Heydar Aliyev Center - Interior

Getting warmed up for an inking project! 

Materials: Yasutomo black sumi ink, Zebra fine tip felt brush pen, faux sable brushes, deleter 2 white ink. Music is “sweet piano” from Audioblocks! Filmed on my Sony RX100 v, edited with Adobe Premier

Moody Castleton

Morpheus Hotel, Cotai, Macao,

Dame Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher Architects

Artist: Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid in her London office in 1985. Photo by Christopher Pillitz.

Hadid's Approach to Architecture

As quoted from an interview between Zaha Hadid herself and Ossian Ward, Hadid speaks about her work and how herself and her team go about completing an assignment. It is quite impressive to see how her work begins as paintings before it transforms into architecture. Read her account of her design process below:

Derogatory tags such as ‘fantasist’ and ‘paper architect’ were often applied to Hadid in the early days due to her conspicuous lack of built work, but ironically they might be appropriate terms for an architect who paints, scribbles or draws her ideas before they are rendered by computer. ‘The paintings were always part of the building,’ she says of some of the works to be included in her Design Museum exhibition.  ‘They were never done as pure art.’ Hadid differs in this hands-on approach from many of the current crop of techno-architects who are only a few steps away from relinquishing all human control and ushering in an age of computer-generated architecture. But stories about her passing images across a photocopier to come up with her extraordinary sweeping, stretching designs are false; it is technology that has had to catch up with Hadid and not the other way round.  The sinuous lines and layers may look spectacular but her architecture is always built with its end users – us – in mind. ‘We learn from our own repertoire, but every site brings something unique to the project. Our approach is to invest in making a space, and research how, for example, to integrate civic space within the domain of office space.’

To read the entire interview visit: http://www.timeout.com/london/art/zaha-hadid-interview

#POLARIS #STAR

What’s Up November 2017

What’s Up For November?

Dawn pairing of Jupiter and Venus, Moon shines near star clusters, meteor activity all month long!

This month binoculars will come in handy–to view the moon, star clusters, and a close pairing of Venus and Jupiter.

You can’t miss bright Venus in the predawn sky. This month Venus pairs up with Jupiter on the morning of November 13th.

The Leonids peak on a moonless November 17th. Expect no more than 10 meteors an hour around 3:00 a.m., the height of the shower.

The Northern and Southern sub-branches of the Taurid meteor shower offer sparse counts of about 5 meteors per hour, but slow, bright meteors are common.

The nearby November Orionids peak on the 28th. In contrast to the Taurids, the Orionids are swift. But don’t expect more than 3 meteors per hour.

The moon glides by three beautiful star clusters in the morning sky this month, and a pair of binoculars will allow you to see the individual stars in the clusters. Aim your binoculars at the Pleiades and the moon on the 5th.

Then aim at the Messier or M-35 cluster and the moon on the 7th and the Beehive cluster and the moon on the 10th.

Meanwhile, at dusk, catch Saturn as it dips closer to the western horizon and pairs up with Mercury on the 24th through the 28th.

Also, Comet C/2017 O1 should still be a binocular-friendly magnitude 7 or 8 greenish object in November. Use Polaris, the North Star as a guide. Look in the East to Northeast sky in the late evening.  

Watch the full What’s Up for November Video: 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Swarm Chandelier by Zaha Hadid

5 facts

Born 31st October 1950, Zaha grew up in Baghdad.

The first Iraqi-British, Muslim female architect to receive the Pritzker Prize in architecture in 2004.

Won an award every year since 2000, winning up to 12 awards in one year.

Zaha Hadid’s first building was the Vitra Fire Station, Germany in 1994.

950 projects over 44 countries, 400 staff, 55 nations.

5 awards

Pritzker Architecture Prize – 2004

Sterling Prize – 2011

Structural Steel Design awards – 2010

RIBA, Royal Institute of British Architecture Worldwide – 2004

Design of the year, Heydar Aliyev Centre – 2014

Source: http://elledecoration.co.za/20-things-know-zaha-hadid/