The blood-red River Thames rushes through a long sheet of black paper on the wall, merging through a cracked landscape of city blocks that twist and sway, as if commanded by some irresistible force. Entangled webs of arteries twist out of central London, pierce the M25 and rise east, meeting in a crescendo of colored pieces that seem ready to accelerate off the page.
The irresistible force that bends the urban fabric of London was Zaha Hadid. The late Iraq-born architect painted this vision at a distorted speed in 1991, at the request of Vogue magazine, designing 75 years into the future to imagine what the capital might look like in 2066. Combining plans, sections and distorted air views – long before computers helped create such complex visions – this was typical of her complex, multi-layered style of imaging, using the drawing process as a way to generate new ideas. “I think through a set of drawings,” Hadid said, “one discovers some things that would not otherwise be possible.”
Gaining freedom over her archive of 12,000 works was utterly astounding
Even once painted, most of her futuristic dreams of London remain impossible. But now, six years after her death, they have come together in an exhibition: the inaugural show at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, which includes some works seen for the first time. Curated by a group of masters from the Courtauld Institute of the Arts as part of the London Festival of Architecture, Zaha Hadid: Reimagining London appropriately occupies the ground floor of its former studio in a Victorian school building in Clerkenwell, which now serves as the headquarters. Where once sat a line of young architects crouched over their screens, now hang some of the radical drawings and models that shape the origins of her practice.
Going up … The 14-storey hotel, designed for Hungerford Bridge. Photo: © Zaha Hadid Foundation
“It was like discovering a treasure,” said Rachel McHale, one of the students curating the exhibition. “We got full access to her archive of 12,000 drawings, paintings, models and sketchbooks, with the freedom to make of it. It was exciting, but also completely stunning. “
Given the volume of material available – and the impenetrable nature of much of it – the students have done an admirable job of putting together a show that tells the story of Hadid’s relationship with her adopted hometown with impressive clarity. She began her student work, including two projects she created at the Architectural Association in the 1970s that rethought parts of the capital’s transport infrastructure as densely occupied, hybrid centers of community service.
Her four-year project, inspired by Russian Suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich, envisions a 14-level hotel on top of Hungerford Bridge, made up of pixelated cubic shapes. Her fifth annual scheme envisions a 19th-century museum designed as a chain of buildings exiting Charing Cross Station, like carriages on a train derailed as they cross the river to the South Coast. They contain the germs of ideas that she will return to 20 years later in a project for an inhabited bridge across the Thames, presented as a horizontal skyscraper full of homes, offices, shops and studios of artists, a boomerang on its way across the river – and shown in the exhibition in a model of sudden, split pieces of perspective.
Fragmented pieces… Model of a habitable bridge, from 1996 Photo: © Zaha Hadid Foundation
Another case of models includes studies of an unrealized Pancras Lane office building, showing how the distorted perspectives of Hadid’s paintings began to translate into twisted, gravitational three-dimensional shapes. “People really ask, ‘Why aren’t there straight lines, why isn’t there 90 degrees in your work?'” She once said. “It’s because life is not made online.” Her crazy schemes for underground skyscrapers cooled by waterfalls may not materialize, but her concept of a growing London in the east really portends the city’s direction of growth. And a piece of her streamlined vision for the East End was eventually realized in the form of a flexible water sports center for the 2012 Olympics.
Her experimental mindset is planned to be kept alive by the Hadid Foundation, which she founded in 2013. Since last year, she has been led by an impressively high-profile team – directed by Paul Greenhall, 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 run by Leonora Baird-Smith, who heads the collection management at the British Museum.
“I like the idea that this is a think tank,” Greenhall said. “That it can become dangerous and radical and really engage with the urgent problems facing our cities. With a strong focus on education, the foundation has so far awarded three full scholarships to the London School of Architecture for students from poor backgrounds and refugees and plans to build long-term research partnerships with other educational institutions.
“Maybe this is 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 have lived and worked, with an auditorium, gallery and event space. Meanwhile, the former building of the Shad Thames Museum of Design, which Hadid acquired before his death, will work more like an open warehouse: “It could be a city of models,” he said.
With the costly dispute over the fate of Hadid’s £ 100 million mansion finally settled in 2020, we hope the foundation can now focus on keeping its experimental spirit out of the courtroom, using its bases in the capital as a testing ground for further unrealized ideas. As Hadid said: “Maybe this is London: these potentials. Maybe his role is to be the final unrealized project. “
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