Concrete Plastic

I like Zaha Hadid´s architecture as pure form and sculpture. Since she is rather popular and sticks to her style, which is a mixture of sci-fi art-nouveau, abstract sculpturing and some echoes of Le Corbusier, she is obviously hated by many.



Maybe that´s why she recently scored lots of commissions by smaller German and Austrian cities, who are not exactly known for their international architecture to build something, anything for them. So, Zaha Hadid´s forms decended on small tram-stations in Innsbruck, where she also designed a beautiful new Ski-Jump tower (very first pic).


Fire stations, a science center and a building for BMW were built in Germany. Now it´s off to Dubai, the oasis of architects, where you should´t be caught dead without at least two spectacular projects "opening sometime around 2010".




As I said before, I am much more interested in Hadid´s work as sculptor and commercial furniture designer. Her "VorteXX Chandelier" (what a wonderfully silly name) needs to find a place in my new apartment (although at first I need to find out where to get it and how to pay for it).


From tomorrow, November 1st, the Sonnabend Gallery in NYC is opening a show with installations, Hadid has been working on for some of her international projects.



These giant, amorphous convulsions of plastex are exactly my kind of thing. Huge forms that seem to flow from the ceiling, organisms that form at the edges of time and consciousness, only to freeze into a senseless and beautiful statue of externalised, forced use. Yes, you can sit on it or use it as a desk in your opera house, as the pic below shows.