Zaha Hadid: Sketching the Future
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Zaha Hadid revolutionised the language of architecture and transformed the way we think about design. An artist who sought to question everything taken for granted, she created some of the most spectacular buildings of the 20th and 21st centuries. Hans Ulrich Obrist, a curator, collaborator and longstanding friend, describes how Hadid’s method began in her sketchbooks with ‘superfluid’ drawings, which reflected her belief in the connection between art and architecture.
Obrist traces Hadid’s childhood in Baghdad, the formative influences of her family and her time studying at the Architectural Association in London, a highly experimental school where she was exposed to the ideas of the early twentieth century Russian avant-garde. Obrist goes on to explain how the development of digital technology allowed Hadid to realise her futurist ideas and create new possibilities in architecture, allowing her to seemingly ‘defy gravity’.
Zaha would always have a notebook with her, you know, and that was like her visual diary, these amazing, amazing super-fluid drawings.
Most of her buildings you could find as sketches in her notebooks.
Often lights would be switched on in her studio and people would pass by her house and she would work late night hours to do these extraordinary paintings which are really very big, big visions for fluid, 21st century cities
I post a handwritten note everyday by an artist or an architect for my Instagram, it’s kind of a protest against the disappearance of handwriting, and it connects deeply to Zaha, you know, because it has to do with doodling and drawing and so Zaha took a pen and she wrote on a post-it.
It’s also fantastic that I’m acknowledged for work that’s really not mainstream, that was very deliberately trying to question all the things that people kind of took for granted.
I would go to the RIBA that night and she would not only talk about art and architecture, but it was also fascinating because for the first time started to show sketches, doodles, she had never shown before and I was completed amazed.
[Voiceover]When you see these young girls in their Western clothes, so assured and confident, you’re inclined to forget how surprised their mothers would have been, the idea of training for jobs their daughters take in their stride.
Zaha grew up in in Baghdad. Baghdad was full of basically optimism and hope and positivity. There was a very strong presence also of modern architecture. We should never forget that she also grew up with calligraphy. She encountered early on calligraphic drawings and that’s something which continued for the rest of her life.
The parents of Zaha encouraged her from very early days to experiment. She was encouraged to design her own living room, to design her own clothes. So, this idea which of course means that all aspects of life could be design, from the clothes to the living room, from the apartment to the cities, to the world, to maybe the universe, you know.
There are no boundaries in a way between art and architecture and design. I think this idea not only of the Utopia of art and architecture entering society, the transformative power art and architecture could have or something, she experienced very early on.
When she arrived in London, she already really ready for the radical experiments of the Architectural Association at the time, which was very, you know, futuristic in spirit. From the very beginning Zaha showed this interest in the Russian Avant-Garde. She said I was a senior at the AA, in 1977, and I titled my graduation project Malevich’s Tektonik.
It was a hotel sitting on, or hanging from, a bridge, so she would bring the Russian Constructivism into London. So, you have here lots of elements, like the horizontal elevation, as well as the residues of this super-imposition which continued to play a role later on. It’s kind of interesting and fascinating that Zaha never was nostalgic. There was never a sense of the past as something finished.
She would revisit Malevich, or she would revisit Tatlin, who of course another big influence. She would do that in a very dynamic way. So, it would basically be the past as a toolbox to invent the future. You could say that Zaha early on found her language. Interlocking angular forms and these fluid urban spaces which anticipated so much of the city.
It also took a long time for her to actually have her first building realised, which is in ’93. The Vitra Fire Station is very much a manifesto, you have her language there. You have fragmentation, you have abstraction. You have deconstruction, and this idea of repetitiveness and mass production.
There is also this idea that it defies gravity, but we can see things being frozen, and things being in movement. If you look at a complex construction, an individual building, of crashing and tilted planes, we can of course see there the link to Suprematism which creates a suspense and creates a tension which is something I had never experienced in that kind of a way.
It doesn’t remind you of anything else you’ve seen before, and I think that’s what happened, you know, people went to Vitra and saw this structure of Zaha and realised that she had invented a totally new world, a totally new language.
One of us would do a sketch, and the sketch would be translated into a more elaborate sketch, and then it has an idea. You know, you move faster if you are versatile and able to do things quite quickly.
Here’s what Zaha told me: “the sketches are interesting because they became a method. If I would trace one layer to another on paper, it gave me the right degree of transparency”.
She mixes angles and the curves and creates a kind of frozen movement and that’s of course something that happens in her drawings and in her paintings. She showed me one notebook where you see really the genesis of the MAXXI museum and you saw how the entire building just grew.
Zaha told me, you know, it’s, it’s why she likes drawing so much, it’s because – you make mistakes, and when you make mistakes, you can start seeing things differently. There isn’t much of an element of chance unless you build randomised progress into a project.
I think what was interesting, in a way, what we decided even with hand-drawings, drawing plans and sections was not enough to explore, maybe, new thinking and architecture.
I think what is also fascinating about Zaha’s drawings is that all of a sudden, the digital age allowed her to build what she conceived much earlier. And you know, people would never have thought at the moment of her early drawings that that would ever be buildable.
I will never forget when I visited her Phaeno Building at the very beginning, when it opened. First of all, it completely changed the kind of feeling I had about concrete, because I always thought that concrete was somehow, you know, connected to Brutalism, that it was a brutal material, that in a way, almost weightless, has a kind of fluidity. How Zaha uses concrete makes it very human. A kind of human Brutalism.
Yeah, it was the Phaeno and also the MAXXI buildings that are, of course, two examples where Zaha could really apply her language on a large scale.
So, the second building of the Serpentine basically became Zaha’s first building in central London. Even now that she built an aquatic centre for the Olympics, and also a school, it remains her only structure in central London.
Zaha basically added a completely contemporary element which is very much an oxymoron, you know, where the past meets the present and projects it into the future. You know, it is not touching the old structure, but it is completely adjacent so it’s kind of an encounter, you can say, by separation.
We should never forget that sometimes we encounter historic figures, you know, among our contemporaries and I always think, you know, that Zaha is one, she’s a historic figure, you know, we’ve been so lucky to work with, to be friends with her.
And I think she’s one of the great artists and architects of the twenty and twenty-first centuries and I think there are so many dimensions to her work which still ought to be discovered.
With thanks to…
Christian Richter
David Gill Gallery
Established & Sons
Georg Jensen
Hélène Binet
Iwaan Baan
Louis Vuitton
Luke Hayes
Roland Halbe
Hufton + Crow
Jacopo Spilimbergo
OKO Group
RIBA
Sawaya & Moroni
Kenny Schachter / Rove
Serpentine Galleries
Slamp
Werner Huthmacher
Zaha Hadid Architects
Zaha Hadid Design
Zaha Hadid Foundation
Archive
Architectural Association
Alamy Stock Photo
AP Archive
Bridgeman Images
British Pathé
Getty Images
Pond5
Shutterstock
Music
Audio Network
9 Lives Music
Full List of Artworks Shown:
A look through Zaha Hadid’s Sketchbook
Serpentine Sackler Gallery
8 Dec 2016 to 12 Feb 2017
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation and Serpentine Galleries
Zaha Hadid’s Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria
Hélène Binet, 2002
© Hélène Binet
Phaeno Science Centre
Wolfsburg, Germany
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2000-2005
Photo: © Werner Huthmacher
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany
Photo: © Christian Richter
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
The Aquatics Centre, London, England
Steve Vidler, 2014
Mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo
Heydar Aliyev Centre
Lerner Vadim / Shutterstock
Nordpark Railway Stations (Hungerburg Station) Innsbruck
Photo: © Werner Huthmacher, n.d.
Courtesy of RIBA
View from Trafalgar Square
Drawing of: Grand Building, Trafalgar Square, London, UK
Zaha Hadid, 1985
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Hommage à Verner Panton
Painting
Zaha Hadid, 1990
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Tektonik, “The Great Utopia”
Painting
Zaha Hadid, 1992
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
‘Blue Slabs’
Painting for: The Peak, Hong Kong, China, 1982–1983
Zaha Hadid, 1983
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
‘I think there should be no end to experimentation’
From: The Art of Handwriting
Instagram post, Hans Ulrich Obrist
March 31st2016
@hansulrichobrist
Dame Zaha Hadid receiving the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture
AP Archive, February 4th2016
RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2016 Lecture: ‘The Way Forward’
Zaha Hadid, February 4th2016
Courtesy of RIBA
Sketch by Zaha Hadid
Drawing of: MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy 1998-2009
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation
Sketch by Zaha Hadid
Drawing of: MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy 1998-2009
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation
The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant Garde 1915-1932
Exhibition design
Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York
26 September 1992 – 3 January 1993
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Shrine of al-Mahdi, Samarra, Salah ad Din Province, Iraq
Danita Delimont / Getty Images
Sketch for Phaeno Science Center
Wolfsburg, Germany 2000-2005
Zaha Hadid, n.d.
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation
Young Zaha Hadid with her parents at the Trevi Fountain
Photo as shown in:
The Way Forward
RIBA Gold Medal Lecture
Zaha Hadid, 2016
Courtesy of RIBA and Zaha Hadid Foundation
Aqua Table for Established & Sons
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2005
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects / Zaha Hadid Design
Aqua Table
Zaha Hadid exhibition at the Design Museum, London, Britain
Tony Kyriacou / Shutterstock, 2007
Icone Bag for Louis Vuitton
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2010
Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects / Zaha Hadid Design
Vortexx Chandelier for Sawaya + Moroni
London Design Museum
Universal Images Group / Getty Images, 2007
Liquid Glacial Seating for David Gill Gallery
Zaha Hadid Architects
Photo: © Martin Slivka, 2015
Courtesy of David Gill Gallery
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Z Chair for Sawaya & Moroni
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2011
Photo: Enrico Sua Ummarino
Courtesy of Sawaya & Moroni
Lamellae Collection for Georg Jensen
Launch Event for the Georg Jensen X Zaha Hadid Jewellery Collection
Victor Hugo/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images, 2016
Launch Event for the Georg Jensen X Zaha Hadid Jewellery Collection
Victor Hugo/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images, 2016
Nova Shoes for United Nude
Courtesy of United Nude, 2013
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Nova Shoes for United Nude in Stuart Weitzman Flagship Store
Stuart Weitzman Opens Zaha Hadid Designed Boutique In Hong Kong
Jessica Hromas, 2014
Jessica Hromas/Getty Images for Stuart Weitzman
Liquid Glacial Table for David Gill Gallery
Photo: © Jacopo Spilimbergo, 2015
Courtesy of David Gill Gallery and Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Liquid Glacial Table for David Gill Gallery
Photo: © Jacopo Spilimbergo, 2015
Courtesy of David Gill Galleryand Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Aria Transparente Chandeliers for Slamp
Exhibition of Zaha Hadid design in Dongdaemun Design Plaza
Alina Zamogilnykh, 2014
Alina Zamogilnykh / Shutterstock
Crest, Zaha Hadid Installation, London, United Kingdom
Ed Reeve, 2014
Ed Reeve/View Pictures/UIG via Getty Images
Lilas
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2007
Photo: © Luke Hayes
Courtesy of Serpentine Galleries
Z-Car 1 for Kenny Schachter / ROVE
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2005-2008
© Zaha Hadid Architects / Zaha Hadid Design / Zaha Hadid Foundation
Bridge of Styx across Ching’s Yard
Valerie Bennett, 1988
© Architectural Association
Zaha Hadid, Peak Project Party
Unknown Photographer, 1985
© Architectural Association
Library Terrace and Ching’s Yard from above
Valerie Bennett, 1988
© Architectural Association
Planetary Architecture II Exhibition Opening
Valerie Bennett, 1983
© Architectural Association
Zaha Hadid, Peak Project Party
Unknown Photographer, 1985
© Architectural Association
Suprematist Composition
Kazimir Malevich, 1916
Private collection
Exhibition Design for:
The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant Garde 1915-1932
Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York
26 September 1992 – 3 January 1993
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Supremus No. 56
Kazimir Malevich, 1916
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Architecton Beta
Kazimir Malevich, c.1920
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Malevich’s Tektonik
Zaha Hadid, 1976-1977
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Supremus No. 58 Dynamic Composition in Yellow and Black
Kazimir Malevich, 1916
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia / Bridgeman Images
Sketch for: MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy 1998-2009
Zaha Hadid
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Foundation
Corner Building Rotation
Painting for: Hafenstrasse Development, Hamburg, Germany, 1989
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Suprematist Composition, Eight Red Rectangles
Kazimir Malevich, 1915
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Reproduction of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument blueprints
SPUTNIK / Alamy Stock Photo
Tatlin Tower and Tektonik Worldwind
Painting for:The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant Garde 1915-1932
Solomon R Guggenheim Museum , New York
26 September 1992 – 3 January 1993
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
‘Blue Slabs’
Painting for: The Peak, Hong Kong, China
Zaha Hadid Architects,1982-1983
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Metropolis
Painting for:Metropolis Exhibition, ICA, London, UK
Zaha Hadid Architects,4thAugust – 1stOctober 1988
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Victoria City Aerial, Mixed use development, Berlin, Germany
Painting
Zaha Hadid Architects, 1988
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Vitra Fire Station 01
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Vitra Fire Station
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Vitra Fire Station
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Vitra Fire Station 06
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Vitra Fire Station, animation
Weil am Rhein, Germany
Zaha Hadid Architects, 1991-1993
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Vitra Fire Station, painting
Weil am Rhein, Germany
Zaha Hadid Architects, 1991-1993
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Painting: ‘Aerial Site Plan’
Vitra Fire Station
Weil am Rhein, Germany
Zaha Hadid Architects, 1991-1993
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Vitra Fire Station
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Vitra Fire Station 02
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Vitra Fire Station 05
Hélène Binet, 1993
© Hélène Binet
Sketches for:MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy 1998-2009
Zaha Hadid Architects
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy 1998-2009
Photo: © Iwan Baaan
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Interior of MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy 1998-2009
Photos: © Iwan Baaan
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Sky Soho by Zaha Hadid, Shanghai, China
VCG, 2014
VCG via Getty Images
Jockey Club Innovation Tower, Hong Kong, China. Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 2014
Doublespace/VIEW/REX/Shutterstock
Dominion Tower, Moscow, Russia.
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 2015
Hufton+Crow/VIEW/REX/Shutterstock
Galaxy Soho, animation
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2009-2012
© Zaha Hadid Architects
Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany, Animation/Project video
Zaha Hadid Architects, 2000-2005
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany
Photos: © Werner Huthmacher
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany, 2006
View Pictures/UIG via Getty Images
Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany
Photo: © Werner Huthmacher
Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Zaha Hadid in her London office, UK, c.1985
Christopher Pillitz / Getty Images
Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria
Hélène Binet, 2002
© Hélène Binet
Lois & Richard Centre for Contemporary Arts, Cincinnati, USA
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 1997-2003
Photo: Roland Halbe
Photo courtesy of RIBA
Sheikh Zayed Bridge, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 2010
Hufton+Crow-VIEW / Alamy Stock Photo
The Galaxy SOHO project in central Beijing
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 2009 -2012
Pealiku / Shutterstock
Port House, Antwerp, Belgium
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 2009 -2016
Rudy Mareel / Shutterstock
Capital Hill Residence, Moscow, Russia
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects, 2006-2018
Courtesy of OKOGroup.com
High Speed Train Station Napoli-Afragola, Naples, Italy, animation
Zaha Hadid Architects,2015-2017
© Zaha Hadid Foundation / Zaha Hadid Architects
- ‘Serpentine Sackler Gallery’, Zaha Hadid Architects
- ‘Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings’, Serpentine Galleries
- ‘Zaha Hadid receives Royal Gold Medal’, RIBA, 4 February 2016
- ‘Zaha Hadid – The Capital Hill Residence’, Vladislav Doronin
- Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, ‘Zaha Hadid, MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts’, Smarthistory, 4 July 2018
- Deyan Sudjic, ‘Dame Zaha Hadid Obituary’, Guardian, 1 April 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/apr/01/zaha-hadid-obituary - Hans Ulrich Obrist, Zaha Hadid and Hans Ulrich Obrist (Conversation Series) (Germany: Walter Konig, 2007)
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