Eugene Tumusiime

Explore the visionary architect’s early paintings and drawings in virtual reality in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Group

Polaris

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

Just putting some finishing touches on this piece of Mor and Awyr. Dr Martins watercolors and Deleter 2 white ink with faux sable brushes on Arches hot press watercolor paper.

The Peak Leisure Club Hong Kong.  1982-1983 Architects: Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid

jenniferbin

That’s polaris. The north star. 

That’s how sailors used to find their way home. 

When I look at you, that’s what I see.

I see my way home.

For Muslims and women, Zaha Hadid was a shining torch

Zaha was an outsider and upfront about the unfair treatment she experienced – but her fight came at great personal cost

Zaha was an outsider and upfront about the unfair treatment she experienced as a woman, a foreigner and a designer of expensive, weird-looking buildings – a triple whammy. She did not fit the stereotypical white male profession of registered architects. Jealousy and prejudice failed to bar her way, but it took its toll. Very few people realise the misogynistic, racist and anti-architect environment she had to navigate in Britain. For Muslims, minorities and women, Zaha is a shining torch beaming into the dark minds for whom a few tiles falling off a building seemed a justification to dismiss her work.

ZAHA HADID, The Haydar Aliyev Center, Baku Azerbaijan 2007-2012. Photography by Helene Binet, Zaha Hadid Architects. / Wired

Library and Learning Centre University of Economics Vienna by Zaha Hadid Architects