Reinventing the steel (and glass)
One of the world’s most influential, controversial and recognisable architects, Hadid looks to be finally receiving the recognition her followers believe she deserves. First receiving the coveted Pritzker prize (the architectural equivalent of an Academy Award) and now bestowed with her own gleaming exhibition at the Design Museum, these highs are in contrast to the lows she has sustained throughout her career – most notably the populist snub to her winning design for the Cardiff Opera House. One inevitably asks why opinion polarises when it comes to the charismatic Hadid.
Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid received her degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before reaching these blessed shores to study at the prestigious Architectural Association, graduating to work with the revered Rem Koolhaas at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, and establishing her own London practice in 1980.
Known for her inspiring and breathtaking visions of urban spaces, most notably the prizewinning Peak in Hong Kong early in her career, she was equally known for being unable to transfer most of these to tangible structures.
Wings clipped by physical, structural or financial limitations, Hadid entered the 21st century with only one notable structure to her name and with countless plans and drawings, hence the derogatory description of her as primarily a “paper architect”.
Yet despite this, she has managed to remain one of the most influential and inspiring figures in her field, with a jaggedly angular yet curvaceous style as distinctive as any of her contemporaries.
Somehow the floodgates opened and her office in Clerkenwell is now overwhelmed with activity as she enters a new phase of her career with a plethora of buildings in progress – a new opera house in Guangzhou, the extraterrestrial Performing Arts Centre in Abu Dhabi and The Opus, an incredibly ambitious office tower in Dubai that will appear to hover over the ground.
More close to home is the new Aquatics Centre for the Olympics, controversially running way over its already immodest £75 million budget.
These are represented immaculately in an exhibition that spans two hushed rooms on the Shad Thames. The first represents the early phase of her career, with early sketches of The Peak and her initial brief and thoughts – “the architecture appears like a knife cutting through butter devastating all the traditional principles and establishing new ones. Defying nature but not destroying it.”
Though clearly in the mindset of an artiste-cum-visionary at times, Hadid backs it up with typical attention to detail; her sprawling yet concise plans for Italy’s National Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome and the Phaeno Science Centre are there for anyone to peruse at their leisure.
A wall is taken up by her paintings, scale drawings and sketches of The Peak and her visions for urban redevelopments – her representations of city centres and even relatively straightforward structures such as office blocks are turned on their head warp across the canvas in a manner nothing short of mind-blowing.
Incorporated too, are hitherto little known plans for developments for London such as the intriguing “Leicester Square” project in 1990, for an exhibition exploring London’s public realm. A new space was proposed approximately the size of the current Leicester Square but semi-submerged below its surface, rather like a sunken space. All development would be inverted and sunk into the ground, slicing subterranean “skyscrapers” into the earth.
On a vast wall are projections of digitally-rendered three-dimensional images of concepts and completed works. The Cardiff Opera House scale model is here too, unrepentantly displayed or perhaps a reminder of the architect’s chequered past before the turn of the century.
Speaking of which, things picked up between then and now – three major works displayed include the brooding and angular BMW Central Building in Leipzig and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, an excitingly jarring yet fittingly congruent addition to the city’s urban regeneration scheme and a counterpoint to Koolhaas’s similarly proportioned Seattle Public Library.
The whitewashed second room displays Hadid’s works-in-progress including the aforementioned, but also a re-imagining of the traditional skyscraper, moving away from single, isolated towers to almost contorted, helix-like forms.
Like other architects, Hadid has been lured into dabbling with small scale design by the prospect of a short time-frame and working on a 1:1 scale. Though hardly miniature buildings, ordinary household items can offer the opportunity to explore an idea or an architectural form.
Presented are regular items such as shelves that looks like something out of Alien, tea and coffee pots that are more military issue than Homebase, and the sleekest, sexiest tables and chairs. Though mundane and humble in function, calling this homewares would be like calling an F1 car a daily commute.
Speaking of commutes, included is a low point in the exhibition – a design for a lightweight car that, though progressive and brave, looks pretty insipid; more Pikachu than Gordon Murray. Also included is the obligatory handbag which, though taken out of context, also fell somewhat short of the mark.
Capturing the diversity and essence of Hadid’s work never seemed a simple prospect, but the curators have succeeded admirably in emphasising Hadid’s creative strengths even if her current body of completed work is not comparable to other architects held in the same esteem. With the concurrent Matthew Williamson exhibition running at the same space, a trip down to the Shad Thames seems due.
