The irresistible force that bent the urban fabric of London was Zaha Hadid. The late Iraqi-born architect painted this warp vision in 1991 at the request of Vogue magazine, projecting 75 years into the future to imagine what the capital could look like in 2066. Combining designs, cuts and distorted aerial perspectives – long before computers helped create such complex visions – it was a feature of the complex, multi-layered style of image creation, using the process of painting as a way of generating new ideas. “I think through a set of plans,” Hadid said, “one discovers certain things that would not otherwise be possible.” The release of the archive of her 12,000 works was utterly overwhelming Even when it was drawn, most of her futuristic dreams of London remained unfulfilled. But now, six years after her death, they are gathered in one exhibition: the inaugural exhibition at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, including some of the works we saw for the first time. Curated by a group of MA students from the Courtauld Institute for the Arts as part of the London Architecture Festival, Zaha Hadid: Reimagining London conveniently occupies the ground floor of her former studio in a Victorian school building in Clerkenwell, which now serves as the headquarters. Where once sat cramped young architects crouched over their screens, now hang some of the radical designs and models that were the beginning of its practice. Going up 14 the 14-storey hotel imagining the Hungerford Bridge. Photo: © Zaha Hadid Foundation “It was like discovering a treasure,” says Rachel McHale, one of the students who curated the exhibition. “We were given full access to her archive with 12,000 drawings, paintings, models and sketchbooks, with free control over what to do with it. It was fascinating, but also completely overwhelming. “ Given the volume of material available – and much of its impenetrable nature – the students did an admirable job composing a play that tells the story of Hadid’s relationship with her adopted city with striking clarity. She began her student work with two projects she produced at the Architectural Association in the 1970s, which redefined parts of the capital’s transport infrastructure as densely populated, hybrid centers of public activity. Her work for the fourth year, inspired by Russian supremacist artist Kazimir Malevich, imagined a 14-level hotel at the top of the Hungerford Bridge, consisting of cubic pixel shapes. Her fifth-year plan captured a 19th-century museum designed as a chain of buildings emerging from Charing Cross Station, like the carriages of a derailed train as they crossed the river to the South Bank. They contain the germs of ideas he would return to 20 years later in a design for a habitable bridge on the Thames, imagined as a horizontal skyscraper full of homes, offices, shops and artist studios, crossing the river boomerang – and shown in the exhibition at a model of broken Perspex fragments. Broken fragments… Residential bridge model, from 1996. Photo: © Zaha Hadid Foundation Another case of models involves studies of an unrealized office building on Pancras Lane, showing how the skewed perspectives of Hadid’s paintings began to translate into twisted three-dimensional shapes that defy gravity. “People ask, ‘Why aren’t there straight lines, why aren’t there 90 degrees in your work?’ he once said. “This is because life is not made in a grid.” Her crazy plans for waterfall-cooled underground skyscrapers may not have come to fruition, but her vision for east-facing London foreshadowed the city’s development direction. And part of its improved vision for the East End was finally realized in the form of the flexible water sports center for the 2012 Olympics. Her experimental mindset is set to be kept alive by the foundation, founded by Hadid in 2013. She has been led by an impressively high-level team since last year – directed by Paul Greenhalgh, former director of the Sainsbury Center, with research led by Jane Pavit , former dean of the humanities at the Royal College of Art, and the collection handled by Leonora Byrd-Smith, who was in charge of managing collections at the British Museum. “I like the idea that it’s a reservoir of thought,” says Greenhalgh. “That it can become dangerous and radical and really deal with the urgent issues facing our cities.” With a strong emphasis on education, the foundation has so far awarded three full scholarships to the London School of Architecture for low-income students and refugees and plans to establish long-term research collaborations with other educational institutions. “Perhaps this is the meaning of London”… Multilevel Perspective from 1991. Photo: © Zaha Hadid Foundation Greenhalgh envisions the building becoming something like the Rodin Museum or the Gustave Moreau Museum – both housed in places where artists lived and worked, with an amphitheater, gallery and event space. Meanwhile, the former Design Museum building in Shad Thames, which Hadid acquired before her death, will function more as an open warehouse: “It could be a model city,” she says. Following a costly dispute over Hadid 100 100 100 million’s fortune finally settled in 2020, the foundation now hopes to focus on keeping its experimental spirit alive, outside the courtroom, using its bases in the capital as test field for further unrealized ideas. As Hadid put it: “Maybe that’s the London issue: these possibilities. “Maybe his role is to be the most accomplished project.”
