cultural blah blah.com

Last Saturday we went to the opening of the Zaha Hadid exhibit at the Guggenheim. For anybody who knows anything about the architect, you will understand when I say that most of the time her work is completely impossible to get. You see a building that she has done and just like if you were looking at a Gehry or a Niemeyer your first reaction might be, "what is this?" With that said what I love about this architecture is that by being so elaborate it gives you the freedom to explore it. Its not just a bunch of rectangles with windows stacked up on to each other. Once you start to study it you may either get really curious or just fascinated with what it means, what it does with light and all the extraordinarily intricate detail. The same goes with this exhibit and how well it was put together. At the beginning its kind of hard to understand, you begin up the ramp and all you see are very large elaborate paintings with very little description. The only reason I recognized one of them is because I have been to Hong Kong and it was a painting of the city with its Hadid addition. As you continue up the ramp there starts to be more detail. You start to see some film with interviews of the architect, sketches that are superimposed on top of each other and then you come to see actual models of the buildings. At this point you start to understand how it all comes together, the combination of the models and paintings and smaller drawings let you really see every detail that she incorporated in the design. According to Hadid using all these various platforms or what she calls "testing fields" allows her to see every angle and perspective of her work. What I loved about this is how cleverly the exhibit was designed to show how Hadid's architecture isn't just architecture but very much an art form. Her buildings with their sharp corners and very aggressive features are actually quite poetic and beautiful in their own ways. What is amazing about her as well is that she takes a modern and unusual yet surprisingly functional approach to architecture using technology and modern science and materials in her work. Her work doesn't necessarily always make all that much sense to the novice like myself but does paint an amazing portrait of the architect as mysterious, fascinating and brilliant. I strongly suggest you go see this exhibit. At first you might not understand nor like it but by the time you finish you will know that you have just seen a great artist's work. Zaha Hadid runs through October 25th at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street), New York City. Visit http://www.guggenheim.org/hadid/index.html for more information. Biography Born in Baghdad in 1950, Zaha Hadid studied in Switzerland, England, and Lebanon. She pursued architectural studies at London's Architectural Association in 1972 and received her diploma in 1977. Shortly after, she joined the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) with her previous professors, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis. She opened her independent practice in London in 1979. In 1982 she garnered international recognition when her submission The Peak won the competition for a leisure club in Hong Kong. The project was never completed, but since then, several audacious buildings have given material form to her search for challenging ideas. In 2004, Zaha Hadid was the first woman to receive architecture's most prestigious award, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Today, using London as the base for her firm, her vision is being transformed into suggestive buildings all over the world. (From the Guggenheim press release on the exhibit) http://www.zaha-hadid.com/ Photo Credits: Vitra Fire Station Weil am Rhein, Germany, 1990–94 Photo: Christian Richters Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects, London Zaha Hadid Photo: Steve Double Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects, London The World (89 Degrees), 1983 Acrylic on canvas, 83 7/8 x 72 1/16 inches (213 x 183 cm) Zaha Hadid Architects © Zaha Hadid, Ltd., London