A selection of works-in-progress designed by the late Zaha Hadid, including projects to be completed, will take centre stage in a survey due to open in Venice this month. The exhibition will chart the four-decade career of the Iraqi-UK architect who died suddenly at the end of March.
The exhibition at the Palazzo Franchetti on the Grand Canal (27 May-27 November) explores Hadid’s future ventures, including the Mathematics Gallery at the Science Museum in London, which opens in December (Hadid’s in-house design research team, CODE, determined the airflow patterns that shape the new space). Models and relief studies of a residential building on the High Line in New York, due for completion in early 2017, are also included.
Paintings, drawings and maquettes linked to both early and more recent works highlight the “pioneering research and investigation that instigates and defines Zaha Hadid Architects’ work”, according to a press statement announcing the show. Indeed, Hadid is recognised for breaking into the male-dominated world of international architecture, drawing on the legacy of Constructivism to make complex, dramatic buildings.
Hadid described the draftsmanship behind her designs, saying: “The whole system of drawing led to ideas, putting one sheet over another and tracing and reworking, like a form of reverse archaeology in a way, leading to a layering process, where distortion in the drawing could lead to distortion in the building.”
The show analyses the technique of “fragmentation, layering and porosity” that underpins all of her projects, including a series of unrealised buildings including the Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994-95) and the Peak Club in Hong Kong (1982-83).
A room will be dedicated to three milestone projects: the Vitra Fire Station completed in 1993 in Weil am Rhein, Germany; the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2003) and the Maxxi Museum of 21st-Century Arts in Rome (2009). The exhibition, which coincides with the Venice Architecture Biennale, is organised by the Fondazione Berengo and sponsored by Falconeri clothing company.
