Zaha Hadid: Reading Her Biography Through Her Metaphors In Design

Zaha Hadid: Reading Her Biography Through Her Metaphors in Design by Christine Wonoseputro

1. ZAHA HADID, A Leading Woman Architect In 21^st century

In the past decade, there has been a turbulent for architecture and design in Britain. With supported by the crown Prince of United Kingdom, Prince Charles, architecture has been in the front line of public debate. There are a lot af school of architecture that being developed and also a lot of creative and talented young architects that being born in United Kingdom. Among a lot of young architects that bring avant-garde way of thinking through their work, Zaha Hadid appear as one of those avant-garde thinker in doing design,especially architecture and some other design fields. Among male domination, there are not so many female architect has become so intens in doing their works and projects like what has being done by Zaha Hadid.
In 1977, Rem Koolhaas has reported that Zaha Hadid fifth year at the Architecture Association included that she was a rocket that took off slowly to describe a constantly accelerating trajectory ( Koolhas in Fawcett, 1991 ).

Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad in 1950 from a rich family. In 1968 – 1971, she was taking maths at the American University of Beirut and continued her study at Architectural Association School ( AA School ) in London, United Kingdom in year 1972 – 1977. After completing her architectural studies, Zaha Hadid join the OMA - Koolhas ( the Office of Metropolitan Architecture ) and collaborating with her senior, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha began her own career. Became a London - based architectural designer whose work encompasses all fields of design, ranging from urban scale through the micro-space design, such as products, furniture, and interiors. Her concern was a simultaneous work of teaching, researching, and practicing, without any compromising to the modernising. From the beginning of her career, Hadid has reworked the concept of how to organize the public space. Hadid has a deep concern through art. It is probably because she likes to paint. Hadid’s work has attracted Philip Johnson who made it as the focal point of “Deconstructionist” exhibition that took place in Museum of Modern Art in New York. Now, her suprematist theme has been realised in myriad excisting projects, such as her first built schemes in Japan, called Folly 3 ( 1990 ) in Osaka for the Garden Festival and MoonSoon, a spectacular restaurant interior in Sapporo, North Island. Since winning the prestigeous Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 2004, work has been pouring for this Iraq born-London based architect.

Through her recent architectural and installation art project in Singapore, Hadid has shown her deep concern about how art and space should make collaboration in order to speak up about good metaphor.We can see that along the decades, she probably the leading woman architect who has innovation and creativity in her work.

2. An Architect Called Zaha Hadid

To be more understand of what has she done in her works, I use the “Geoffrey Broadbent theory” about architecture and human science.( Broadbent, 1974 ). Broadbent first investigates what an architect is as a person. Trying to understand how an architect thinks and what sets him apart from the other members of a building design team. Although Broadbent has mentioned that the reports are inconclusive about what characterizes an architect, he has mentioned that there would seem to be great difference between the personality of the architect an average personality.

Broadbent defined that a building as a means of modifying the thinking idea of the architect itself can be viewed as a creative process, that very similar to general problem solving as performed by many people in different situation. Broadbent mentioned that there are interesting investigations about different types of thinkers that can be identified. One classification is between convergent thinkers and the others are divergent thinkers. Convergent thinkers are generally associated with the science, these type usually work with one answer about the problems. The other type are divergent thinkers that will respond well to open ended questions, taking pleasure from the task of proposing many alternatives to a given problems. Divergent thinkers seem to enjoy ambiguity in a problem and happy to work in this kind of situation.

According to Broadbent’s theory, we can see architect as a unique figure, that can be understood from the way of his or her works.He mentioned that along the design process, The alternative solution that being taken by the architect or the designers come from the experience and experiments that has been done before. The experiences has make the basic of the cognitive problem solving throughout the design itself. So does Hadid’s works. In some of her project, we can see that she is a person with broad experience, full of energy, and more to become a divergent thinker, even-though she has once being trained as a convergent learning. She mentioned that her precious childhood has traced some habits in her works. She said that she used to draw masp and stuff like as she was a child. As a child, she travelled frequently with her father, Mohammed Hadid, aho was a businessman and a democrat. She raves about Iraq of the 1960s to the United Kingdom, the place where people embraced education and ambitions of becoming doctors and scientists. In her teens, Hadid has been encouraged by her other siblings to have an independent voice and her own taste. After completing her major subject in Beirut, she jump to architecture and entering the prestigious AA School in London. After completing her architectural studies, she join the Dutch Architect, Rem Koolhaas. In those early days as an architect,she got a lot of benefits. Working from home, than she was submitted a lot of design competitions. To survive, she gave lectures at her almamater for about 10 years. In 1985 she opened her own studio, now she has 136 employees.

 

3. The Story Behind : Reading Her Biography Through Her Works - Case Study Of One North In Buona Vista and Singapore Biennale 2006 Project

 

The main idea that we can read from Hadid’s work is that her controversial design evolve from a unique and her personal interpretation of some experiments that being carried out earlier by the Russian Suprematists[1], ( Betsky, 1991 ) which can be seen as anti-gravity architecture or design that against the nature of science.

Mainly, through her recent project, that being done in Singapore Arts Museum that become the “centerpiece” of the whole Biennale event in August until November 2006, has shown that her idea is like a spiritual metaphors, that the main idea, is not supposed to be read in the physical existence of the form, but supposed to be read in the meta-physical existence of being, or the intangible meaning.

In Singapore Biennale[2], the idea has been described in organic shapes, that being floated in the whole of Exhibition space, like ghosts that being appeared in the old building of St. Joseph Catholic Boy School. In void area, “the ghosts” remain stop flowing, and turn its direction – because we can see that in the front yard, the shape is more like a giant flower that blooming very nice and seems like greeting everyone who were visiting the exhibition area. And in the other void area, those shapes are standing up, facing the sky and pointing to upside direction , like fingers that pointing up.

What can I see through that project is actually the playing of vertical and horizontal mode of the shape. When it appear inside the building or in the interior, it flows like wind and water but when it appeared in the open space or void area, it stop and turn vertically.

The other interesting part of her work is, actually the way of how she put the accent. The accent usually intriguing, like screaming, and interrupting, and sometime shocking. Like inside the museum gallery, suddenly the shape try to make cross-border through the physical partition, like it want to breakthrough the concept of modern space that being formed by the site existing.

The other thing that should not be miss is the way she choose materials and structure. To present the concept of”out of the box” she choose rather uncommon material for outdoor sculpture, which is foam, and being coated by special ingredients to protect it against weather. She use with colour with texture to finish up her installation and hanging it , so it would look like light weight sculpture that against gravity.

The other project is OneNorth masterplan[3], the project of Hadid’s collaboration with JTC-Jurong Town Council,Singapore $ 15 billions New Economy Hub project in Buona Vista.The main concept of the One North master-planning is actually represent Singapore as a place of exchange, the life exchange, vista exchange, and central exchange. It because, as Hadid has said, that Singapore - located one north degree from equatorial, has been developed as a melting point across the countries. The programs are mixed unit buildings among residential units, commercial hubs,tertiary, and reserach institutes, sports facilities, and green spaces planned for One Northe envisions a new creative environment that is conducive for innovation and experimentation in living space.The rush complex of geometry extends to the glazed building that hug the base of each building and extends also into the recreated landscape, the latter benefiting from the hilly terrain it sits on from some dramatic slicing of rock masses and water features. The landscaping and programing of the interstitial fissures hold promise of physical lubricant for community to take shape. With putting the public-social space gathering, by putting cafes, restaurants, salubrious sitting bench, and latter replete by water, timber decking, and greenery the social meeting really facilitated.

The Phase1 of the development, called Biopolis 1 is the metaphor of life exchange. It madeup of 7 buildings named Helios, Nanos, Proteos, Genome, Matrix, Centros, and Chromos. She was tempting to think that Biopolis 1 is as large piece of Rock that being broken into small pieces.

From both of Hadid’s project in Singapore I see similarities between both designs, the fluidity in space and the way how she is looking architecture, not only as a frozen being, but the element that can speak up. The element that can represent herself, through it shapes, structure, and materials that she has chosen. As we now that Hadid is the deconstructionist of Shard and Sharks movement[4] - who works with slates and planes elements , she seems like comfortable to work with this kind of methodology in design development. Probably, it was because Hadid has been trained as mathematician, so she use her convergent learning background in order to support her divergent thinking. The concept of speed and fluidity, fractal and anti gravity has make her design metaphor really become Hadid’s authentic design trade mark.

4. Conclusion

Her works has revealed that Zaha Hadid is an independent and energetic person who has authentic works and brave enough to speak up about her own taste. As a woman, her design metaphors has represent the spirit of “sharp-energetic-feminine” figure in architecture which idea is probably intriguing with our minds but in the other side it really has strong message, to say about the who is figure behind, and give prominence on marking the architectural design of 21 st century.

 

————————
Footnotes :

[1] Suprematism is an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms (squares and circles) which formed in Russia in 1913.When Kasimir Malevich originated Suprematism in 1913 he was an established painter having exhibited in the Donkey’s Tail and the Blaue Reiter exhibitions of 1912 with cubo-futurist works.He created a Suprematist ‘grammar’ based on fundamental geometric forms; the square and the circle. (http://www.wikipedia.org/suprematism, 2006 )

[2]The Singapore Biennale 2006 (SB2006), Singapore’s inaugural international biennale of contemporary art, is open to the public on 4 September 2006. This major international contemporary art exhibition will feature more than 95 artists and artists collectives from over 38 countries and regions including Singapore. B2006 highlights Singapore’s prominence as an international visual arts hub, not only providing new opportunities for Singapore artists, curators and arts businesses, but also as a key enabler of exchange and collaborations for the global arts community. The presence of SB2006 is also a significant opportunity for the Singaporean public to develop a stronger relationship with contemporary art. (http://www.singaporebiennale.org/, 2006 )

[3]One North project is set to be breakthrough community in western part of Singapore. The main concept is being developed in order to morphing the organization age to the creative age. They are designed to embrace an environmentalism with the use of pneumatic waste, conveyance system, direct air conditioning system, and intelegent building automation system. (http://www.one-north.com/, 2006 )

[4]Shard and Sharks: the most radical of deconstruction architecture. They play with slate and plane. The composition is chaotic and fractal. The metaphor is rebellious, chaotic, and the beauty of ugliness. Prijotomo called this kind of deconstruction as the “ugly duckling” –the hidden beauty of design. As being mentioned by Gehry in his Inaugural Lecture in NUS, October 2006, he use his architecture as the metaphors of urban chaos, the mixed use topography and the messy environment. He said that architecture is become mirror of its era, giving achieves to next generation about how that time when architecture is being stated looked like . So, as what Himmelblau has stated, that architecture has mission to carry, as a story teller. Architecture must burn. Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Kazuo Shinohara, Coop Himmelblau, and Gunter Domineg are the part of Shard and Sharks movement. ( Wonoseputro, 2006 )

References :

1. Betsky, Aaron (1990). Violated Perfection, 1990, United States of America : Rizolli, New York, 12, 30-36.

2. Broadbent, Geoffrey ( 1973 ). Design in Architecture : Architecture and the Human Science, United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons.

3. Fawcett, Anthony (1991). At RAndom : Zaha Hadid-Nigel Coates, New British Interiors, Kyoto: Kyoto Shoin Publisher.

4. Lim, Vincent ( 2004/2005, 023 ). Creative Fiss : A Review of Biopolis Phase 1, d + a ,08-12.

5.http://www.one-north.com/

6.http://www.singaporebiennale.org/

7.http://www.wikipedia.org/suprematism

8.http://www.wikipedia.org/zahahadid

9.Wonoseputro, Christine ( 2006 ) . Metaphors : A Creative Design Approach or Theory ?, Retrieved November, 01 2006 from

http://www.transmaterialasia.wordpress.com/2006/01/11