"At some point in the last decade Hadid and her office could have used their new-found fame and status in one of two ways. They could have addressed their weak spot, which is the high degree of difficulty that it requires to realize their works, in such ways that they really might transform the everyday experiences of living in cities. Or they could have set about creating ever more elaborate and disconnected icons. Which, unfortunately, is what they chose to do."
Zaina
Oct 2, 15 2:28 pm
I hate Zaha Hadid's style and her way of defining Architecture... I always had troubles with one professor who wants the students to think "Zaha Hadid"!
boy in a well
Oct 2, 15 3:54 pm
who's to say that zaha and patrik have not in fact burnt the trail that eventually leads to transforming "the everyday experience of living in cities"? took 40 years just to get the drawings off the page. lets see what another 40 does.
BR.TN
Oct 2, 15 4:49 pm
^ another 40 will put them both in the ground
...or dispersed poetically across an ocean or iranian desert
null pointer
Oct 2, 15 5:16 pm
Zaha's work is amazing. Most of the commentary that is meant to detract from it just speaks of shoddy contractors, and people with huge persoanl insecurities.
Zaha and Gehry are our Bernini and Borromini.
Continue.
awaiting_deletion
Oct 2, 15 6:44 pm
custom and complex is a challenge. challenges bring headaches and bitching.....you want simple and easy go to mcdonalds..........the article wasn't all that great and the paragraph quoted here is actually a bit silly. they are addressing their weak spot by experimenting with these apparently unsuccessful isolated buildings....if you actually practice and try to push the envelope this should be obvious.
awaiting_deletion
Oct 2, 15 6:46 pm
that was random quondam....but i see i am not the only one who thinka the article failed.
sameolddoctor
Oct 2, 15 9:33 pm
Burp
awaiting_deletion
Oct 2, 15 10:06 pm
yeah! /\
Miles Jaffe
Oct 2, 15 10:43 pm
Bernini? LOL That must mean Gehry is Michelangelo.
The empty promises of trophy architecture and once again the utter refusal to address critical issues of sustainability in any it's forms let alone basic programmatic functions. Epic fail.
awaiting_deletion
Oct 3, 15 12:19 am
Miles. No. its perverted and distorted but if your dad wanted to put the T motif from his 5th ave building into the floor then so be the test of humanity. walked by that building again recently, focusing in on the steel profiles,really really impressive......the only qoute that made sense from text was Koolhaas....the self orbiting alien Zaha is on her own planet, and it moves the envelope......EKE any suggestions for better people?
vado retro
Oct 3, 15 7:35 am
zaha is the george pal of her generation.
Miles Jaffe
Oct 3, 15 9:49 am
Zaha is the Michael Bay of her generation.
Olaf, I have no idea what you're talking about. Except that 565 does have a T pattern in the floor and it was a mistake. Or at least appears so in hindsight.
awaiting_deletion
Oct 3, 15 1:32 pm
yes that T, and that's the point, experimental does not always work out as planned.
situationist
Oct 4, 15 10:03 pm
I wonder if people wouldn't have as many issues with ZHA's work if Patrik didn't go around saying insane fascist stuff.
But - I agree with Aureli, we're in a rococo-like period. Maybe Gehry is late modern baroque?
Josh Mings
Oct 5, 15 12:27 am
I've seen that Patrik dislikes the Chicago Architecture Biennial's focus on firms that use architecture for social good. It's a time for optimism and maybe some naïveté in our profession, a return to each act of architecture attempting to make the world a better place. ZHA can stick with their pessimistic "let's make icons for the rich" ideology, but real architecture lies in the impact you can make for society.
He's incredibly right that the Biennial setup is a cacophony that would be incredibly hard for the lay person to understand. It's definitely overwhelming and doesn't have one clear voice (both a strength and a weakness).
tduds
Oct 5, 15 4:40 pm
The problem I have with ZHA is that her (their) "boundary pushing" seems to focus only on the aesthetic. It's architecture as image, more art than craft.
Glossing over my long-winded opinions about architecture's parallels to the art world... my belief is that art and architecture fundamentally split at the beginning of Postmodernism, and every attempt toward an avant-garde beyond that has created icons and trophies that have not only disconnected the Architecture world from the world-at-large, but done an active disservice to their functional relationship with the public.
Postmodern art rests on an underlying irony, sort of a cynical self-awareness and rejection of modernistic purity. That's great for a painting or a book, but Architecture should never be ironic. On one level, the formal expression should always exist to serve the inhabitants. On a much deeper level, any imposition on a cultural or environmental fabric should seek to enhance the culture and the environment. We're at a point in human development where purely aesthetic experimentation is inherently at odds with social and environmental quality. Architecture in the 21st century is fundamentally a social good. We can't afford to innovate in any way that ignores the resource scarcity and human rights issues that surround us.
Zaha is free to do what she wants and explore the arenas that interest her, but it's silly to suggest that she's pushing boundaries in any way other than the most superficial. And for that I don't believe her recognition is warranted.
Bernini is not judged by his effect on contemporary/future society...zaha is...she is open to a whole slew of critique by being a living practitioner, where as Bernini is judged soley on his physical artifacts...thats a perk of being long dead...
Miles Jaffe
Oct 12, 15 1:16 pm
Olaf, an aesthetic mistake is subjective and largely inconsequential in comparison to conceptual / functional mistakes.
Bernini's buildings still exist half a millennium later. I doubt Zaha's will exist half a century later. They certainly weren't designed for performance or durability.
no_form
Oct 12, 15 1:58 pm
The purpose of Zaha's architecture isn't necessarily designed for performance (how are you defining?) or long term durability. Most buildings are not designed to last longer than 30-50 years.
tduds
Oct 12, 15 2:26 pm
"The purpose of Zaha's architecture isn't necessarily designed for performance (how are you defining?) or long term durability."
Then they're failures.
curtkram
Oct 12, 15 2:47 pm
Then they're failures
only if you measure success by performance or durability?
x-jla
Oct 12, 15 2:48 pm
Any building designed to last less than 500 years is a failure imo. We do not have the resources for throw away buildings.
tduds
Oct 12, 15 3:27 pm
I measure the success of inhabitable structures by their long term inhabitability, yes.
For a more rambling defense, see my previous post.
no_form
Oct 12, 15 4:01 pm
"when we build let us think we building forever." why? we have technology and materials available to do buildings that only need to exist for short periods of time, short as in under 20 but longer than 5 years, that can be as durable and meaningful as something that has been around for 100 years.
all of these things are in their nascent stage of development, such as Kieran Timberlake's cellophane house.
and comparing Bernini to what we do in the present is a logical fallacy. The conditions and potentials are entirely different.
boy in a well
Oct 12, 15 5:46 pm
ʇɔǝʇıɥɔɹɐ uɐ uɐɥʇ ɹoʇdlnɔs ɹǝʇʇǝq ɐ sɐʍ ıuıuɹǝq
tduds
Oct 12, 15 6:24 pm
"we have technology and materials available to do buildings that only need to exist for short periods of time"
Do we?
Again I'll call back to my original post in this thread: whether or not ZHA's work is pushing boundaries is not important to me. What is important is recognizing that the "boundary pushing" is in what I consider to be the least important, most superficial, and probably most disconnected-from-reality area of 21st century architecture.
no_form
Oct 12, 15 8:56 pm
Tduds, point taken. Do you have any examples? Mine was KT architects.
Donna Sink
Oct 13, 15 8:03 am
Well done, boy in a well.
Japan is currently demolishing the Hotel Okura Tokyo. Japan seems to have an attitude of newer being better, moreso than much of the rest of the world.
Donna Sink
Oct 13, 15 8:12 am
Well done, boy in a well.
Japan is currently demolishing the Hotel Okura Tokyo. Japan seems to have an attitude of newer being better, moreso than much of the rest of the world.
Miles Jaffe
Oct 13, 15 9:16 am
One of the things I like about Japanese culture is reverence for the old. Especially as I get older.
The Miniguchi-Ya in Okitsu has been in the same family for over 400 years. Hirohito stayed there. When it burned down it was restored not replaced.
In Japan it is not uncommon to see wood siding eroded to paper thinness or other materials used with the ultimate efficiency to their last breath. Here we call this poor and run down. Very different attitudes all around.
no_form
Oct 13, 15 3:19 pm
Let's not completely romanticize Japan here. Ando, Kuma, Sejima, Nishizawa, the Metabolists, tsukamoto, Kajima, and on and on.
Can't say they revere the old in their work they way Leon Krier would. The relationship between tradition, history and modernity is complicated in Japan. I'd make the argument that craft and ability to use materials in efficient and beautiful methods is more of an enduring trait than just a straight forward reverence for the old.
Sorrowful Giuseppe
Oct 13, 15 4:16 pm
Zaha is Bernini
lol X 1000 = million lols
Then I guess Trump is Niccolo Machiavelli...
Gehry is Palladio...
Rem is Pico della Mirandola
and
herzog de meuron are I guess the brother Grimm
tduds
Oct 13, 15 4:37 pm
@rob_c: Kieran Timberlake is definitely doing some interesting stuff. I'm not super familiar with him/them, I'll look more into what he's done.
A lot of the people who inspire me are better theorists than designers, or really only locally known. For all his faults, Andres Duany is a brilliant thinker and deserves more recognition for his lectures than he does for Seaside. Ellen Dunham-Jones is also a fantastic figure. My graduate work was inspired by the earlier theories of Moshe Safdie (can't say much for his last 20 years though...) and Adèle Naudé Santos. Christopher Alexander (another brilliant theorist / mediocre designer) and Jan Wampler are past personal mentors.
On a more prominent scale the two firms that interest me most currently are BIG and Snohetta (maybe honorable mention for Diller & Scofidio ~pre-2009). Neither are without their faults but they - like the lesser known names I cited and unlike most other Global Starchitects - tend to focus their narrative towards the non-designer. They seem to be more acutely aware of how the average individual experiences their building and how to frame that experience in a way that becomes intuitively apparent. Forget the obtuse headiness of an El Croquis showcase and simply look at the way a child plays around a building and you'll see what succeeds and what fails.
Also all the names I've dropped here are much more vocal about environmental quality and social equity (one of my biggest slights against ZHA is their stanch refusal to take responsibility for this).
As I've said repeatedly: we're at a place in architecture - and society overall - where experimentation in pure aesthetics is at odds with our resource scarcity and social inequality. I think it's a mistake to continue to praise designers who don't recognize this fact, and I think it's the primary reason the general public views Capital-A-Architecture as increasingly out of touch with the needs of the world they're designing in and for.
awaiting_deletion
Oct 14, 15 9:48 pm
you know Miles i walked by 565 again today, the T's actually are located in such a way that they read like parts of a cornice and the way the glass bays stick out I am going to guess your dad was matching prior block size 5 story walkups........either way still a pretty article by Rowan
Carrera
Oct 14, 15 9:54 pm
+++tduds, +++Kieran, hold up the relevant.
Miles Jaffe
Oct 15, 15 12:51 am
+++++ tduds we're at a place in architecture ...
Carrera
Oct 15, 15 1:34 am
Think there are 36 Starchitects (firms) and 20,836 U.S. firms, yet we allow just .02% of 100% to speak for us and define architecture…symptomatic of the ills of our society.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/27/zaha-hadid-profile-
From Rowan Moore's article in The Guardian:
"At some point in the last decade Hadid and her office could have used their new-found fame and status in one of two ways. They could have addressed their weak spot, which is the high degree of difficulty that it requires to realize their works, in such ways that they really might transform the everyday experiences of living in cities. Or they could have set about creating ever more elaborate and disconnected icons. Which, unfortunately, is what they chose to do."
I hate Zaha Hadid's style and her way of defining Architecture... I always had troubles with one professor who wants the students to think "Zaha Hadid"!
who's to say that zaha and patrik have not in fact burnt the trail that eventually leads to transforming "the everyday experience of living in cities"? took 40 years just to get the drawings off the page. lets see what another 40 does.
^ another 40 will put them both in the ground
...or dispersed poetically across an ocean or iranian desert
Zaha's work is amazing. Most of the commentary that is meant to detract from it just speaks of shoddy contractors, and people with huge persoanl insecurities.
Zaha and Gehry are our Bernini and Borromini.
Continue.
custom and complex is a challenge. challenges bring headaches and bitching.....you want simple and easy go to mcdonalds..........the article wasn't all that great and the paragraph quoted here is actually a bit silly. they are addressing their weak spot by experimenting with these apparently unsuccessful isolated buildings....if you actually practice and try to push the envelope this should be obvious.
that was random quondam....but i see i am not the only one who thinka the article failed.
Burp
yeah! /\
Bernini? LOL That must mean Gehry is Michelangelo.
The empty promises of trophy architecture and once again the utter refusal to address critical issues of sustainability in any it's forms let alone basic programmatic functions. Epic fail.
Miles. No. its perverted and distorted but if your dad wanted to put the T motif from his 5th ave building into the floor then so be the test of humanity. walked by that building again recently, focusing in on the steel profiles,really really impressive......the only qoute that made sense from text was Koolhaas....the self orbiting alien Zaha is on her own planet, and it moves the envelope......EKE any suggestions for better people?
zaha is the george pal of her generation.
Zaha is the Michael Bay of her generation.
Olaf, I have no idea what you're talking about. Except that 565 does have a T pattern in the floor and it was a mistake. Or at least appears so in hindsight.
yes that T, and that's the point, experimental does not always work out as planned.
I wonder if people wouldn't have as many issues with ZHA's work if Patrik didn't go around saying insane fascist stuff.
But - I agree with Aureli, we're in a rococo-like period. Maybe Gehry is late modern baroque?
I've seen that Patrik dislikes the Chicago Architecture Biennial's focus on firms that use architecture for social good. It's a time for optimism and maybe some naïveté in our profession, a return to each act of architecture attempting to make the world a better place. ZHA can stick with their pessimistic "let's make icons for the rich" ideology, but real architecture lies in the impact you can make for society.
He's incredibly right that the Biennial setup is a cacophony that would be incredibly hard for the lay person to understand. It's definitely overwhelming and doesn't have one clear voice (both a strength and a weakness).
The problem I have with ZHA is that her (their) "boundary pushing" seems to focus only on the aesthetic. It's architecture as image, more art than craft.
Glossing over my long-winded opinions about architecture's parallels to the art world... my belief is that art and architecture fundamentally split at the beginning of Postmodernism, and every attempt toward an avant-garde beyond that has created icons and trophies that have not only disconnected the Architecture world from the world-at-large, but done an active disservice to their functional relationship with the public.
Postmodern art rests on an underlying irony, sort of a cynical self-awareness and rejection of modernistic purity. That's great for a painting or a book, but Architecture should never be ironic. On one level, the formal expression should always exist to serve the inhabitants. On a much deeper level, any imposition on a cultural or environmental fabric should seek to enhance the culture and the environment. We're at a point in human development where purely aesthetic experimentation is inherently at odds with social and environmental quality. Architecture in the 21st century is fundamentally a social good. We can't afford to innovate in any way that ignores the resource scarcity and human rights issues that surround us.
Zaha is free to do what she wants and explore the arenas that interest her, but it's silly to suggest that she's pushing boundaries in any way other than the most superficial. And for that I don't believe her recognition is warranted.
http://www.uncubemagazine.com/sixcms/detail.php?id=15927105&articleid=art-1441185293554-a9de40e6-7535-46c2-91f2-0a07eb065c4f#!/page1
/\ useful/productive interview
Bernini is not judged by his effect on contemporary/future society...zaha is...she is open to a whole slew of critique by being a living practitioner, where as Bernini is judged soley on his physical artifacts...thats a perk of being long dead...
Olaf, an aesthetic mistake is subjective and largely inconsequential in comparison to conceptual / functional mistakes.
Bernini's buildings still exist half a millennium later. I doubt Zaha's will exist half a century later. They certainly weren't designed for performance or durability.
The purpose of Zaha's architecture isn't necessarily designed for performance (how are you defining?) or long term durability. Most buildings are not designed to last longer than 30-50 years.
"The purpose of Zaha's architecture isn't necessarily designed for performance (how are you defining?) or long term durability."
Then they're failures.
Then they're failures
only if you measure success by performance or durability?
Any building designed to last less than 500 years is a failure imo. We do not have the resources for throw away buildings.
I measure the success of inhabitable structures by their long term inhabitability, yes.
For a more rambling defense, see my previous post.
"when we build let us think we building forever." why? we have technology and materials available to do buildings that only need to exist for short periods of time, short as in under 20 but longer than 5 years, that can be as durable and meaningful as something that has been around for 100 years.
all of these things are in their nascent stage of development, such as Kieran Timberlake's cellophane house.
and comparing Bernini to what we do in the present is a logical fallacy. The conditions and potentials are entirely different.
ʇɔǝʇıɥɔɹɐ uɐ uɐɥʇ ɹoʇdlnɔs ɹǝʇʇǝq ɐ sɐʍ ıuıuɹǝq
"we have technology and materials available to do buildings that only need to exist for short periods of time"
Do we?
Again I'll call back to my original post in this thread: whether or not ZHA's work is pushing boundaries is not important to me. What is important is recognizing that the "boundary pushing" is in what I consider to be the least important, most superficial, and probably most disconnected-from-reality area of 21st century architecture.
Tduds, point taken. Do you have any examples? Mine was KT architects.
Well done, boy in a well.
Japan is currently demolishing the Hotel Okura Tokyo. Japan seems to have an attitude of newer being better, moreso than much of the rest of the world.
Well done, boy in a well.
Japan is currently demolishing the Hotel Okura Tokyo. Japan seems to have an attitude of newer being better, moreso than much of the rest of the world.
One of the things I like about Japanese culture is reverence for the old. Especially as I get older.
The Miniguchi-Ya in Okitsu has been in the same family for over 400 years. Hirohito stayed there. When it burned down it was restored not replaced.
In Japan it is not uncommon to see wood siding eroded to paper thinness or other materials used with the ultimate efficiency to their last breath. Here we call this poor and run down. Very different attitudes all around.
Let's not completely romanticize Japan here. Ando, Kuma, Sejima, Nishizawa, the Metabolists, tsukamoto, Kajima, and on and on.
Can't say they revere the old in their work they way Leon Krier would. The relationship between tradition, history and modernity is complicated in Japan. I'd make the argument that craft and ability to use materials in efficient and beautiful methods is more of an enduring trait than just a straight forward reverence for the old.
Zaha is Bernini
lol X 1000 = million lols
Then I guess Trump is Niccolo Machiavelli...
Gehry is Palladio...
Rem is Pico della Mirandola
and
herzog de meuron are I guess the brother Grimm
@rob_c: Kieran Timberlake is definitely doing some interesting stuff. I'm not super familiar with him/them, I'll look more into what he's done.
A lot of the people who inspire me are better theorists than designers, or really only locally known. For all his faults, Andres Duany is a brilliant thinker and deserves more recognition for his lectures than he does for Seaside. Ellen Dunham-Jones is also a fantastic figure. My graduate work was inspired by the earlier theories of Moshe Safdie (can't say much for his last 20 years though...) and Adèle Naudé Santos. Christopher Alexander (another brilliant theorist / mediocre designer) and Jan Wampler are past personal mentors.
On a more prominent scale the two firms that interest me most currently are BIG and Snohetta (maybe honorable mention for Diller & Scofidio ~pre-2009). Neither are without their faults but they - like the lesser known names I cited and unlike most other Global Starchitects - tend to focus their narrative towards the non-designer. They seem to be more acutely aware of how the average individual experiences their building and how to frame that experience in a way that becomes intuitively apparent. Forget the obtuse headiness of an El Croquis showcase and simply look at the way a child plays around a building and you'll see what succeeds and what fails.
Also all the names I've dropped here are much more vocal about environmental quality and social equity (one of my biggest slights against ZHA is their stanch refusal to take responsibility for this).
As I've said repeatedly: we're at a place in architecture - and society overall - where experimentation in pure aesthetics is at odds with our resource scarcity and social inequality. I think it's a mistake to continue to praise designers who don't recognize this fact, and I think it's the primary reason the general public views Capital-A-Architecture as increasingly out of touch with the needs of the world they're designing in and for.
you know Miles i walked by 565 again today, the T's actually are located in such a way that they read like parts of a cornice and the way the glass bays stick out I am going to guess your dad was matching prior block size 5 story walkups........either way still a pretty article by Rowan
+++tduds, +++Kieran, hold up the relevant.
+++++ tduds we're at a place in architecture ...
Think there are 36 Starchitects (firms) and 20,836 U.S. firms, yet we allow just .02% of 100% to speak for us and define architecture…symptomatic of the ills of our society.
bernini was not a very good boyfriend.
whats a little scar for eternal glory?