Zaha Hadid Is The Future Architecture Cultural Studies Essay

Currently there are a lot of new buildings that have strong futuristic appearance and inspiring features, represent tomorrows skyline. The rapid development of technology like hybrid cars, slim size computers and advance communication gadgets has certainly shown us new heights of transformation.

The influenced of architecture has come to its light. Imaginary arts and craft based on fictional space movies and illustrations have come a long way to introduced and to be recognized for its rare platonic solids and geometry constructions. The society is getting more positive and acceptance with the growth of new technology and high development futures. The world is evolving to a new era and by tomorrow there will be more of these buildings appearing as part of the city infrastructure.

The architect Zaha Hadid or Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid who is well known for her intense de-constructivist designs and neo-modernist designs in the architecture industry. Her designs are similar to Sci-Fi movies that create forms of morph, shape change geometries and breaking the rules of space.

She emphasized her work based upon the concept of de-constructivist designs on a prism shape that in-cooperates between interior and exterior influences. The overall form is based on cutting away or reshaping the surface to look like a deform prism or crystal debris. It is therefore resurrecting a historical element that had become largely absent from the ‘square’. This is how she would choose her earlier designs to look like.

The rapid developments from big cities in England, America and China may have some strong appraisal for Zaha Hadid’s creations and attracted many to her concepts of a new city infrastructure should have and in-cooperated for the future. Previously, huge events like the Beijing’s Olympics and the Shanghai Expo has proven her design is necessary for a new horizon. Her works is the result of that imagination, her structures can be empathized only as a fragment of a new continuous pattern and that is finally getting paid worthy of her effort.

She had introduced some alternatives and new concepts in architecture to the world and may be accepted by many who like her works but there are some may find it rather less institutional, lavishly expensive to the cost and the commissions she is getting. She only interested in the onetime ‘wow’ factor as a signature creation than thinking about the effectiveness and the long run purpose of the building. Her critics mentioned her work as a ‘design blunder’ for the London Aquatic Center and her success with the ‘Cardiff Bay Opera House’ competition was unpleasantly “re-evaluated” immediately after an outrage to the idea of building it. She may be a good designer with sense of creativity for a specific culture but this culture is limited to certain things.

Her works were compared with Michael Hopkins’ Velodrome versus the London Aquatics Centre that has drawn some attention about her design flaws. The Velodrome was developed through a near hostile approach; it synchronized slowly with the people’s input by various members in a multi level ‘integrated design team’ which combined the inputs of others.

Perhaps though a point where the despite disparities of architecture developments and lack of fairness for those may have some differences. Thus without claiming the full ‘universality’ in design culture, I am inclined to see patterns that insist on comparison, and hence on explorations of the linkages between futuristic designs, society experience and normative mores across boundaries between their struggles and success. At least in the early modernity of this new architecture era, the connections seem to me compelling.

(History)

Here is a little history about her background as she would mature and be one of the many architects in the deconstructivist movement. Architect Zaha Hadid is not only the first female and a foreign Muslim woman, and also a winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize which is equivalent the Nobel Prize in architecture, an award can only takes a life time to archive for architects. She ranked 69th in the Forbes magazine and enlisted as one of “The world’s 100 most powerful women”. After winning the Pritzker prize she still has a lot to struggle with her own hands when it comes to some projects. 

In her last 15 years, there has been some tremendous change and now it seems as normal to have women in this profession but still very difficult for women to operate in this profession because there are some worlds are limited for them to access. She experienced resistance but she kept on her own path, her direction and her focus on her long run ambition as an architect.

Zaha Hadid from Baghdad, born in the year 1950, she grew together in a very peaceful and developing Iraq, not from the one we known of today. The Iraq of her childhood days was a wonderful place, western-oriented country with a growing economy that flourished until the year 1963, Ba’ath politics took over the government and her father was a wealthy politician, economist and industrialist and at that time, a co-founder for the National Democratic Party of Iraq.

Her father taught her cultures of the world while always reminding the significance of her traditions and her heritage. He used and learned this through at the London School of Economics and joined forces with the resistant party against foreign occupation.

His political views on the industrialization economy of Iraq, property issues and the nationalization of the country’s oil have influenced her thoughts of the world. Her childhood experiences brought her to belief in open communication between people, but also a conviction in Iraqi’s freedom.

She was proud of her father’s achievements and there is no reason why she would not be equally ambitious just like her father. In the past, female role models were plenty in Iraq, but in architecture, in the Middle East, there were none in the 1950s to the 1960s.

She was educated in Baghdad in a school run by French Roman Catholics, and continued part of her secondary education years in Switzerland and The Great Britain. During her elementary education, she mixed with different cultures. She attended a nun school with Christian, Jewish, and Islamic girls but this is the first indication of a cultural exchange for her. She felt separated from her traditions because of her Christianity education. She never had proper religious schooling as a Muslim. Education in Arab countries, Islam or Arab culture is the same, it is only a cultural differences.

Zaha Hadid became interested in architecture at the age of eleven, although she would pursue her other academic education. A family friend was working on a housing project for her relatives and would bring models to show her. Her parents thought she would like to see more arts and craft by taking her to architecture exhibitions in her childhood days. The mixed between Arab and Western influences, she developed her personal interest towards architecture.

She returned to the Middle East to continue her education at the American University in Beirut from 1968 to 1971 and studied related subjects of physics, modern mathematics, math, and philosophy, shortly before she studied architecture. She returned back to Britain and in 1977 she then received a diploma from the Architectural Association (AA) in London.

The Architectural Association (AA) in London in the 70’s was a good environment for young, ambitious and independent architects. This particular area becomes a very solid foundation for architects to grow and to achieve their success; this is where famous architects got their education and the place in which her academic refinement began developing from 1972 and to the next 5 years. During her years at AA she had more time to expand her ideas and creating her own architectural methods. People like Bernard Tschumi and Daniel Libeskind are big names of today’s award winning architect designers. While there, she studied with Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Daniel Libe-skind, and Bernard Tschumi and among others.

In the early 1968, optimistic modernism was abandoned and was caused by the economic uncertainty and cultural issues. The architecture industry was affected too. Rem Koolhaas founded OMA in 1975 together with others, like Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas’s wife) Madelon Vriesendorp in London. After that, Koolhaas recruited his student as a partner was Zaha Hadid who would eventually achieved her own success later in life. Koolhaas offered her a job working with them in his new firm, the ‘Office for Metropolitan Architecture’ or OMA. But she didn’t last very long working for them.

The relation Zaha Hadid with OMA was more of a fundamental level than working as a team with them. There was almost a kind of no dialogue basis between them. They did support her when she needed guidance.” Koolhaas did serve as a mentor and a friend. As her former tutor, he could appreciate her style of work and the thoughts she had when she was still in AA.

She obviously respects his opinions, comments and values his friendship when she was still his student. Koolhaas reviewed her as “a planet orbiting in her own way”. She had her thoughts about architecture and waiting for the right time to ripe. This relationship soon became too restrictive for her, although she and Koolhaas remained close friends.

Soon after that, she taught at AA and until 1987 she led her own studio. She started teaching while developing her own visions of neo-modernist architecture, which referred back to modernism’s times in the constructivism and suprematism from the early 20th century of architecture.

Her final graduation hotel project at London’s Hungerford Bridge was motivated by Malevich’s Tectonik. Written in the year 1928 after the suprematist, Kasimir Malevich wrote “we only recognized space when we are separated from the ground, to a state of mind, where there is no more constraints to retain.” her works were inspired by these words and from then onwards her creations become landscapes which metaphorically transformed her way of thinking design, literally this would be today’s reality.

She formed and founded Zaha Hadid Architects ‘ZHA’ in 1980. She has gone to produce internationally acclaimed award winning designs for structure buildings and interiors around the world. Zaha Hadid was hired to teach in a number of institutions. The year 1994 she was teaching in 3 different institutions in the United States: the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard University’s School of Design, University of Illinois’s School of Architecture, the Sullivan Chair, and the Master Studio at Columbia University. Since then, the prominent University for Applied Arts has appointed her as professor in Vienna, Austria in the year 2001.

(Theoritical)

Zaha Hadid obsession with shadows and light rooted from the Islam architecture, while its flows openly, charging forward like an ocean bed and crash to impact, deforming a metaphor tsunami, together with an unbalance of modern urban landscapes. All of this would have been impossible without the support through computer technology, architects given the endless possibility creating any shapes they want to have. Such extreme rhythm of shapes required significant investment and time, financially and engineering capabilities. Her style has been described as today’s De-constructivist and Neo-modernist. In the Britain’s Design Museum discussed her work referring to baroque modernism.

Like Francesco Borromini’s Baroque classicists ‘demolished ideas of Renaissance, using a single perception that desire for an unstable nature’. Zaha Hadid against both the classically rules, modernism references from Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and the rules of architecture space. She would reconstruct the idea to what she said as “a new fluid, kind of spatiality of design” of multiple perspective points and fragmented mesh geometries, designed to attach the chaotic forms of modern living quarters.

Perhaps her style was partially inspired by her tutor’s work, when Zaha Hadid graduated in 1977, Rem Koolhaas offered her a job but she didn’t last long. If she got attracted to any of the tutors in her past, it was Rem Koolhaas, he was writing his books for the 1977’s ‘Delirious New York’ and working his ‘neo-modernity’ ideas.

This has set Rem Koolhaas’s career and he described the “a desire” for a change in city living: “The environment is an obsessive high-tech city which is inescapable” in his book. He explained the city was a group of “red hot spots.” He acknowledged that this method had already been proven in the Japanese Metabolist Movement from the 1960s to the 1970s.

(Contextual / Asia Design Movement)

The scheme for The Peak in Hong Kong 1983 marked a shift in her ability to sense certainties from her past, the resistance between the complexity of order and chaos. Her passion remains in her work, creating abstract architectures. Her works were recognized and accepted in Asia, this all started from her first encounter of a project that signaled her breakthrough in the year 1983. The Hong Kong competition project was ‘The Peak’, a sports club and she won first place for the competition entry in The Peak project.

Her contest scheme was discarded by some technical reasons, but a late judge pulled it back from the disqualified submissions. The scheme was to feature a sports center with multiple floors; however it was never build because the developer went bankrupted after the incident. The building from Weil-am-Rhein in Germany, or known as the The Vitra fire station completed in the year 1993 was Zaha Hadid’s first project, which later converted in to a museum.

In the year 2002, she designed the Hoenheim-North Terminus and Car Park at Strasbourg, France and the Bergisel Ski Jump overlooking Innsbruck in Austria. Since then, in the 2003 she was getting closer to worldwide recognition.

The Expo 2010 in Shanghai China was a major World Expo in the convention of international fairs and expositions, the first since 1992.

The theme for the trade fair “Better City – Better Life” an indication to the world, the coming of “next great world city,” will eventually influence the 21st century. It had the largest number of countries participating and was the priciest in record for world’s Expo trade events. In the year 2002, China will host the World Expo events and their given assignment is to rearrange Shanghai city.

The Germany pavilion is one of the popular European pavilions in the expo. The theme, entitled “Balancity” contributes the devotion from the word, “balance”. The outlook of the structure is more of an asymmetrical balance, maintaining the heavy giant roof and the awkward arrangements that seem almost impossible to build.

The architect Lennart Wiechell from Schmidhuber +Kaindl Gmbh Germany was the designer for this project.

At first glance, every angle of the building is different, like shattered geometries stacked together in one structure. The building seems to have an awkward position of gravity; the top is heavier than the bottom, observing in different parts of the building, the whole structure given the impression of an unstable nature. As a cluster of geometries hold each other perfectly and expressing the name “balancity” through architecture.

The building had similar resemblance of Zaha Hadid’s work which refers to deconstructivist appeal and defying the rules of gravity with bizarre geometries. Architects from all around the world like Zaha Hadid had set foot in to China’s development projects and winning architectural success.

Case Study (1) (Public Critic)

One of her worst un-built projects that she had during the year1996 when she won the design for Cardiff Bay Opera House which was discard, it was assumed as a crucial component for the Cardiff Bay redevelopment projects in the1990’s. The development was thought to be a new opera house in Cardiff but in turn out The Wales Millennium Centre was built, replacing the original plan and in the year 2004, it was completed.

The Cardiff Bay Opera House Trust established an international design competition to decide on the architect project. The competition would be finalized in two rounds. In round one, the competition started with 268 international competitors and Zaha Hadid won the first round. Her avant-garde design for the main theatre was covered by a radical design glass structure. Nevertheless, her work and design was interesting enough and unique that the Cardiff Bay Opera House’s Trust, Lord Crickhowell as the chairman, requested Zaha Hadid to re-submit her work again, together with Norman Foster and Partners and Manfredi Nicoletti, who were asked to re-submit their work and revised for amendments, in round two, she won again in the second round competition.

The conclusion to refuse the bid was announced on 22nd of December 1995, the lottery money is to fund the project by the Millennium Commission. The Royal Opera House in London was backup by the Millennium Commission has affected the bid to turn sour, which was seen exclusively for that. The development did not gain sufficient supports from South Glamorgan County Council or possibly the media affected Cardiff City Council’s decision. The Millennium Commission and the UK National Lottery which supposedly to provide funds for the development, decline to support for the project as it measured to be a financially issue.

This was not relieved by the successful submission funding for the Millennium Stadium. In due course, the project collapsed and was rumored about the provincialism and the conservatism had damaged the outcome in associate to the modern architecture and partly because the Millennium Stadium was supported by the Cardiff Council. In the event of the news conference, Virginia Bottomley, Secretary of State for National Heritage announced that the project was imperfect by some questionable issues related to its financial and development troubles that would caused reservations for the project and the building. Lord Crickhowell interrupted the news conference to condemn the refusal. He said the result was “dreadful and making no sense at all, If this project was from London it would have gathered enough supports. The important projects from London will allow this to go on; however we can’t get hold of this sort of effectiveness”.

The developers of the competition made a standpoint towards to those who they consider unconventional has affected and scared Zaha Hadid’s career. After she won the 1994 competition entry for the Cardiff Bay Opera House was taken off and “re-evaluated”, resentment at the idea of building it. They sustain creativity output up to a certain limit of production and then the project will be eliminated because the development did not win enough supports financially from the Millennium Commission, the ‘UK National Lottery’, the organization which distributes funds to the project.

The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation presented the plan was to construct a long term residency for the Welsh National Opera on a location near the Inner Harbor at Cardiff Bay. The design was nicknamed the ‘Crystal Necklace’ by media, considering the estimation price of this building was far fetching from their expectation. The theater was valued at £86 million quoted by Zaha Hadid at the time and it was ‘a tragic moment for the people of Wales’ and ‘a victory for petty-mindedness’.

The Sun newspaper published a hate campaign and First Secretary of the Welsh Assembly Rhodri Morgan mocked the design project was disrespectful version to the Ka’bah in Mecca, believing that a punishment from god would fall upon Cardiff.

The Cardiff Bay Opera House was neglected from the project organizer; Millennium Commission after a heated argument opposed from the local campaigner, particularly Cardiff politicians worried of such radical architecture was being “forced” on to Welsh city by London’s decision. The authorities were knee in the conservative political traditions and the architectural culture had emerged since the 1970’s. The acceptance has come slowly for her. After the competition for the opera house for Cardiff Bay in Wales in the year 1994, her post modernism design was put down by the locals and those who criticized her work and in the end; her request to build the stadium was rejected.

As the replacement for this project, the Wales Millennium Centre was built, which included a wider range of artistic offerings, keeping with the Welsh heritage and the opera traditions. The Centre opened in November 2004, on location originally planned for the Opera House.

The popular design movement was slowly becoming more daring, but her ideas were far beyond their kind. It was an unexcited moment, for several years which set her back in her office, but one thing she learnt from the competition, the politics that involves her. Later, she became more philosophical, seeing it as a turning point in her career. She slowly learnt to have faith and walk again. After she won the Pritzker Prize that followed with her wild competitive attitude towards her avant-garde aesthetic nature has softened. She responded much of her current behaviors in to two undecided conclusions, living in anger over her failed Cardiff project or strained herself to insomnia.

‘Of course it was unpleasant,’ she said, she mentioned her lost was an important experience after Cardiff Bay. The year 1999 was like the dark ages for her. She did not stop working and continued producing some of my best work. She said defying the rules in that early period changed the way people identify architecture. She got upset that she wasn’t able to achieve her breakthrough success along with Cardiff Bay. She described her experience was “traumatic” and “It became a cause celebrity”. “Everyone was getting on to something, which was never allowed outsiders to win projects that were unknown and not part of their union. They did not accept the truth I was only a woman and to consider the winner was a foreigner as well.”

“I do not have a label or a typecast being stereotype, as a woman they would let you get off, but others will never escape that,” she said. She trusted her status being a foreigner, a non- British national and working as a female architect in London, has everything to do with good fortune. “In contrast, you are not their type, not a male, not a European origin, there are certain priorities that regardless for all the things you can do for them, you are still forbidden to enter. I’m not close to be a member of their brotherhood. I will never be golfing with men or riding on a boat trip with them, it will not occur in any time,” She complained. “In America, it’s different, the co-existence between men and women are professionally equal and justified…but not so much in Britain’s culture.”

“We were shamed by them who remembered the problem but they don’t seem to know what happened.”

She mentioned the aftermath of Cardiff would have finalized her decision to resign. “There isn’t any purpose for me to go on like this, but I had no choice,” she said. She made an awakening resolution in 1996, “I made a choice, I will not let them escape with this, and I will survive”. She and her 20 staff members in the office knew there was no work, distracted and yet they carried on.” After several years, she felt herself and her team mates were slightly more relaxed and now driven more by trouble-free wishes to create better things. She said that she could have done things better in general. “I have ideas and plenty of it and certainly, just like all things, you need to amend them first, but being an architect you only wish to accomplish better projects and spaces.”

Case Study (2) (Public Debate)

An exhibition held at the Galerie of Gmurzynska at Zurich, a debate entitled ‘Zaha Hadid and Suprematism’. The 1920s Soviet avant-garde, as her style and method, displayed works from Kasimir Malevich and others. Zaha Hadid’s partner and assistant, architect Patrik Schumacher, he is also a theorist, presented his talk, ‘A Glimpse Back into the Future’. Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid’s architectural partner (ZHA) he is also an abstract speaker for 16 years and a content writer, producing theoretical texts to go alongside in every museum and opera house.

He disagreed by the next century of art and architecture will be so popular up to this frustrated decade that nothing has been done; it wasn’t planned by the Soviet avant-garde, ‘the time, the amount and value of that creative work of art, knowledge and creation was truly amazing. It was only one blink of an eye and it took 50 years spreading it to the world.’

He stressed the respect for this abstraction, referring to the extreme of non-referable concepts, Non-Objective World of Kasimir Malevich and Suprematist painters and architects that followed him, creating space where earthly rules were challenged.Malevich was a founder for abstraction and the first who found abstract art with architecture applying his shaping ‘tectonics’. It is exciting, however, to observe these tectonic sculptures, which were visualized as a form of a prototype architecture, where geometries being restricted like his composition paintings, too ‘cubic’ and almost mathematical, leaping into this independence of oblivion.

There is one person, who will never follow accordingly to the same direction. Since the early Russian avant-garde Zaha Hadid was inspired and took the first inspiration, absorbed with the works of Kasimir Malevich’, reflecting this insight in to her first major project. The Project Malevich’s Tektonik was a proposal for Suprematist style in replacement for London’s Hungerford Bridge

The Russian avant-garde could not be completely combined with architecture, not without people like Zaha Hadid building it, into a completely non-objective space, Even now Malevich persisted to free the last ruins from this spatial of reality. From a different point of view, ‘These projects’, Schumacher wrote, ‘in their entire radical experiments hidden a social message and a political agenda. But the social experiment from the Russian context has weakened in comparison with their artistic ingenuity and innovation’.

Since the early 20th century the Russian Futurist and Constructivist movements were inspirations for the deconstructivist architects using their creative architectures and graphics. Architects, deconstructivist, Zaha Hadid and many others were influenced by this idea of using graphics and geometrical forms from artist and creators like Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, and those who were part of this movement.

Deconstructivism and Constructivism has been associated creating abstract art sculptures with tectonic structures.

As the fundamental artistic element, both were linked with this radical plainness of using geometrical objects, articulated in all related forms of graphics, architecture and sculptures. The concentration of Constructivist towards purism is because when the missing element of Deconstructivism, the situation of an object or figure is usually disfigured when construction buildings is deconstructed.

*The general graphic patterns of constructivism were usually drafted and share the similar nature with technical and engineering drawings.

Zaha Hadid is not theorist. In the early 1980’s, people like Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind are passionate architects, graduated from architecture schools and they are the contemporaries of ‘deconstructivism’. She has no intention to justify her forms, although she always referred the similarities of Marxian Soviet avant-garde.

Daniel Libeskind gave a talk at the TED conference 2009 in America; his talk was entitled ’17 words of architecture inspirations’.”Buildings are an important form of expression in society, and we should attempt to make them as exceptional as we can, whenever we can.” Through his speech, he was stressing the words “optimism, political, expression, inexplicable, emotional, hand, real, raw, communicative and democratic” is about human beings. He believed architecture should be like people on an intense human level, rather than ideological or contextual level. Whether his architecture achieves that goal is another debate. Likewise, the use of words like “radical, risky, complex, unexpected and space”, explaining the possibilities to explore deep space rather than explaining what we have here on earth. This idea to assume architecture has similar forms like human beings or a living creature.

Daniel Libeskind works as an architect, architectural theorist, a professor and a deconstructivist for many years; when he was 52 year old, his very first building was completed; the Felix Nussbaum Haus opened in the year1998. As a result, critics had rejected his impractical creations as ” impossible to build or excessively bold.” His first design competition that he won was a typical housing project in West Berlin, the year1987, but the housing project was immediately canceled right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the early 1990’s, he entered several design competitions and winning projects of the first four.

The Jewish Museum Berlin, completed in 1999, was Daniel Libeskind’s first foreign achievement and it was the first designer’s building constructed since after the reunification. Most critics labeled his crafts are forms of deconstructivism. Like many great buildings in our time, his designs puzzle the expectations about the city and the characteristic of its furnishings. He is an abstract architect and from his talk as a supernatural-being trying to persuade the public about his ideas. Thus, the more tortured and alienating it is, the better the building. As city after city “bends over” for these actions, the architect takes on his ego.

Daniel Libeskind defying all logic, in one incident he persuaded museum of Palestine to waste hundreds of millions of American dollars on buildings that hardly function, that leaks continuously and hated by the public. It is sad that, he was using the philistine reaction of people who doesn’t know as much as he does. His undercut and belittle attitude comes across in every single part of his talk. This could be his confidence and his inner self believing that this rule of deconstructivism which is also the core concept, against every single rule of today’s architecture.

Since the late 1980s deconstructivism developments were part of this post-modern architecture. The concepts were referring to fragmentations, an interest of influence ideas using structure’s surface or skin, shapes which use the purpose to deform and disrupt various building blocks of architecture, for instance constructions and bends.

The complete visual of buildings that exhibit has that development “styles” of deconstructivist, depicting the inspiration of controlled disorder within its unpredictability nature. The history of the deconstructivist movement started in the year 1982, from the architectural design competition of ‘Parc de la Villette’, the winning entry goes to Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi and Jacques Derrida at that time. In the year of 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture made its first appearance, held an exhibition in New York at the Museum of Modern Arts and the following year of 1989, the Wexner Center building for the Arts was opened in Columbus and the building was originally designed by architect Peter Eisenman.

The exhibition in New York displayed works from Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and others. Ever since the exhibition was held, some of the known architects who were involved with this Deconstructivism avoided themselves from this union. Some of the architects known as Deconstructivists were greatly influenced by Jacques Derrida’s ideas, the philosopher from France. Eisenman made a personal relationship with Derrida; He became a Deconstructivist after his architectural design practice was qualified. Peter Eisenman believes deconstructivism practitioners should have an extension of interest in radical transformation. The practitioners were inclined to the Russian made constructivism of geometrical unbalances and their organized experiments.

Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid’s architectural partner in Zurich galleria, he explained the source of this new avant-garde he calls ‘Parametricism’, a term used in the computer scripting software that are largely used in the architectural firms for design works. He mentioned the term ‘parametricism’ has been accelerating with speed within architectural discussion and its critical questioning has strengthened. From the outside architecture circles, ‘style’ is the source in architecture owing to which is practical and acknowledged. A typical new style required to be named and to explore the succession and renowned the concept as part of architecture. This marks the beginning of ‘parametricism’ in architecture.

Creative appearance matters greatly in architecture and design, the architecture and its styles can never be compromise based only on appearance. Neither must the trends of styles be absorbed to the elegant modes of fashion. The perception of style will eventually distinguish all these unnecessary suggestions.  It signifies the union of the differences between the architectural eras from gothic times to the modernism chapters of today. The self consciousness of architecture history stresses the recovery of the concept of style as a profound historical event that can be reflected into the future.

The classification of parametricism separates and stimulates a growing avant-garde movement, and picking up acceleration in its progress and possible dominance as a combine research and development efforts. As a piece of representation depiction and explanation, the declaration of parametricism seems reasonable after 10 years of steady, growing design research. Potentially, the declaration of the style should further combine the accomplished achievements and prepare the change from avant-garde to conventional validation.

Post-modernism and deconstructivism were historical trends, similar to ‘art nouveau’ and ‘expressionism’ as the change from historical periods to modernist times. The difference of historical fashions from conventional modes is significant. In changing times, emerge a rapid succession of styles, or plurality of immediate, competing styles. The crisis and the down fall of modernism lead to a deep and long term changing time frame, but there isn’t an explanation to this thinking of this persistence pluralism can’t be defeated or pacified by this domination of a new unified style that has the potential of combining it together.

The modernist order of segmentation and repetition is being replaced by the parametricist order of continuous separation and exhausted connection. Within the patterns of explanation of parametricism, many secondary styles might be expected to improve and progress the coming time of parametricism.

In contemporary architecture, deconstructivism or parametricist stands against the constrained judgment of Modernism. Its connection with Postmodernism has always been on the reflected side. At the beginning of a break down between the two movements, deconstructivism practitioners took the challenging position go to against the architectural history and its form, however they are lacking the ability to dislocate and disassemble architecture itself.

While postmodernism returned to protect and ironically the historical references that modernism had avoided, deconstructivism rejects the postmodernism to accept of such linkage with this.

Modernism’s crisis and its architectural consequences had brought many critics to believe there is no way to create a unified style. Schumacher argued and persuaded the fact the philosophical character progress of styles in the evolution of architecture, has proven that the gothic era, renaissance baroque historicism, modernism times or movement has not come to its end yet. Schumacher explained that the persuasion of post-modernist era is slowly moving away, and the supports from all related crafts and progress developments of deconstructivism were mixed together with this parametricism movement. As the majority has withdrawn back to the appearance of a more sensible modernist look with a vaguely improved pattern to a form of mix and match elements from all modernism’s secondary styles. The lack of ability for both post-modernism and together with deconstructivism to conclude a viable archetype or the patterns of similarity lead to the return of modernism in the appearance of minimalism as the only influence, inflexible style that confronts and the persuasion of parametricism today.

At present, there is a fear that the philosophical supports the re-birth, a new beginning of this movement which has been lost, and all that remain is this aesthetic of deconstructivism. References in deconstructivism in the 20th-century movement, the modernism or postmodernism made contact with expressionism, cubism, minimalism and contemporary art. The errors of deconstructivism is to drive architecture away from their original fundamental practices, such ‘rules’ of modernism, as “form must followed function, truth to the use of materials and the purities of form” which were abandoned. Some believe that Deconstructivism is directly connected with the “presence of metaphysics”, but that idea is also a fundamental to the architectural concepts.

Critics claimed that the deconstructivist see it as a purely formal practice to have minimal social capabilities. Some finds it “rare but separated.” Deconstructivism is like a “virus spreader”, it influence the design mindset, to create and to construct ravage forms. This also includes the errors of this fundamental of deconstructivism affects the wisdom and cause the future generations of architecture to reject history and at present which has no clear values as replacements for this and would result to strategies and ideas that are intentionally destructive and harmful to the human society.

Case Study (3) (Public Critic)

The highest profile of her project, The London Olympic Aquatic Centre, which has been involved with controversy problems and questionable issues over the escalating cost of the centre. Referring to the ‘guardian.co.uk’ online press release and the online ‘timeout.com’ interview, Tessa Jowell from the Department of Culture had apologized after the incident that she had provided the wrong figures for the budget. Zaha Hadid was acquired the cost of her projects which were far too great. The swimming pool complex had tripled the price tag due to uncertainty changes in her proposals. The £75million was originally the budget for the Olympic Aquatics Centre but it has run more than £250million now.

According to the ‘guardian.co.uk’ online press release, she said “My buildings are not outstandingly costly, if you need a small car you pay the price for what it is; it isn’t a tin hut, I do not consider it is just trendy to have a public sports building, I believe buildings do require such inputs and the land as the public domain is no longer a boundary or a stronghold where you are forbidden to enter.”

The Olympic officials had offered refunds for tickets to seats with viewing problems from the games in the aquatics centre. Critics blamed Zaha hadid designed the curve roof as a ‘design blunder’, that covered a number of the top row seating positions from screening the 10m diving board events and the highest board for diving will eventually host at least eight complete events on the same day. Zaha Hadid denies the issue was the cause from her ‘bad design’ error.Zaha Hadid’s team confirmed what was brief for the building should provide at least 5,000 seats without obscure views of the 10 meters diving stage activity. Referring to the online report from the ‘www.e-architect.co.uk’, as for the spectators who bought tickets for the event, they were never told about the poor seating views upon their purchase. The centre was build with more than 8,000 seats with proper views for the event. An Additional 3000 seats were added in which is more that the brief’s requirement. They mention that the designs of the seating positions, studies of the sightline and most of the layouts were approved two years ago.

Despite the interior remains exceptionally gorgeous and the view, providing the additional seats for the center may require to stand-in position from their seating place and it has ultimately affected the spectator’s comfort level from the games. Apart from the criticism of heavy expenses and continuous budget over flows, yet it moves on, validates as the representative civic space that would offer the ideal ‘winning factor’ and the building still signifies the Olympics of events; it bestows some unforgettable distinctiveness of the games but the ‘design blunder ’caused fewer people watching from the top row seats, than could have offered by the London Olympic Aquatic Centre.

Case Study (4) (Comparison)

The top designers at in the Beijing Olympics, the comparison of the Zaha Hadid Architect’s London Aquatics Centre and the Hopkins Architect’s Velodrome and now they struggle for recognition and appreciation in Great Britain. The Velodrome was build at a low hill area, far away from the other sports arenas, not realizing it and without a thought, replacing the open outdoor cycling track was popular among the public. The building was made for this long term purpose, with an additional of 7 kilometers outdoor track to cover for the post-Olympic games, the Velodrome for the indoor events and cycling course will be part of this velopark. The Hopkins director, Mike Taylor was working for this project described a housewarming party for the Olympics would be organized in a café and putting the café in the concourse will be the minimal adjustment for the building.

The centre was built with two pools for competition purpose; the 50 meters race pool and a 25 meters diving pool were placed in the main hall where the spectators from the sides will enter the stands, under the entrance forecourt, a 50 meters training pool for the Olympics. The permanent seats located at the side of the competition pools, a mechanical plant and changing rooms located at the floor below the pools. The arena is in a concrete base, clear-cut and logical to its arrangement. Once the temporary stands detached, the glass walls will lift up to its distinctive characteristics. It is also the main focus of this design and most likely can be seen from the outside, the ‘dripping liquid’ from the roof. It’s pleasantly vivid form inspired Zaha Hadid, the feature is misleading and irrelevant to its structural common sense or the economy purpose of it.

The lines of the finishing roof matched with the grey ceiling and the discolored wood planks are inappropriate, the final effect of the dipping down liquids between the racing pools and diving pools, resulting large empty space made from these three huge lengthen beams that worth 3,000 tones of structural steel which was a waste of material and usage.There is no arrangement or their structural elements is seen, while searching slowly, from top to bottom, it becomes obvious that the roof was built with three points to which either side of the doorway and one on the solid wall behind the wall of rounded concrete diving platforms. But there are no structures of strongly held sense of weights being allocated to the ground. As a replacement, the huge roof floats like a giant whale above the interior, while the outside can be seen from the side slumps low to the floor on whichever directions of the doorway like a clumsy flipper from a whale, but the design hardly fits in. Obviously, Zaha Hadid develops the form of the structure first and followed up by the engineers had to find out a way to build it. Nevertheless, the project attained at an extensive structural used and economic lavishness, the outcome is fascinating and interesting but not the intelligence or the strongly held engagement as this is more like something else than constructing for architecture.

Building the Velodrome, the team effort moves in together as a slow union that would synchronized inputs by various members on a multi-level ‘integrated design team’, inserting with the inputs of others and design was created through a near hostile approach. The architect chosen for the programme, Mike Taylor from Hopkin’s Architects, a regular cyclist, his ideal inspiration came from a bicycle design, not because of the structural form but the economical purpose and value, and he will remove anything that does not go along with the purpose of performance. Architect, Mike Taylor was involved with the Kroon Hall project, housing Yale University’s School of Forestry, the roof was built with steel cables as supports was inspired the Velodrome’s design. The project for the Kroon Hall, every single measurement was taken to attain sustainability at present can imagine, a must for all Hopkins’ design staff and architects, an element in which the company’s encompass their direction. An additional design purpose of this project is to provide the perfect requirements for the racing purpose and spectators watching the race. The inspiration of this facility is to provide the Olympic competitions a place in which records are broken, and as a result, the velodrome can provide that.

Both designs seem to have a similar frame work, visible in the circular shape like in a park environment. The structure is not the main objective of these designs were built, delivering accordingly to the prescribed purpose as a competitive sports arena, spectators would love coming back and watch the games. Two of these designs respond with what could be seen as a huge sculpture form, but the consequences of different designs could be shorten as ‘styling versus synthesis’. As a result, the Aquatics Centre seems to be a product, produced in a crucial manner, built in an orderly fashion according to design development s with the architect’s decisive forms and with the engineers making it possible. The Velodrome is an exclusive manner of synchronized process with all levels working together and all forms the product with everyone’s input at once.

In design approach between style and styling are usually not consistent, which affects the impression of what most architects and critics would think of and like the Aquatics Centre is a headstrong randomness of its forms, depicting the steel frames and the glass structure of the arena. It may look stylish and exaggeratedly dramatic as it is, but there is nothing to explain it’s rational or the unintentional features. It bares no structural or proper architectural fundamentals to read or to refer with, there is no absolute sense of forces in action or the cause of a heavier arched, neither the weights being brought down to the ground. It is in these visible design elements and the graceful economy of form, that the Velodrome is a winner.

The critics blamed Zaha hadid’s curve roof that has blocked the view from the top row seats. Perhaps this was done by a miscalculation or her intention to defy some of the rules as a deconstructivist, as for the top row seats will remain dysfunctional as it is.

The Velodrome is different; with its visible structural solution, the seats from the upper level were leaning forward to sustain the pull of the weights to the roof connected along with the two directional cables, The seated spectators can visible enjoy the view and feel the breeze increasing and the cool air travels along with the curve ceiling. Beyond that, all the parts in the building serve its purpose, structural and the surroundings are integrated and positioned nearby and compact, that would offer a complete feature of the arena.

Despite the budgets overrun for building the aquatic center, the inefficient usage of steel for a mere decorative purpose and poor visibility at the top row seats. Being lavish with construction materials, using methods that lack the functional purpose and not counting on the spectators would be watching the games; this is not the reason the aquatics center was built and wasteful.

The Velodrome is clearly the better one if they were placed purely for a competition as designs. In architecture, it works differently and if the exciting is greater than what it is, it escalates to restricted practical limits by which buildings were assessed in a competition. However there is another way of assessing the related qualities of these architecture buildings, judging the long term purpose, style, methods and modernity influence. But the design should mix with trends that satisfy the eye and create a lasting impression.

(Conclusion)

Zaha Hadid was not alone selling her own personal branding; Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry and others did the same. But she is of the ‘starchitects’ that characterized the era of overly indulge that so dramatically popular with her interviews and collaboration with fashion trends.

She made some personal success in the industry of fashion designs; recently Zaha Hadid designed and made clothing, shoes and bags for top fashion labels. She said ‘the process of development is so much faster than doing for architecture that gives her the right opportunity to do experimentations’. In one of her projects, she was designing a shoe where she could create samples immediately and comfortably while evaluating her progress in the same day.

‘She could have become a fashion designer, as she has always been enchanted by fashion and a huge fan in Japanese fashion for their materials and proportions. Actually, many of her skills are more useful for fashion design than architecture work.’ Referring the reports in September 2010 from an online site ‘www.coutts.com’. She said she was emulating ‘the art of fashion’ to create some of her radical designs that has an effect on her client’s wishes.

She is picky with materials and proportions; she likes experimental designs and takes pride with her work for perfection, a bond she shares some similarities with fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld in their collaboration job for Chanel. She could have just switched her career to fashion line if architecture doesn’t fits her anymore. Although exploring new frontiers would benefit the inspiration and ideas for the sake of architecture but involving with fashion line is just one of her marketing strategy towards ‘self branding’.

The architecture shouldn’t be missing in fundamental aesthetic forms and values. If all the architects would be just like Daniel Libeskinds, Frank Gehrys and Zaha Hadid, what will our cities would become and why should everything be like versions of their opera house and museums?

As deconstructivist practitioners, they don’t see buildings as ‘architecture’ and they usually confused themselves between social agenda and architecture means and that would have misled them. Sometimes there is a need to have fixed rules and traditions for a common identity.

The troubled with this unbalance workings than with iconic buildings or the movements of culture. To assume this is high class or remarkable architecture is just one of the reasons of her mirage visions and ineffective ideas of thinking. Such as the London Aquatic Center had caused some disputes among the public and the developers. She lacks the proper aesthetic of architectural values and means in her efforts to justify her role.

Architecture doesn’t have that independence for them to practice whatever they want to in their own way. This involve with limitations in culture, budget limitations, the developers, the city planners, society interest, critics and the community that interplay the complex building processes that doesn’t always share the same belief and appreciation.

Currently, architects are branded and purchased for their style and their respected professional talent. Failure to respond to the limitations of society interest may face certain consequences and as a result Zaha Hadid had suffered her lack of consistency with her work and caused community rejections. Comparable events like the disputed aquatics center and the Cladiff Bay aftermath that she suffered most.

Despite her weak declarations to the contrary from the aftermath of Cladiff Bay competition, her design of the opera house was not fitted for the program, she had no influential status with the place and disregarded those would have been her financial benefactors and authority for the project, the cultures in which based on her design to build has no significant identity with the place.

Her design creates personification of controversy with cultures. Such as her deconstructivist ideas for the aquatic center, she intends to disregard her post-modernist principles, historical architectural methods for this civic space and urban settings, mutilating fine designs with her own way and unrefined additions of her tectonic visions and deconstructivism.

Zaha Hadid’s creation would leave a bizarre and harmony-destroying means without regards for unity context, modernist cultures or any of the qualities that has pride for others and cultivating common goals to the place we all share. There is a missing element of ‘critical-regionalism’ in her work.

Her breakthrough came in when she won the 1983 competition in Hong Kong, ‘The Peak’ project that took her first place and followed through with her Vitra Fire Station located in Weil am Rhein, Germany. After winning numerous international awards and projects that lead her to design and built the London Olympic Aquatic Center.

However, she is just like her other counterparts of deconstructivist, Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry and those who share the same fate as this movement and culture will be forgotten. People hated the Eiffel Tower when it was built, but people also hated many other uncaring ideas and structures that does not symbolized the purpose for humanity. Their buildings of deconstructivism, lack the respect for other historical cultures, the grace or the dignity, they certainly lack the sincerity and as a result, they will be gone, until the next dominance of a unified style or culture is born.

[6132 words] Written by Charlotte Wong