Dichotomy by Zaha Hadid
(Source: simplypi)
Londres será la capital arquitectónica de 2012 por la celebración de los Juegos
por ANATXU ZABALBEASCOA - para el diario El País
Con un estadio vestido, temporalmente, para la ocasión y una piscina olímpica reconvertida en piscina de barrio, Londres anuncia unos Juegos Olímpicos sostenibles, sencillos y, sin embargo, memorables. Será la cercanía a la gente y la utilidad del evento el día después -el 10 de septiembre, cuando hayan terminado los Juegos Paralímpicos- lo que determine el valor de tanto esfuerzo para terminar de regenerar el este de la capital británica.
Con todo, más allá de los fastos, toda celebración es simbólica, y la arquitectura que dibujarán los próximos Juegos tiene una gran dosis alegórica. Por un lado supone el regreso de la hija pródiga Zaha Hadid que, tras vivir 35 años en Londres, es por fin reconocida en su ciudad. Su Centro Acuático será la puerta del recinto olímpico y es, casi, su primer edificio en la capital, tras el colegio Evelyn Grace de Brixton, por el que recibió el premio Stirling en 2011. Por otro, unos Juegos Olímpicos son un escaparate abierto al mundo. Y no es asunto baladí que, en esta ocasión, dos olvidados de la arquitectura británica, Hadid y Peter Cook, exmiembro del colectivo pop Archigram, hayan firmado las piezas más destacadas. Algo así parece pensar el alcalde Boris Johnson cuando asegura que el estadio, que ha diseñado Cook junto al estudio Populous, “será el edificio más visto de la historia”. Y eso que, frente a la opción maximalista que Ai Wei-wei y Herzog & De Meuron exhibieron en Pekín, el recinto londinense es liviano y nació con la ambición de ser desmontable. Sin uso asignado todavía, tras ser rechazado como sede del West Ham, que permanezca ya no se discute. Lo que se discute es si la arquitectura debe aprender del arte o el arte de la arquitectura. La vecina escultura de Anish Kapoor, Arcelor Mitta Orbit, levantada por el ingeniero Cecil Balmond para “competir con la Torre Eiffel” tiene mucho que aprender de la ligereza y la naturalidad del estadio de Cook, un arquitecto de obra escasa pero de profunda trascendencia.
En una arquitectura hecha con realidad, ideas, restos e ingenio trabajan cada vez más colectivos que no están dispuestos a que la sostenibilidad se convierta en una etiqueta estéril y hacen del reciclaje y la reutilización de contenedores o solares vacíos su trabajo cotidiano. Crecerá el número de grupos como Zuloark, Straddle3 o La Creativa dedicados, en España y en Latinoamérica, a indagar en esa arquitectura.
Frente a las ilusiones y la fiesta, la otra cara del año continuará siendo poderosa, pero ha optado por la discreción. Silenciando sus festejos, los grandes acaparadores de premios en la década pasada son hoy los grandes cuestionados. Ley de vida. Con todo, es natural preguntarse si el antiguo héroe Rem Koolhaas puede seguir dando lecciones de democracia y progresismo mientras firma con una mano el edificio más representativo de Pekín y con la otra el cuartel general de Rothschild en la City de Londres. Juzgando arquitectura sin contexto, el rascacielos es discreto y, lejos de competir con las torres cercanas, elige servir de fondo para la pequeña iglesia St. Stephen Walbrook que había permanecido oculta durante dos siglos. Puede que el hecho de que los banqueros hagan visible lo perdido sea un signo de los tiempos.
Entretanto, el panorama invita a trabajar desde la escasez. Son muchos los profesionales que, como Francis Keré en Burkina Faso, Mass Design Group en Ruanda o Anna Heringer en Bangladesh, llevan ventaja en esa búsqueda. ¿Sabrá valorarla también el jurado del Pritzker, que dejó sin premio al ya fallecido arquitecto egipcio Hassan Fathy pero está a tiempo de galardonar al brasileño Lelé (João Filgueiras Lima)?
KAPSARC by Zaha Hadid Architects
King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC; non-porfit energy think tank), is under construction in Riyadh and located in the KKIA airport road on the right hand side as you drive from the airport toward the city. It is exactly N. of Prince Norah University which is also under construction.
via ArchDaily:
On June 24, Zaha Hadid was honored as the UNESCO Artist for Peace, an award bestowed upon a person who promotes the values of the organization, specifically by creating the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. “The arts have always bridged cultural, economic and social divides; teaching us that disparate worlds are not mutually exclusive, but rather layered upon each other and profoundly interlinked. I am honored to join the Artists for Peace, furthering UNESCO’s important message and programs,” said Hadid.
The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, acknowledged Hadid’s efforts to raise public awareness of intercultural dialogue through her architecture and creativity. As the new inductee, Ms. Hadid joins the ranks of past winners, such as author Frankétienne (Haiti), musician Manu Dibango (Cameroon), fashion designer Bibi Russell (Bangladesh), and writer Scott Momaday (United States); all “renowned personalities who use their influence, charisma and prestige to promote UNESCO’s message.”
The UNESCO award is a prestigious honor and others agree with Hadid’s influence – she recently placed on top of the “Thinkers category” of TIME magazine’s 2010 “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
Congratulations, Ms. Hadid, not only for your accolades and being inspirational to other female architects, but also for continually producing work that instantly causes a reaction. Your architectural point of view may differ from the traditional, yet we are always excited to see what you will produce next.
One day around the tower (Zaha Hadid - Marseilles)
Zaha Hadid profits slump by two-thirds, but number of architects employed increases by 19% as high-end contracts fuel turnover:
The full impact of the recession on signature practices began to emerge this week with profits at Zaha Hadid Architects tumbling by two-thirds.
In the latest set of accounts filed at Companies House, the world’s most famous female architect saw the amount of money her firm makes shredded by 69% from just over £5 million in 2008 to £1.6 million in the year to March 2009.
Underlining how tough the period has been for Hadid, the firm’s margins — the share of a company’s turnover that is profit — fell from 19% in 2008 to just over 5%.
In a statement, the firm blamed the fall on restrictions on credit, which have had an impact on the wider construction industry.
It may seem ironic, but even petroleum research centers can be LEED certified if they meet the critieria. Case in point: the King Abudullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC for short), designed by Zaha Hadid, is aiming for LEED Platinum. Set to be built in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the state of the art campus will house research and development facilities on energy and environmental exploration and analysis. KAPSARC’s main building is a crystalline structure composed of modular six-sided cells with many connections between them, as well as a series of shaded outdoor spaces, gardens, and underground tunnels…. [read the whole article clicking here]
[seen at Archinect]
The writer of this article had lunch with Hadid at the Mercer in New York’s SoHo. Hadid’s sandwich came with wavy waffle potato chips, and Hadid examined one before putting it in her mouth.
The twisty geometry of an ordinary potato chip, to say nothing of the curves in modern cars and phones, is a reminder of how few buildings look as if they belong to the digital world. Hadid is devoted to helping architecture catch up. Walls are never quite vertical, floors rarely remain flat for long and the twain meet not in ninety-degree angles but, rather, in the kind of curves one finds in skateboard parks. Hadid’s largest completed building to date, the National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, or MAXXI, in Rome, opened in November. For an architect so celebrated, Hadid’s output is relatively small.
She has completed thirteen structures: these include the Vitra Fire Station, in Weil am Rhein (1992); a train station in Strasbourg (2001); a ski jump in Innsbruck, with an attached restaurant (2002); the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, in Cincinnati (2003); the Phaeno Science Center, in Wolfsburg, Germany (2005); the BMW Plant Central Building, in Leipzig (2005); and MAXXI, in Rome (2009). There is no single Hadid style, although one can detect a watermark in her buildings’ futuristic smoothness. She has forty-five architectural projects under way. The global recession seems barely to have affected her office, which is in London.
Hadid was born into a wealthy family in Baghdad, in 1950, and she grew up at a time when Iraq’s capital was a secular, cosmopolitan, progressive city. Tells about her childhood there and her education in England and Switzerland. She attended the American University in Beirut and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Discusses being taught by Rem Koolhaas during her student years and her interest in the Russian avant-garde, in particular the ideas of Kazimir Malevich. In her final year at the A.A., Hadid won the Diploma Prize for her portfolio, which included “Malevich’s Tektonik,” a fourteen-story hotel that stretches over London’s Hungerford Bridge.
Then the writer attends the Frieze Art Fair with Hadid. He describes Hadid’s first completed building, the Vitra Fire Station and tells about the controversy around her plan for the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales, which was ultimately scrapped. Discusses how developments in computer modeling have facilitated Hadid’s designs. He also tells about the Phaeno Science Center and the BMW plant building. Then he attends the official opening of the ‘MAXXI’. At a dinner in Hadid’s honor, the writer asks the contractor what it had been like to work on the MAXXI. “Very dee-fee-cult,” he answered.
Read the full article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/21/091221fa_fact_seabrook#ixzz0aRT4CeRt
