Sarah Abdeen
Today, 31 October, the anniversary of the birth of Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid (1950: 2016) marks the courageous woman who refused to continue her professional career in architecture and broke into a largely male-dominated field.
The uniqueness of her work style and the way she presented herself left a big mark on the contemporary world architectural scene and is considered one of the most famous architectures of her time.
She has won many prestigious awards throughout her career, most notably the Pritzker Architecture Award 2004, the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011 and the Royal Gold Medal of the RIPA Engineering Award.
Disassembly and movement
Hadid's geometric designs are bold, with a sense of fragmentation, instability and movement. This deconstruction led to the same classification with the architects of deconstructive architecture, which is one of the architectural forms that emerged in the twentieth century in America and Europe thanks to the use of design programs developed from the programs of the aircraft industry.
The deconstructive structure of geometry opposes the traditional logical structure, and in its designs it follows uneven, multidisciplinary lines, resulting in the design ultimately based on the distortion or dismantling of architectural lines, which is in line with the essence of the philosophical and artistic deconstruction of French thinker Jacques Derrida. Deconstructive geometry represents a revolution on Euclidean geometric heritage and classical ideas, and is moving towards revolution and revolutionary over the past.
Disadvantages encountered implementation
In the early 1980s Hadid was known as a paper engineer, meaning that her designs were very modern and ambitious, so that they could not go beyond the drawing stage, to be actually implemented. This impression increased after its designs were presented separately as abstract abstract paintings in major museums.
Even after strengthening itself in the world of architecture, its buildings faced several problems in the implementation stages, most notably the high financial cost of converting drawings into an architectural reality, in addition to not taking into account the details of the mass use of buildings, which needs clarity in the places of corridors and doors, contrary to the ambiguity that Many of Hadeed's designs are shrouded, because the implementation of their buildings technically loses them much of the functional ease required for the public, in order to aesthetic implementation of their ideas.
The high cost of steel designs is mainly due to irregular bends and geometric shapes, because they cost more than simple lines and uncomplicated shapes. Hadid's architectural approaches can therefore be considered first, and then the means of its implementation, so that its buildings can argue about the essence of architecture, which must combine beauty and functionality at the same time, versus one that reinforces the importance of imagination and somehow distance from the logic that may have worked to nip. Many great buildings even before they were born: Westminster Palace, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Center, and most of Gaudi's works.
The philosophical theory behind Hadid architecture lies in revolutionary design that can revolutionize a small, encouraging dynamic interactions between citizen and architecture. But most of Hadid's works are considered icons or monuments in a modern form, because they do not translate the freedom of the designed form into the freedom of its users. She could choose between two paths at the beginning of her architectural glow.First, she tackled the degree of difficulty and cost involved in achieving her work in ways that would make buildings easier to deal with in the masses of the day, or began to design icons more separate from the audience and its requirements, which Hadid chose.
The most important buildings
Hadid's first project was the Vitra fire station in the city of Weil am Rhein, Germany, which consists of a series of sharp-angled wings that ultimately resemble a flying bird's skeleton. Work on the project continued from 1990: 1993, after a period of transformation of the building from its main function to a museum.
Hadid reinforced her fame as an architect in 2000 when she designed the Lewis and Richard Center for Contemporary Art in Ohio. The center is 7900 square meters and opened in 2003 as the first American museum designed by a woman.
Located in downtown Cincinnati, the center consists of a series of vertical cubes with spaces. The side facing the street is characterized by a transparent glass facade invites pedestrians to look at the work of the museum in a break to the prevailing rule of the museum as a remote area or far.