The Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre – one of Zaha Hadid’s projects
Zaha Hadid was one of the most or is the most famous female architect out there, for her modernistic and neo futuristic designs with different play of her shapes. Born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq she was born to an Iraqi-British family where she went to the American University in Beirut to study mathematics and later moved to study architecture at the Architectural Association. She eventually graduated in 1977 where she had an opportunity to join the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and the Architectural Association (AA). She also gained many other titles such as earning the Kenzo Tange Professorship at Harvard School of Design and went to the University of Illinois School of Architecture to earn the Sullivan Chair. She eventually gained international fame when she went to started competing in competitions by displaying her art and design skills, where they are now displayed in multiple of museums. In total Zaha Hadid won a total of 19 awards in her entire lifetime (and many more in the future); such as winning the Gold Medal Architectural Design in 1982, the Erich Schelling Architecture Award in 1994, the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture in 2007, and the RIBA European Award in 2010. She is now living in Austria teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Floor Plan of the Dubai Opera House
Throughout Zaha Hadid’s lifetime her buildings were known to be very powerful with her “many sudden curves appearing in her structures” and “the disorientated geometry and the different perspective points to illustrate the disaster in our modern lives”. Some of her works are not even finished, but yet state a very powerful statement. Some of her works include; the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan, the Bridge Pavilion in Spain, the Contemporary Arts Center in Ohio, and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Ohio. However what stood out to me was the Dubai Opera House in Dubai. It stood out to me because the design had such sudden curves with the elegant texture that looks like it just blends with the sand. The Dubai Opera House is a 300 000 m squared cultural center for the performing arts and apparently is going to be serving as a hotel also. It’ll have a 5,400 square feet art gallery, with an opera house containing 2,500 seats and an 800 seat playhouse, along with 2 libraries, a ‘6 star’ themed hotel, a marina, and an outdoor theater. This Opera house was originally a design competition, but luckily Zaha Hadid and her partner Patrik Schumacher won the competition. They presented their idea to have their structure to look very gentle and elegant like the sand rising from the ground, making it very unique element in the skyline.
Wow, practically speechless;
if you’re interested more in Zaha Hadid and the latest news about the Dubai Opera House check out this link!;
http://www.zaha-hadid.com/
ahraycho 