Zaha Hadid: Deconstructional Design

The physical realization of philosophies and ideas are usually manifested in the various forms of self-expression of the human psyche. Art, poetry, film, literature, music, architecture even science and engineering are all creations and demonstrations of people’s capabilities of creating the tangible scheme of their dreams, beliefs and aspirations. Zaha Hadid is one of today’s most notable figures in architecture. Her bold and avant-garde designs reflect her innermost rebellious nature. Her buildings have redefined the limitations and extensions of architecture. Labeled by many the queen of curves and fluidity, her designs has a deeper dimension to just form. Zaha’s style of architecture is characterized as deconstructivism.

Deconstruction

Malevich was a Russian painter of polish descent and an art theoretician. He originated the avant-garde supermantist movement and was a pioneer in abstract geometric art. He was a revolutionary that formed new ways of experimentation and expression. Zaha’s interest in Malevich grew in the 1970’s when she was a student in the architecture association in London. The 1970’s was a period of critical investigation especially in architectural drawings. One of her results in her interest in Malevich is her decision to use painting as a design tool. She found that traditional forms of architectural drawings to be limiting and binding. By studying Malevich that allowed her to utilize abstraction as an investigative principle. Most notably of Malevich’s work is the dissolution of a plane (1917). His geometric abstractism of planes became forces and energies that led the ideas of how space itself can be distorted to increase its complexity and dynamism without losing continuity. These ideas are visible in Zaha’s concepts of fragmentation, explosion, lightness and fluidity. Two of her notable buildings the Zaragoza bridge pavilion and the Vitra fire station showcase her design strategy and signature. The Zaragoza bridge pavilion was constructed in 2008 to serve as a gateway for the Zaragoza expo in Spain. Both the design and concept behind the building are challenging the conventional norms of architecture and engineering. It merged both the

The fire station was built as a safety measure in case a fire occurrence happens again like the one before that took place in the Vitra campus. Hadid portrayed her individual design signature by contextualizing the fire station to its surrounding and landscape. The long road that is near by the fire station was beheld as an extension as a linear landscape and perceived as an artificial extension of the near by fields and vineyards. Thus, the building has a narrow profile that acts as a linkage that would redefine the edge between the artificiality of the campus and the surrounding landscape. The use of concrete planes that bend, tilt and break in respect to the conceptual dynamism of the design creates a sense motion that s frozen in time. With the planes sliding past one another, always in a state of constant uneasiness creates heightens the sense of instability and