Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid (Arabic: زها حديد‎), CBE (born October 31, 1950, Baghdad, Iraq) is a notable British Iraqi deconstructivist architect.

Zaha Hadid was born October 31, 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. After graduating she worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met the engineer Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed difficult to build. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught at the Architectural Association. She has also taught at prestigious institutions around the world; she held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, guest professorships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, the Knowlton School of Architecture, at The Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid's winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong (1983) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore's one-north masterplan. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded an CBE for services to architecture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was honored with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut. Zaha Hadid's architectural design firm - Zaha Hadid Architects - is over 250 people strong, headquartered in London.

In 2008, she ranked 69th on the Forbes list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women". On January 2nd 2009, she was the guest editor of the BBC's flagship morning radio news programme, Today.

She has also undertaken some high-profile interior work, including the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome in London. Ongoing projects include: The 17,500-seat Aquatics Centre for London, one of the new venues being constructed for the 2012 Summer Olympics. While she was previously slated for work in the Docklands area of Melbourne, it has since been announced that architect Norman Foster will be designing it instead. The MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century Arts) in Rome. The Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan. The new departmental records building, Pierres vives, for Hérault in Montpellier. Zaha Hadid's project was named as the best for the Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in 2008.

To the top

Architectural Association School of Architecture

The Architectural Association School of Architecture, more usually known as the AA, is one of the most prestigious and most selective architecture schools in the United Kingdom. Its wide-ranging programme of exhibitions, lectures, symposia and publications have given it a central position in global discussions and developments within contemporary architectural culture. Many of the world's most celebrated and respected figures in architecture and its associated fields 'have been here (sooner or later)' as a plaque outside the school entrance proclaims.

It is the oldest independent school of architecture in the United Kingdom and was founded in 1847 by two dissatisfied young architects (Robert Kerr, 24, and Charles Grey, 24), to provide a self-directed, independent education at a time when the profession of architecture had yet to appear in the form we recognise today. The School was formally established in 1890. In 1901, it moved premises to the former Royal Architectural Museum. In 1920, it moved again, to its current premises in Bedford Square, central London (it has since acquired additional London premises in John Street and a 350-acre site at Hooke Park in Dorset). The school has also acquired property on Morwell Street behind Bedford Square, which it uses as studio space and there are plans for further expansion.

Many notable architects have since passed through its doors as its former staff and alumni list shows. The students of the AA have been addressed by many eminent figures, from John Ruskin and George Gilbert Scott, to more recently Daniel Libeskind, Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas.

After 150 years, the AA is one of the world's most international schools of architecture, attracting students and staff from more than 60 countries worldwide, and a long list of visiting critics, lecturers and other participants from around the world each year.

Courses are divided into two main areas - undergraduate programmes, leading to the AA Diploma, and postgraduate programmes, which include specialised courses in landscape urbanism (LU), housing and urbanism, sustainable environmental design, histories and theories, emergent technologies, design research lab (DRL), as well as day-release course in building conservation, garden conservation, and environmental access. Since its foundation, the School has continued to draw its teaching staff from progressive international practices, and they are reappointed annually, allowing a continual renewal of the exploration of architecture.

The school also has its own bookshop, the AA Bookshop, containing a comprehensive range of architectural books, as well as books related to the field of architecture. The bookshop is also used as a platform for new launch titles from AA Publications.AA Publications has a long tradition of publishing architects, artists and theorists early in their careers, as well as occasionally publishing figures who have already gained notoriety in their field of expertise, such as Salman Rushdie. AA Publications also prints AA journal files, documenting the annual work undertaken by members of the school. The school also has its own independent radio station. The AA gallery also regularly exhibits work from emerging professionals, to exhibitions containing the work of more established architects and related professionals.

The school is notable as existing outside the state-funded university system, with tuition fees comparable to that of a private school, though some bursaries are available on merit and financial need. Since non-EU students are charged higher fees to attend state universities, however, the AA is competitively priced by comparison, therefore it is noted as having a higher proportion of overseas students enrolled than many other UK architecture schools.

It also exists outside the UCAS application system; even at undergraduate/first degree level direct application is the norm. It is therefore not included in many books which guide potential undergraduates to choose appropriate courses, indeed many are unaware of its existence until they are studying architecture elsewhere. This may also account for the lower count of home-students enroled.

To the top

Phaeno Science Center

The Phaeno Science Center is a new interactive science center in Wolfsburg, Germany. Phaeno arose from progressive urban planning by the City of Wolfsburg. In 1998 City officials were developing a plot of vacant, public land immediately adjacent to Wolfsburg's railway station and just south of VW's huge, then-unfinished attraction Autostadt. An art museum was planned for the site, but Dr. Wolfgang Guthardt, then the City's Director for Culture, Sports and Education, knew that such an institution would compete with Wolfsburg's successful Kunst Museum (Art Museum) and needed other options. Guthardt visited Technorama, a science center in Switzerland and became convinced that a science center in Wolfsburg would complement both Autostadt and the Kunst Museum.

Preliminary planning began in November 1998, and one year later Joe Ansel, an American consultant and designer, was approached to handle the exhibitions and other operational aspects of the project. An architectural design competition was held in January 2000 and the prominent architect Zaha Hadid won, in conjunction with structural engineers, Adams Kara Taylor. About five years later, phaeno opened to the public on November 24, 2005 with over 250 interactive exhibits from Ansel Associates, Inc. all enclosed in an astounding concrete structure designed by Zaha Hadid, her German associate, Mayer Bährle architects and Adams Kara Taylor. The architectural design has been described as a "hypnotic work of architecture - the kind of building that utterly transforms our vision of the future." The design won the 2006 Institution of Structural Engineers Award for Arts, Leisure and Entertainment Structures.

The building effectively stands on concrete stilts allowing visitors to the Autostadt to pass through without having to interfere with the workings of the building. Phaeno is connected to the Autostadt via a metal bridge accessed by escalators and stairs either side. The underside of Phaeno is illuminated and the "stilts" are too.

Dr. Guthardt is now Phaeno's first Executive Director. Phaeno has enjoyed high attendance and broad public acceptance since its opening.

To the top

Rem Koolhaas

Remment Lucas Koolhaas, IPA: , (born 17 November 1944(1944-11-17)) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell University in New York. Koolhaas is the principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, or OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO, currently based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In 2005 he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman.

In 2000 Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008 Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People.

Remment Koolhaas, usually abbreviated to Rem Koolhaas, was born on 17 November 1944 in Rotterdam, Netherlands to Anton Koolhaas (1912–1992) and Selinde Pietertje Roosenburg (born 1920). His father was a novelist, critic, and screenwriter. Two documentary films by Bert Haanstra for which his father wrote the scenarios were nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, one won a Golden Bear for Short Film. His maternal grandfather, Dirk Roosenburg (1887–1962), was a modernist architect. His grandfather had worked for Hendrik Petrus Berlage, before he opened his own practice. Rem Koolhaas has a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Annabel. The family lived consecutively in Rotterdam (until 1946), Amsterdam (1946–1952), Jakarta (1952–1955), and Amsterdam (from 1955).

Koolhaas first studied scriptwriting at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. Koolhaas co-wrote The White Slave, a 1969 Dutch film noir, and later wrote an unproduced script for American soft-porn king Russ Meyer.

He then was a journalist for the Haagse Post before starting studies, in 1968, in architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, followed, in 1972, by further studies at Cornell University in New York.

Koolhaas first came to public and critical attention with OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the office he founded in 1975 together with architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas's wife) Madelon Vriesendorp in London. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students, Zaha Hadid - who would soon go on to achieve success in her own right. An early work which would mark their difference from the then dominant postmodern classicism of the late 1970s, was their contribution to the Venice Biennale of 1980, curated by Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, titled "Presence of the Past". Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; and the OMA scheme was the only modernist scheme among them.

Other early critically received (yet unbuilt) projects included the Parc de la Villette, Paris (1982) and the residence for the President of Ireland (1981). The first large project by OMA to be built was the Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992). These schemes would attempt to put into practice many of the findings Koolhaas made in his book Delirious New York (1978), which was written while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, directed by Peter Eisenman.

Delirious New York set the pace for Koolhaas's career. His work emphatically embraces the contradictions of two disciplines (architecture and urban design) that have struggled to maintain their humanist ideals of material honesty, the human scale and carefully crafted meaning in a rapidly globalising world that espouses material economy, machine scale and random meaning. Instead, Koolhaas celebrates the "chance-like" nature of city life: "The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape." As Koolhaas himself has acknowledged, this approach had already been evident in the Japanese Metabolist Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Another key aspect of architecture Koolhaas interrogates is the "Program": with the rise of modernism in the 20th century the "Program" became the key theme of architectural design. The notion of the Program involves "an act to edit function and human activities" as the pretext of architectural design: epitomised in the maxim Form follows function, first popularised by architect Louis Sullivan and Nicolas Cisneros at the beginning of the 20th century. The notion was first questioned in Delirious New York, in his analysis of high-rise architecture in Manhattan. An early design method derived from such thinking was "cross-programming", introducing unexpected functions in room programmes, such as running tracks in skyscrapers. More recently, Koolhaas (unsuccessfully) proposed the inclusion of hospital units for the homeless into the Seattle public Library project (2003).

The next landmark publication by Koolhaas was S,M,L,XL, together with Bruce Mau, Jennifer Sigler, and Hans Werlemann (1995),a 1376-page tome combining essays, manifestos, diaries, fiction, travelogues, and meditations on the contemporary city. The layout of the huge book transformed architectural publishing, and such books - full-colour graphics and dense texts - have since become common. Ostensibly, S,M,L,XL gives a record of the actual implementation of "Manhattanism" throughout the various (mostly un-) realized projects and texts OMA had generated up to that time. The part lexicon-type layout (with a marginal "dictionary" composed by Jennifer Sigler, who also edited the book) spawned a number of concepts that have become common in later architectural theory, in particular "Bigness": 'old' architectural principles (composition, scale, proportion, detail) no longer apply when a building acquires Bigness. This was demonstrated in OMA's scheme for the development of "Euralille" (1990-94), a new centre for the city of Lille in France, a city returned to prominence by its position on the new rail route from Paris to London via the Channel Tunnel. OMA sited a train station, two centres for commerce and trade, an urban park, and 'Congrexpo' (a contemporary Grand Palais with a large concert hall, three auditoria and an exhibition space). In another essay in the book, titled "The Generic City", Koolhaas declares that progress, identity, architecture, the city and the street are things of the past: “Relief … it’s over. That is the story of the city. The city is no longer. We can leave the theatre now...” For Koolhaas architecture and the city are said to be superseded by Bigness.

Koolhaas's next landmark publications were a product of his position as professor at Harvard University, in the design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page Mutations, followed by The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (2002) and The Great Leap Forward (2002). All three books involved Koolhaas's students analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as Lagos in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical - as if Western capitalism and globalization demolish all cultural identity - highlighted in the notion expounded in the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". However, such cynicism can alternatively be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops.

When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of present day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within his design activities: calling such a condition the ‘culture of congestion’. Again, shopping is examined for "intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size, money etc. For example, in his design for the new CCTV headquarters in Beijing (2006, under construction), Koolhaas did not opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises, but instead designed a series of volumes which not only tie together the numerous departments onto the nebulous site, but also introduced routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. Through his ruthlessly raw approach, Koolhaas hopes to extract the architect from the anxiety of a dead profession and resurrect a contemporary sublime, however fleeting it may be.

In 2003 Content, a 544-page magazine-style book was published by Koolhaas, giving an overview of the last decade of OMA projects including his designs for the Prada shops, the Seattle Public Library, a plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest town, as well as interviews with Martha Stewart and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

In the late nineties, while working on the design for the new headquarters for Universal (currently Vivendi), OMA was first exposed to the full pace of change that engulfed the world of media and with it the increasing importance of the virtual domain. It led Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to create a new company, AMO, exclusively dedicated to the investigation and performance in this realm. He is heading the think tank ever since with Reinier de Graaf.

In 2005 Rem Koolhaas co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman. Volume Magazine - the collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (Columbia University NY) - is a dynamic experimental think tank devoted to the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. It goes beyond architecture’s definition of ‘making buildings’ and reaches out for global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures, and creating environments to live in. Volume Magazine creates the agenda. The magazine stands for a journalism which detects and anticipates, is proactive and even pre-emptive - a journalism which uncovers potentialities, rather than covering done deals.

Following the signing of Treaties of Nice in May 2001, which made Brussels the de facto capital of the Europe Union, the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt invited Koolhaas to discuss the necessities and requirements of a European capital.

During these talks and as an impetus for further discussion, Koolhaas and his think-tank AMO – an independent part of OMA – suggested the development of a visual language. This idea inspired a series of drawings and drafts, including the "Barcode". The barcode seeks to unite the flags of the EU member countries into a single, colourful symbol. In the current European flag, there is a fixed number of stars. In the barcode however, new Member States of the EU can be added without space constraints. Originally, the barcode displayed 15 EU countries. In 2004, the symbol was adapted to include the ten new Member States.

Since the time of the first drafts of the barcode it has very rarely been officially used by commercial or political institutions. During the Austrian EU Presidency 2006 it was officially used for the first time. The logo has already been used for the EU information campaign which will also be continued during the Austrian EU Presidency. There was initially some uproar caused, as the stripes of the flag of Estonia were displayed incorrectly.

With his Prada projects, Koolhaas ventured into providing architecture for the fleeting world of fashion and with celebrity-studded cachet: not unlike Garnier's Opera, the central space of Koolhaas' Beverly Hills Prada store is occupied by a massive central staircase, ostensibly displaying select wares, but mainly the shoppers themselves. The notion of selling a brand rather than marketing clothes was further emphasised in the Prada store in New York, which had previously been owned by the MOMA: the museum signs were not removed during the outfitting of the new store, as if emphasizing the premises as a cultural institution.

Prior to his Prada project in New York, Koolhaas was behind another remodeling project on the other side of town. Koolhaas redesigned a 1929 bank and transformed it into a one-of-a-kind, 296 seat, performance space for Second Stage Theatre.

At the moment Koolhaas' constructions sites are in China: the massive Central China Television Headquarters Building in Beijing, China, and the new building for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the equivalent of the NASDAQ in China.

Recently he has changed the organization of his office to a partnership. Partners next to him are Ole Scheeren, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigeimatsu and managing partner Victor van der Chijs.

Koolhaas now heads offices in Europe (OMA*AMO Rotterdam), North America (OMA*AMO Architecture PC New York) and Asia (OMA Beijing).

OMA Rotterdam: the head office is working on a master plan for the White City area of London; a harbour redevelopment and contemporary art Museum in Riga, the Cordoba Congress Centre in Spain; the redevelopment of the Mercati Generali in Rome, an architectural centre, offices and housing in Copenhagen, the new head office of Rothschild Bank in London and multi-use towers in Rotterdam and The Hague. It is also working on various masterplans in The Netherlands and Belgium and shopping centres in Rotterdam and Ostrava. In addition the Rotterdam office has a number of activities in the Middle East including office and residential towers and master plans in Dubai, three master plans in Ras -Al-Khaimah and several public buildings in Qatar. With his Rotterdam office Koolhaas is also designing a science center for Hamburg’s Hafencity.

OMA New York: the office in Manhattan Koolhaas is leading by Shohei Shigematsu is now designing an extension of Cornell University (NY), 111 First Street, a high rise residential building and hotel in Jersey City (NJ) and a high end residential tower with CAA screening room at One Madison Park in NYC.

OMA Beijing: In Asia, Koolhaas is working with his team on the office’s largest project to date, the 575,000 m2 China Central Television Headquarters (CCTV) and Television Cultural Center (TVCC), currently under construction in Beijing and due for completion in 2008. (However, the TVCC was damaged by an enormous fire in 2009.) Other projects in development include the new Shenzhen Stock Exchange and a lush residential tower and residential masterplan in Singapore.

To the top