I went to see the Zaha Hadid exhibition at the Design Museum the other day. It's good. It's not just about the buildings, Hadid does some really interesting drawings and paintings. And she's one of those rare people who manage to make the finished product look like the concept sketches. You can see more pics over on Flickr.
My good friend Henrietta Thompson has been writing for the exhibition blog and she's spotted something I think you'll find interesting. Henrietta is a professional writer (for proper publications like Arena, Monocole, Blueprint and the Guardian) so the words are by her and the pics are by me.
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Get some Z at the Design Museum
Give us a “Z”! Give us an “A”! Give us an “H”! Give us an “A”! Zaha Hadid is the queen starchitect - the undisputed champion of signature architecture.
Critics and fans alike have long wondered where she finds her inspiration - where do her forms come from? Her architecture rarely fails to astonish, and yet it is always unmistakably her own. It has been attributed to her willingness to experiment with new technologies, her tireless pushing at the boundaries of materials and construction methods. Over and above all that, however, Zaha is an artist. And her conceptual approach begins by taking a long hard look at herself.
From the moment she could write her own name, Zaha has been creating masterpieces. Her trademark geometric Zs are almost certainly the starting point for every project, but it is perhaps only when we see all her buildings, paintings, plans and projects together that we can fully appreciate how she follows through with those perspective warping combinations of As and Hs. And every now and then she will surprise us with a beautiful sinuous D curve and a rare straight vertical I. There’s no doubt about it, this architect puts the “I” in “iconic”.
You can see more pics over on Flickr. This post also appears on the Zaha Hadid Exhibition Blog.
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