Michael Wyetzner of Michielli + Wyetzner Architects returns to AD to discuss Zaha Hadid's iconic career and how her work revolutionized the way architects design today. Known for her logic and gravity-defying designs, Hadid’s design process was heavily influenced by abstract art and sparked a new wave of freer, less rigid architecture. Join Wyetzner as he breaks down how Zaha developed her style and became one of the most respected architects of the 21st century.
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00:00Zaha Hadid's buildings are complex, surprising, and entirely unique.
00:03And it turns out, so is her process for designing them.
00:06I'm Michael Weissner. I'm an architect.
00:08And today, we're going to discover how Zaha Hadid designs a building
00:12and what makes her process so revolutionary.
00:19Zaha Hadid is famous for breathtaking designs that seem to defy logic,
00:23and sometimes even gravity.
00:25But while her buildings are undoubtedly eye-catching,
00:27unprecedented, and complex,
00:29it's not the buildings themselves that are the most revolutionary thing about her legacy.
00:33In fact, it was how she went about designing a building
00:36that changed the way we think about architecture.
00:38So let's talk about her design process,
00:40beginning with the project that inspired her to rethink what was possible.
00:45This is called Malevich's Tectonic,
00:47and Zaha Hadid painted it as part of her fourth-year thesis
00:50at the Architectural Association in London.
00:53Her teachers at the time, Rem Koolhaas and Ilya Zangellis,
00:56challenged their students to use the revolutionary painter Malevich's work
01:00as the basis for a project proposal.
01:02The assignment would profoundly change Zaha
01:04and the way she thought about architecture.
01:06To understand why, let's back up and talk about
01:08what made Malevich revolutionary as a painter.
01:11Broadly speaking, there are two types of art, objective and non-objective.
01:15Objective art is representational.
01:17A chair looks like a chair, a flower looks like a flower.
01:20It is showing us recognizable things in a recognizable way.
01:23Even cubism falls into this category.
01:26A distorted face still reads as a face.
01:28It never becomes truly abstract.
01:30Non-objective art, by contrast, is not representational at all.
01:34It is abstract.
01:35It is an exercise in pure expression by the artist.
01:39And at the time that Malevich was working,
01:40abstract art was a brand new idea.
01:43He was at the forefront of developing the entire concept of non-objective art
01:47in a movement that he called suprematism.
01:49The name comes from the idea that his art was concerned
01:52with the supremacy of pure feeling,
01:54as opposed to the representation of the real world,
01:57which is basically what art was up until that point.
02:00And to support this focus on feeling,
02:02his art was characterized by simple geometric shapes
02:05and a limited color palette
02:07and rejected realistic representation entirely.
02:10So how does this relate to Zaha's thesis project?
02:12In her own words, she was inspired by Malevich's art to rethink design.
02:17She said,
02:18Art used to be representation rather than creation.
02:22Abstraction opened the possibility of unfettered invention.
02:26She also said,
02:27I felt limited by the poverty of the traditional system of drawing in architecture
02:31and was searching for a new means of representation.
02:34So she began to experiment with abstraction inspired by Malevich's art.
02:38So Malevich created these sculptural objects he called architectons,
02:42which were essentially these 3D objects
02:45that took his ideas of shapes that he used in his paintings
02:50and turned them into a 3D piece.
02:52The assignment that Koolhaas and Zangellis gave their students
02:56was to use this architecton as the basis for a design
03:00for a real world building.
03:02So let's look at this painting that she has created.
03:04So this painting is intended to read
03:06as a presentation of a hotel and apartment complex
03:10built across Hungerford Bridge in London.
03:12This is far from a typical rendering of a building.
03:15For one thing, it's abstracted.
03:17It mixes perspectives of two dimensions and three dimensions.
03:21Like Malevich, it uses very simple geometric shapes.
03:25So you see it in 3D over here.
03:27You see silhouettes of it over here
03:29and they're flying by, creating movement.
03:32It's almost as if someone threw it
03:33and it's just hurling through space.
03:36And my favorite part of this is she takes all these pieces,
03:40which sort of is exactly what Malevich was doing.
03:44So if we look at Malevich's suprematist composition, 1915,
03:50what you see in this painting are these three
03:54very strong black shapes floating
03:58on essentially a blank white background.
04:01And then under that are these floating array
04:04of red rectangles, lines, and squares.
04:07And you could see how those shapes here
04:10become these shapes here,
04:11and these shapes become the architecton.
04:15And then she's taking that one step further,
04:18and according to her assignment,
04:19is taking that architecton
04:21and is turning it into a building.
04:23Zaha Hadid has spoken of how this project
04:26opened up new ways of thinking for her.
04:27But this was only the beginning for Zaha,
04:29who would continue to explore this process
04:32throughout her career.
04:35One of the first projects that she became known for
04:37was her winning entry for the PEEK,
04:38an architectural competition for a private club
04:41at the top of a mountain in Kowloon, Hong Kong.
04:44So this is a painting she composed
04:48for part of her award-winning entry into this competition.
04:52And what I love about this painting
04:53is that she shows the whole city,
04:56and then the mountain, and buildings off in the distance,
05:00and then at the very top, there's her project,
05:03the peak, near the peak of this mountain.
05:06So essentially what she's showing
05:07is not only her project in relation
05:10to the rest of the city,
05:12which is very much like the Malevich idea
05:14of showing the shapes in relation to one another,
05:17but she's also showing that her idea for the building
05:20grows out of the mountain.
05:22It almost looks like it's part of the mountain.
05:27And these are some of the paintings and drawings
05:28she did as part of the design process.
05:30So I love these drawings
05:31because they're half plan, half painting,
05:34and they almost have a feel of Arabic script writing
05:38as part of them.
05:39Quite often she would begin the idea for a project
05:42with these calligraphic drawings,
05:45these sort of pieces of calligraphy and form,
05:48and then she would move from there into painting
05:50to further refine the idea,
05:52and it would evolve eventually into a building.
05:55So this project was never built,
05:56but she used a lot of these ideas in later projects.
05:59And you could see how those sketches
06:00we were just looking at before evolve into the building.
06:05Looking at this, you could see ideas that Malevich had here,
06:09but unlike Malevich, whose forms never really overlapped,
06:13this is more reminiscent of El Lissitzky,
06:16who was Malevich's protege in a lot of ways.
06:20For El Lissitzky, the idea of expressing personal emotions
06:22through art was not enough,
06:25so he aligned himself with a movement
06:27known as Constructivism, which was based in Russia
06:29and founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko.
06:34While Suprematism viewed art
06:36as a spiritual and emotional experience,
06:40Constructivism saw it as a tool for social progress.
06:43El Lissitzky even wrote a children's book
06:45called About Two Squares,
06:47which used the artistic language of Suprematism
06:50to question the societal order of the day,
06:52and which is still considered an important work
06:55in graphic design.
06:56Constructivism took the floating compositions of Malevich
06:59and joined the geometric shapes together
07:02in a way that could be used as a basis for functional design.
07:06This meant that the art of the Constructivist movement
07:08could have practical applications in architecture.
07:11But the concept he explored
07:13that would prove most influential to Zaha Hadid
07:16was the idea of the fourth dimension.
07:18Einstein at this time was a great inspiration for many,
07:21and he had been exploring the idea of the fourth dimension.
07:23Essentially, if one dimension is a line
07:26and two dimensions is a plane,
07:28and three dimensions is a cube,
07:30then the fourth dimension adds the element of time.
07:32And essentially, architecture always has had
07:35the element of time embedded in it
07:37because we move through it.
07:38Once there's movement, there's time.
07:40In his most famous works, Prounds,
07:42which is an acronym for Project for the Affirmation
07:45of the New in Russian,
07:46El Lissitzky wanted to create a visual illusion
07:49that would transcend the flat surface,
07:51attempting to imply this unseen dimension of time
07:54that was beyond human perception.
07:56To achieve this, he used several artistic techniques,
08:00which later also appear in the designs of Zaha Hadid.
08:03Floating geometric forms, multiple vanishing points,
08:07dynamic perspectives, and overlapping planes,
08:10which at times appear to defy gravity.
08:12You can see this idea of the fourth dimension
08:14beginning to come into play in Zaha's architecture
08:17with the Maxi Museum in Rome.
08:19So this is the Maxi Museum.
08:21You can see from this overhead
08:22that that idea of calligraphy is still very much present
08:25in the design of this project.
08:27These forms almost feel like some form of writing.
08:30So when you compare this to her original sketches
08:33for the museum, which you see here,
08:35you get the idea of this sort of movement,
08:39which she then intends for people
08:41to move through her museum.
08:43But to really get a sense of the movement of her buildings,
08:47you need to look at them from the interior.
08:51So this is a view inside the Maxi Museum.
08:54So how does one express four dimensions?
08:56How does one express the element of time within a building?
08:59So Zaha had this idea that she spoke about
09:02that she wants people to experience
09:05the interiors of her buildings
09:08through the idea of these choices that we make.
09:10So she offers different paths through the same space
09:15with the idea that depending on the path you pick,
09:19it affects the way you'll experience the building.
09:22And I think one could say that's her expression
09:24of the fourth dimension,
09:25the way you move through the building,
09:28the element of time,
09:29is very much part of how she looked at design.
09:32So just like the way you really can't see
09:35the end of the space
09:37or the beginning of the space in this photograph,
09:40it's almost like the way one experiences time,
09:43that you can't see the end,
09:45the beginning's very hazy,
09:46and you wind your way through the space.
09:49So let's just talk about this interior for a second.
09:51So this red line and these black forms
09:54that are the stairway and the upper walkway,
09:57they are in direct contrast to the surrounding white walls
10:01and gray of the concrete and the white floor.
10:04So it creates this constructivist, suprematist composition.
10:09And then she expresses the movement of the ceiling above
10:13with these fins, these parallel fins, these baffles,
10:18and those move with the shape of the building
10:21as you wind your way through.
10:22So another idea that Zaha explored
10:24was the idea that all representational drawing
10:27is an illusion.
10:28And that includes the way we draw buildings
10:30and the way that they're depicted on the page.
10:32One of the most fundamental ideas in art is representation.
10:36How do we draw or paint something in two dimensions
10:39in a way that best resembles what we see with our eyes?
10:43And one of the main inventions of representational art
10:46is what's known as perspectival drawing or perspective.
10:49Ancient civilizations like the Greeks and Romans
10:51used rudimentary techniques to create depth in their art.
10:54However, it was during the Italian Renaissance
10:57in the 15th century that linear perspective
10:59was formally developed and codified.
11:01Filippo Brunelleschi, an architect,
11:04is credited with pioneering
11:05the mathematical principles of perspective.
11:07His methods were then refined later by artists
11:10like Leon Battista Alberti, who wrote De Pictura in 1435,
11:15a treatise outlining the rules of perspective in art.
11:18So let's get technical for a second,
11:20but in a very rudimentary way.
11:21If one were drawing a simple one-point perspective,
11:25you start with a horizon line,
11:26then you pick a vanishing point,
11:28and then if you're gonna draw a frame,
11:30draw the parallel lines,
11:32converge at that vanishing point, which is this.
11:36And so a person would be standing right here,
11:38and we basically just draw in a room, right?
11:40And here's a person standing in the room in silhouette.
11:44That's the real basics of what a one-point perspective is.
11:48So all those lines converge to this vanishing point.
11:52But this is an illusion, right?
11:55In essence, what I've really drawn is four trapezoids,
12:00and here's one of them.
12:01It's actually a shape.
12:02It appears like it's going off into space,
12:06but it's not, because it's on the page.
12:08So it's an illusion, what we've drawn.
12:10It creates the illusion of depth.
12:13Then there's two-point perspective.
12:14Two-point perspective takes that same idea
12:16with a horizon line, but it introduces two vanishing points
12:21so that if you had a cube,
12:23they go back to that vanishing point the same way.
12:30And again, that appears to be a three-dimensional object,
12:34but in fact, one could just look at it
12:37as two trapezoids touching one another.
12:39That's perspective in a very, very simplified way.
12:43Then there's these other types of three-dimensional drawing
12:46in architecture.
12:47One is called axonometric.
12:48One is called isometric.
12:50Axonometric takes a square like that
12:55and then projects lines,
12:57and that also reads like a three-dimensional object.
13:01So what this does is it takes an exact representation
13:06of what's drawn in the plan,
13:08the exact dimensions and the exact shape,
13:12and then it just projects lines
13:13to make it look three-dimensional.
13:15Then an isometric takes that same piece in the plan
13:19and makes it illusionistic.
13:20So really what's happening is
13:22this is a true 90-degree angle, right?
13:24But an isometric, it's a false angle.
13:27This is actually drawn at 120 degrees and 30 degrees.
13:31But in our mind, we read this as a 90-degree angle.
13:33So the axonometric drawing
13:36takes the actual 90-degree shape and then projects.
13:40The isometric adds illusion to that top plane.
13:45So the top square looks as if it's been rotated,
13:48but we still read it as a square.
13:50In fact, we read all three sides as a square
13:54to make this cube.
13:55But in reality, it's just a hexagon
13:59divided into three rhombuses.
14:00It's an illusion.
14:02And so in addition to artistic renderings
14:03of a completed building,
14:05which use perspective to depict
14:08what the building will look like,
14:09architects also draw plans, sections, and elevations
14:14with no three-dimensional representation,
14:16which builders use to construct the building.
14:18But Zaha liked to play with this idea a little.
14:20She would take these distorted shapes
14:23that one sees in an isometric, for instance,
14:26and she would put those into her plans.
14:29So the shapes that make up the illusions of a cube,
14:32for instance, would actually become the shapes
14:35that make up her plans and elevations.
14:40And a good example of this are the plans she devised
14:42for the BMW Center in Germany.
14:45This is the floor plan of the building.
14:47This is actually what the builders will build from.
14:49But at the same time, what Zaha has done,
14:51which I find to be really clever and cheeky
14:54at the same time, is she's injected the illusion of 3D
15:00into the two-dimensional drawing.
15:02So this appears to be a square
15:06that we're looking at as a three-dimensional object,
15:09but it's not, it's just a rhombus.
15:11So she's taken that shape, which is a rhombus,
15:13and she's using it as the shape of a room here in this plan.
15:19So if we spin the plan around,
15:20we can draw this same exact piece
15:23that we just were looking at before.
15:25So right there, that's an example
15:28of what she was depicting in her plan,
15:31which is a radical idea.
15:33So in effect, she's taking an illusion and making it real.
15:36And so when you're in it, it feels distorted
15:38because these walls are not at right angles to each other.
15:41She's injecting this three-dimensional illusion
15:44into this two-dimensional drawing,
15:46and then it becomes a three-dimensional space.
15:50So another example of how she plays with distortion
15:52is at her first built project,
15:54which is the Vitra Fire Station in Germany.
15:57So her idea for this building
15:58was all about sort of frozen action,
16:02and her idea, because it was a fire station,
16:04that at any moment, the building would spring into action
16:07and it would be this explosion of movement.
16:10And so what she does is she takes these shapes,
16:14like this one, which could read as a rectangle
16:18that's been distorted
16:20because a light was projected against it,
16:22and this would be the shadow
16:23that would be revealed from that projection,
16:26and then she builds that shape.
16:28And all the walls and everything in this building,
16:30very few things are actually at right angles.
16:33The walls are canted, the canopy is slanting up,
16:37the edge of the wall is cut at a slant,
16:39and again, all to reinforce this idea
16:42of an explosion of movement.
16:43But when one looks at these shapes
16:45from a different point of view,
16:49if you do here, all of a sudden, it's completely different.
16:52This is such a great contrast
16:54because this shape is this shape.
16:57It's the same exact canopy.
16:59So it's really this brilliant sort of play
17:03on shape and form
17:06that was, up until this point, not really explored.
17:09And she created this whole idea
17:13through the idea of drawing and painting
17:15and creating these different ways of looking at buildings
17:19and designing them.
17:20So by combining an artistic sensibility to representation
17:24and an abstraction of the design process itself,
17:27Zaha was able to make some of the world's most unique
17:30and breathtaking buildings,
17:31of which we've only looked at very, very few.
17:34So I love the way that she combined this idea
17:36of art and architecture
17:37and created something completely different
17:39and something completely new.
17:41And she did an amazing amount of these fantastic paintings
17:46in her earlier years that are really great works of art.
17:50She passed away way too soon in 2016,
17:53but she set herself apart as an artist and an architect
17:57that truly believed in the power of design
18:00to create spaces which could improve the lives
18:02and experiences of anyone who came in contact with them.
18:05So what's your favorite Zaha Hadid building?
18:07Let us know in the comments below.