Polaris

Polaris

Morpheus Hotel, Cotai, Macao,

Dame Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher Architects

65 Irving Place, New York, NY ($21.5 million USD)

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

600 COLLINS STREET by Zaha Hadid Architects

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/

Leeza Soho by Zaha Hadid Architecits in Beijing

Moody Castleton

Zaha Hadid in Venice