"Creating a new, continuous space..."
A
conversation with Zaha Hadid about her exhibition design for "All the Best"
At the very latest since 2004, when she was awarded the
renowned Pritzker Prize,
Zaha Hadid has become the most
coveted architect worldwide. Her revolutionary concepts are currently
being celebrated at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and she's created
the architectural design for the anniversary exhibition of the Deutsche
Bank Collection for the third time now. For "All
the Best," the last station of the exhibition tour, Zaha Hadid
has installed an inimitable dynamic spatial landscape in the Singapore Art
Museum - a conceptual architecture that enables visitors to discover the
Deutsche Bank Collection all on their own. Marc Spiegler met the
London-based star architect for a talk.
|
Zaha Hadid at the opening of "25",
the anniversary exhibition of the Deutsche Bank Collection at the
Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Photo Mathias Schormann
|
Marc Spiegler: How would
you describe this design's relation to the two previous jubilee
exhibitions of the Deutsche Bank Collection?
Zaha Hadid:
As the Deutsche
Bank Collection itself is solidly grounded, but continues to be fluid
and fresh, we considered how best to compliment, reinforce and
contextualize the works within the each exhibition. In extending and
transforming the geometry of these art centres, the new exhibition design
is a continuum of fluent and dynamic space, where the oppositions between
exterior and interior, old and new, geometry and nature are synthesized.
The lines of energy converge within the building, redefining the quality
of the surrounding urban space; guiding movement through the space.
Zaha
Hadid's exhibition design for "25" at Deutsche Guggenheim,
Photos
Mathias Schormann
Both the Deutsche
Guggenheim, Berlin and the Hara
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo have their own formal logic, which
represents a key principle behind our designs. In Berlin, the visitor
entered a strange space, configured of a cluster of interpenetrating
ellipsoidal voids, like air bubbles within a solid, then proceeded through
these bubbles until they turned from void to solid and started to float
within the large atrium space behind the gallery.
|
Design for "Tokyo Blossoms", the second
station
of the anniversary
exhibition at the Hara Museum in Tokio,
Photo
© KatrinPaul
In Tokyo, the initial
point of departure for the design was a series of studies of the
characteristics of textiles and their ability to transform. These studies
helped us to create a design which enabled us to reproduce their qualities
such as lightness, softness and flexibility. We were also interested in
the notion of a temporal and growthbased system, which would highlight the
very moment in which the exhibition took place.
Design
for "All the Best" at the Singapore Art Museum,
Courtesy
Zaha Hadid Architects, London
For the Singapore
Art Museum , we created a holistic environment in interpreting the
geometries of the building. The form of the exhibition design is derived
from the juxtaposition and distortion of the museum's base grid, creating
a continuous space that joins all the displayed artwork in a new
environment and expresses the circulation of visitors cohesively.
What
relation do you see between this project and your Cincinnati museum
project?
As the Rosenthal
Center in Cincinnati has done, this installation exhibition design
engages with the community, I hope helping to broaden the audience for
contemporary art. It plays an important role in developing local art
enthusiasts into an involved community. The openness of the ground level
of the Rosenthal Center and the penetration of light into various parts of
the building make the passer-by aware that there is something exciting
going on inside. The ground floor surface bends upwards at the back of the
building creating a strong continuity with the vertical circulation space
cutting through the building. The topologies of streetscapes and urban
street patterns contribute directly to the interior landscape of the art
centre. At Cincinnati, this surface is the "urban
carpet" that articulates the public accessibility of the building
from the horizontal to the vertical. The exhibition design at the
Singapore Art Museum is a literal manifestation of the same accessibility
for visitors.
|
Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for
Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, 1997-2003, Photo Hélène Binet,
Courtesy
Zaha Hadid Architects, London
|
[1]
[2]
|
