With the loss of Zaha Hadid I’m saddened, yet feel fortunate to have found inspiration in her work. While a student I was regularly drawn – as one should be in school – to the architectural avant garde. It was the late 80’s and early 90’s when I was doing my most creative academic work and Zaha, Lebbeus, Raimund, Daniel, Hedjuk, and numerous other “paper” architects were there to learn from. Their confidence in the power of drawing to evoke new ideas and experimental forms was just what this young architect needed in the homestretch of my education.
Zaha Hadid’s captivating drawings are what excited me at first. The brilliant, bright colors and fluid forms proposed an architecture that could move. Sure, others had done it before; the Italian Futurists, the cubists, even Duchamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase suggested a frozen motion. There was something about Zaha’s movement though that was different, this time it was with built form and it somehow seemed possible.
In 1988 the Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition on Deconstructivist Architecture. Philip Johnson curated the show along with Mark Wigley and Frederieke Taylor. The MOMA fact sheet describes the content as follows;
“The architects recognize the imperfectibility of the modern world and seek to address, in Johnson’s words, the “pleasures of unease”. Obsessed with diagonals, arcs, and warped planes, they intentionally violate the cubes and right angles of modernism. Their projects continue the experimentation with structure initiated by the Russian Constructivists, but the goal of perfection of the 1920’s is subverted. The traditional values of harmony, unity, and clarity are displaced by disharmony, fracturing, and mystery.”
I knew then that I had to go see this show, for this was the future of architecture. The show featured work by Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, and Bernard Tschumi. Zaha was the youngest of the group and the only woman. This group of architects in 1988 had very little built work – all of them now are what most people refer to as “starchitects”. Frank, Rem, and Zaha have all won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious prize.
I know I will always remember that spectacular show – and, it was truly spectacle, there is no other way to describe it. I will always remember seeing Zaha’s drawings for the first time, just as I will always remember the first time I saw the drawings of Lebbeus Woods and Raimund Abraham. Zaha Hadid once said “you can’t teach architecture, you can only inspire people”. She inspired me and I’m truly thankful.
David
