Exhibitions are planned in London and Rome to celebrate the life and work of Zaha Hadid in buildings that the late architect designed, while her archive is due to stay in London. Yesterday (10 October), friends and former colleagues gathered in St Paul’s Cathedral in London for her memorial service, which Charles Saumarez Smith, the secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, described as "impressively international".
London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery, which is housed in a building in Kensington Gardens that Hadid converted and expanded, is due to open its exhibition on 8 December (until 12 February 2017). The show will feature her drawings, paintings and notebooks. It is due to tour “a select number of institutions and museums across the world, tailored to each venue”, a spokeswoman for the gallery says. Meanwhile, a separate exhibition is planned in 2017 for Rome’s MaXXI, the Modern art and architecture museum also designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). Possible venues for a tour include the ZHA-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, says Patrik Schumacher, Hadid’s longstanding collaborator and a director of ZHA. The Zaha Hadid Foundation hopes to establish the architect’s archive in London, Schumacher says, stressing that the exhibitions are the priority.
The last pieces of furniture designed by Hadid are on sale at David Gill Gallery in London (until 29 October), while Schumacher’s own clothing designs are on show at Maison Mais Non, a new gallery in the city (until 16 November). Hadid and Schumacher’s shared interest in architecture, furniture and fashion makes ZHA “a little bit like the Bauhaus”, he says. When Hadid bought the former Design Museum’s building in London, she joked that she would “turn it into her wardrobe”, the artist Brian Clarke revealed at her memorial service.
