http://www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/digitalhadid.htm
Post-modernism, Deconstructivism, Folding Hegel grasped that the New
in artistic and intellectual history is always consuming its immediate
precursor as its defining opposite, maintaining and carrying it along
like a shadow. And this shadow carries a further shadow etc., so that a
cultural innovation can only be identified and appreciated by those who
are able to place it within the whole historical evolution. Such
appreciation therefore becomes a relative, graded and ultimately
infinite act. (And it is essential for the culture of architecture to
insist that a new architectural position can not be reduced to an
isolated form or gesture, but - like a scientific idea - involves a
whole network of historically cumulative assumptions and ambitions.)
This process, which Hegel called sublation, is borne out by the fact
that the definition of the New, e.g. of deconstructivism or folding in
architecture, stretches across hundreds of magazine and book pages,
broadly retracing architectural history, referencing classic as well as
modernist tropes. But - and this is beyond the grasp of hegelian
dialectic - each time the sequence is traversed it is twisted and
retro-actively realigned by current contingencies and emerging agendas.
The history of (architectural) history reveals how distinctions and
relative newness are redistributed, emerge and collapse under the force
of current innovations and concerns, a force that thus works to a
large extend against the arrow of time and this has bewitching
consequences: A thought might no longer speak the language of its own
beginning. As Derrida puts it "... all is not to be thought at one go
... " and "The necessity of passing through that erased determination,
the necessity of that trick of writing is irreducible".(Derrida 1974)
However easy and natural the latest innovations (layerings,
deformations) might seem to us now, they did constitute radical
violations of the implicit rules of architectural order and for the
mainstream audience this oppositional character still dominates their
perceived meaning. The innovative architect has no choice but to reckon
and work with this dialectic determination by opposition or contrast.
It will take time for the differences internal to the new language to
emerge from the shadow of the stark difference of new vs old. One
argument here is that while the current avant-garde language of
architecture - with its incredible surge of creative energy and
power, fuelled by the ongoing IT revolution, is conceptually still
working out the ramifications of a series of dialectical reversals
first launched by “deconstructivism”.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Zaha Biography info
http://designmuseum.org/design/zaha-hadid
Hadid was picked as part of the seminal Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the first definitive survey of the new generation. Critics loved it, but most MoMA visitors found the new shapes, particularly Hadid’s, baffling. She presented her ideas in impressionistic, abstract paintings, designed to get across the feel of her spaces. Hadid explained that conventional architectural drawings could never convey the “feel” of her radical, fluid spaces, but paintings could. It took time, though, for people to understand them.
The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio was a chance to try out her ideas on a large scale and to conceive a stunning new take on curating and museum experience, imagined as “a kit of parts”, she says, which curators can customise for each show. The galleries are housed in horizontal oblong tubes floating above ground level, between which ribbon-like ramps zig and zag skywards. “It’s like an extension of the city, the urban landscape.” Literally so. It is designed like “an urban carpet”, one end of which lies across the sidewalk at the busiest intersection in Cincinnati to yank in unsuspecting passers-by. Inside, the carpet rolls through the entrance, up the back wall, marked with light bands directing you like airport landing strips to the walkways, up which you can clamber like a child on a climbing frame, bouncing from artwork to artwork, shoved about by an architect who piles space high into a tower of tightly controlled vignettes, throwing your eye from the most intimate of spaces, to trompes l’oeils and out of the building through carefully positioned windows. “It’s about promenading,” says Hadid, “being able to pause, to look out, look above, look sideways.” Her impressionistic new space was realised. The New York Times described it, without overstatement, as “the most important new building in America since the Cold War.”
Hadid was picked as part of the seminal Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the first definitive survey of the new generation. Critics loved it, but most MoMA visitors found the new shapes, particularly Hadid’s, baffling. She presented her ideas in impressionistic, abstract paintings, designed to get across the feel of her spaces. Hadid explained that conventional architectural drawings could never convey the “feel” of her radical, fluid spaces, but paintings could. It took time, though, for people to understand them.
The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio was a chance to try out her ideas on a large scale and to conceive a stunning new take on curating and museum experience, imagined as “a kit of parts”, she says, which curators can customise for each show. The galleries are housed in horizontal oblong tubes floating above ground level, between which ribbon-like ramps zig and zag skywards. “It’s like an extension of the city, the urban landscape.” Literally so. It is designed like “an urban carpet”, one end of which lies across the sidewalk at the busiest intersection in Cincinnati to yank in unsuspecting passers-by. Inside, the carpet rolls through the entrance, up the back wall, marked with light bands directing you like airport landing strips to the walkways, up which you can clamber like a child on a climbing frame, bouncing from artwork to artwork, shoved about by an architect who piles space high into a tower of tightly controlled vignettes, throwing your eye from the most intimate of spaces, to trompes l’oeils and out of the building through carefully positioned windows. “It’s about promenading,” says Hadid, “being able to pause, to look out, look above, look sideways.” Her impressionistic new space was realised. The New York Times described it, without overstatement, as “the most important new building in America since the Cold War.”
Zaha Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
http://weburbanist.com/2011/06/13/deconstructivism-7-architectural-wonders-of-the-world/
Baghdad-born, Britain-based Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win a Pritzker Prize, has also contributed a number of notable Deconstructivist works to international architecture. One such structure, Hadid’s first design to ever be built, is the 2003 Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. Known popularly as the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), the building is both blocky and soft, defined by geometric volumes on the facade and featuring an unusual ‘urban carpet’, with the ground slowly curving upward from the sidewalk outside into the building and ultimately up the back wall. A ramp resembling a twisted spine draws visitors up to a landing at the entrance to the galleries.
Baghdad-born, Britain-based Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win a Pritzker Prize, has also contributed a number of notable Deconstructivist works to international architecture. One such structure, Hadid’s first design to ever be built, is the 2003 Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. Known popularly as the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), the building is both blocky and soft, defined by geometric volumes on the facade and featuring an unusual ‘urban carpet’, with the ground slowly curving upward from the sidewalk outside into the building and ultimately up the back wall. A ramp resembling a twisted spine draws visitors up to a landing at the entrance to the galleries.
Vitra fire station
http://www.archdaily.com/112681/ad-classics-vitra-fire-station-zaha-hadid/
The Vitra fire station is Hadid’s showcased work that delves into the deconstructivist theoretical language that she developed through her paintings as a conceptual mediator of finding spatial relationships and form. The Vitra fire station is a synthesis of philosophy and architecture that bridges the Vitra design campus to its surrounding context.
As part of the initial design process, Hadid and her associate Patrik Schumacher began relating the existing buildings on the campus to the surrounding agricultural context. The long road where the fire station would be located was envisioned as a linear landscape as if it were an artificial extension of the adjacent fields and vineyards. The fire station was understood to be the linkage that would define the edge between the surrounding landscape and the artificiality of the campus. By implementing a narrow profile to the building, it can be perceived as an extension, or extrusion, of the landscape that conceptually runs through the building.
The Vitra fire station is Hadid’s showcased work that delves into the deconstructivist theoretical language that she developed through her paintings as a conceptual mediator of finding spatial relationships and form. The Vitra fire station is a synthesis of philosophy and architecture that bridges the Vitra design campus to its surrounding context.
As part of the initial design process, Hadid and her associate Patrik Schumacher began relating the existing buildings on the campus to the surrounding agricultural context. The long road where the fire station would be located was envisioned as a linear landscape as if it were an artificial extension of the adjacent fields and vineyards. The fire station was understood to be the linkage that would define the edge between the surrounding landscape and the artificiality of the campus. By implementing a narrow profile to the building, it can be perceived as an extension, or extrusion, of the landscape that conceptually runs through the building.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
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