LONDON.- Zaha Hadid is at the height of her powers. With an office 170 strong, she is building all over the world, from masterplans in Singapore and Istanbul, to an opera house in China, a museum in Rome, and a skyscraper in Dubai. In the last year she has opened two substantial buildings in Germany: a car factory for BMW and the Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, for which she received great international acclaim, and her range of domestic products and furniture has engaged the attention of art and design collectors and critics throughout the world.
Zaha Hadid: Architecture and Design at the Design Museum through 25 November will be the first UK full-scale exhibition of Hadid’s visionary work. Incorporating a wide range of media including painting, sketches, models, furniture and design objects, and spanning two floors, it will be the most ambitious project undertaken by the Design Museum.
The exhibition will open with an introduction to Hadid’s most significant completed projects: the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art, Cinncinnati; the Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, recently shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize; and the BMW plant, Leipzig, Germany. A series of models, plans and renderings will establish her achievement as an architect building today, and will demonstrate her ability in pioneering a new vocabulary for architecture. Process will be examined with an in-depth analysis of the Maxxi Centre for Contemporary Art in Rome. The exhibition will demonstrate the importance of London for Hadid, from her formative experiences at the Architectural Association, the influence of the people she met there including Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi, and the first steps to building a practice, to her future plans for the 2012 Olympics Aquatic Centre. A special section of the exhibition will be dedicated to the many products that Hadid has designed including her limited edition projects for Established & Sons, such as the Seamless Collection, the Aqua Table and Swarm chandelier.
Closing with a look at future plans with a city of models of Hadid’s buildings, Zaha Hadid – Architecture and Design will leave visitors with an insight into the huge breadth and power of the Hadid office, and a very different world from the conventional architectural circuit.
