Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects updates progress on Central Bank of Iraq Headquarters in Baghdad

2024-08-16T18:09:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has shared new construction photos of its Central Bank of Iraq Headquarters design in Baghdad. Sitting on a narrow site right by the Tigris River, the tower's exoskeleton rises from a podium and gradually widens upwards to reach a height of 560 feet.

The late Zaha Hadid is credited for the design (along with Patrik Schumacher), making this project a significant contribution to her city of birth.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Zaha Hadid Architects (@zahahadidarchitects)

Digital spatial asset platform Treasury launches in partnership with Zaha Hadid Architects and other creatives

2024-06-25T17:01:00-04:00

A new creative digital suite promising itself as the "Getty Images of premium spatial assets" has just been launched by San Francisco-based design technology startup Treasury Spatial Data in response to the growing influence of spatial computing in nearly every segment of the design industry.

Users of the new platform will have the ability to discover, fingerprint, license, share, and even commission their own spatial assets for licensing while simultaneously ensuring their protection against machine learning software and generative AI.

The platform's founders say: "The Treasury spatial asset platform is the foundation of a new era in design development for spatial assets and their applications."

Image: © Zaha Hadid Architects

Patrik Schumacher, principal of Treasury's early partner company Zaha Hadid Architects, added: "I have believed for many years that the metaverse will become compelling to a large portion of humanity not just when the technology is sufficiently sophisticated —...

Zaha Hadid Architects on using AI in workplace design

2023-06-15T13:01:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has offered The New York Times an insight into how the firm has deployed artificial intelligence in workplace design. Times writer Farah Nayeri spoke with Arjun Kaicker and Ulrich Blum from Zaha Hadid Analytics + Insights (ZHAI) which uses data and artificial intelligence to design workplaces.

“The pandemic has really supercharged innovation in the workplace,” Kaicker told the paper, noting that before 2020, “the majority of office buildings had a one-size-fits-all desk for everyone, and the same environment around them, the same everything.”

Blum shared that ZHAI possessed a computer tool that, within 27 hours, could generate 100,000 designs for a building interior — a feat which would take an architect a decade to deliver if producing 40 drawings per day. The team cited the firm’s Infinitus Plaza in Guangzhou, China, which saw AI deployed to generate options for positioning the bui...

'Whats the point of all this?' Patrik Schumacher's blistering critique of the Venice Architecture Biennale stirs debate

2023-05-23T17:51:00-04:00

A new Facebook post from Patrik Schumacher critical of the newly-opened 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale is gaining traction after the Zaha Hadid Architects Principal expressed his concerns over the apparent lack of architectural content in the Lesley Lokko-curated exhibition, whose theme touches on Afrofuturism, the environmental crisis, and identity.

In a fourteen-paragraph invective titled “Venice Biennale Blues,” Schumacher decried the Biennale as being “mislabeled,” claiming that “What we are witnessing here is the discursive self-annihilation of the discipline.”

Schumacher, who is himself a co-curator of this year's Venice Virtual Pavilion, claimed to visit twelve total pavilions without seeing anything related to architecture before lamenting the pavilions and themed exhibitions as being awash in “documentary-style intellectual-artistic allusions to moral issues, garnished with pretentious critical-speak.”

Perhaps controversially, Schumacher lambasted the American pavilion a...

Zaha Hadid Architects reveals new Science Centre project in Singapore

2022-12-05T17:34:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has shared project details for its new Science Centre in Singapore.

According to a press announcement released today, the design includes five interconnected rectangular volumes defined by large "monocle" windows that offer views of neighboring Jurong Lake Gardens. Features include a network of discovery trails and an enhanced Children’s Gallery that offers twice as much room as the space provided in its predecessor.

Rendering: Negativ, image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

An "Eco-Lab" and "Eco-Garden" will serve as part of the museum’s educational offerings, while programmable rooftop spaces, an observatory, and a Digital Fabrication Lab all provide students with the opportunity to learn about topics like vertical farming.

Rendering: Negativ, image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

ZHA says it hopes to attain a BCA Green Mark Platinum rating for the project with the help of atelier ten and Architects 61...

An anonymous architect comments on the need for ‘degrowth’ in detailed manifesto

2022-08-15T09:00:00-04:00

Environmentalist blog Treehugger has published an exchange between the author of an anonymous new Twitter manifesto that outlines in 25 points the need to combat the capitalistic notion that endless growth is the only option for modern industrial societies. Patrik Schumacher and others are mentioned as examples of the industry’s bad side, with groups like Architects Declare and thinkers such as Tim Jackson, Jason Hickel, and Open City director Phineas Harper being cited as the clarions of a movement the latter says is more or less inevitable.

"We use 'degrowth' because, as architects, we sometimes get to control the consumption spigot a bit," shares the author and architect, who wished to remain anonymous during their conversation with Lloyd Alter of Treehugger. "Someday architects may be called upon, first and foremost, to make spatial interventions that create value for society and for future generations—more like caretakers or repairmen, and less as heroic form-givers who functio...

Zaha Hadid Architects is planning a metaverse city for Liberland

2022-02-25T15:25:00-05:00

In January, Liberland unveiled its most dazzling and arguably most convincing proposal yet. Working with Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, Jedlička portrayed his country as a futuristic crypto paradise through a fully realized city in the metaverse. Picture a national assembly hall, a buzzy NFT bazaar, office towers—all done in Hadid’s trademark swooping, swoon-worthy architectural style.

ZHA principal Patrik Schumacher has been personally spearheading the metaverse version of a disputed quasi Freestate called the Free Republic of Liberland since shortly after it was founded in 2015 by the self-styled libertarian Czech politician Vít Jedlička.

Liberland City Hall. Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.

Jedlička and Schumacher’s joint ambit has grown over the preceding years and now seeks to (virtually) cement its place in the popular imagination through the establishment of institutional infrastructure and the push for eventual recognition of statehood from the United Nations.

Liberland's virtual trading floor. Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.

“It was time to turn ideas into something more concrete,” the 38-year-old politician told Quartz. “It’s important to show to the world that we are serious about starting development in Liberland.”

Liberland's NFT Plaza. Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.

An avowed libertarian himself, Schumacher says the program of parametr...

'Zaha Hadid Architects: Vertical Urbanism' offers a new perspective on ZHA's innovations in tall building and urbanism

2022-02-21T15:26:00-05:00

A closer look at one of the most innovative approaches to tall building design in the industry went up in the gallery of the Hong Kong Design Institute after “Zaha Hadid Architects: Vertical Urbanism” opened to the public last Wednesday.

By utilizing a wide array of various forms of media, including technical drawings, models, renderings, and VR experiences, the show’s curators arranged a three-pronged exhibition that highlights the work of the firm’s five-year-old design education and research group ZHA CODE, explores their considerable regional output, including the forthcoming 36-story Henderson development for the central business district of Hong Kong, and, importantly, showcases ZHA’s innovations in supertall building and verticality across the world.

The Peak Project, Hong Kong, 1982-1983. Image courtesy of HKDI.

Thallus, Installation, 2017. Sculpture developed by ZHCode with ZHD in collaboration with AiBuild, Odico Formwork Robotics, Armadillo Engineering. Image courtesy of...

Zaha Hadid Architects has paid almost $16million to keep founder’s name

2022-01-17T12:46:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has paid almost $16million over the past five years in order to retain the name of the late Zaha Hadid in the practice name. The deal, reported by UK outlet Building Online, included $4.6m (£3.4m) to use the founder’s name in 2021, $3.8m (£2.8m) in both 2020 and 2019, $1m (£780,000) in 2018, and $3.1m (£2.3m) in 2017.

The fees were paid to the Zaha Hadid Foundation, who control the trademark for the late architect. According to Building Online, the fluctuation in figures paid to the foundation are due to the fee’s link to the company’s annual turnover, which have increased gradually since 2018.

The company controlling the firm, officially named Zaha Hadid Limited (ZHL), was placed under the control of an employee-owned trust named Studio 9 in December of 2021, which saw the practice’s former parent company, Zaha Hadid Holdings, relinquish its control over ZHL. In the UK, Limited companies such as ZHL are required to publish annual accounts viewable to the ...

Zaha Hadid Architects' NFTism exhibition at Art Basel Miami proposes a new standard in digital architecture and the metaverse

2021-12-03T19:36:00-05:00

As Art Basel Miami Beach draws to a close this weekend, the twin buzzwords of NFTs and the metaverse have been left ringing throughout the convention hall with the notion that the oft-dismissed digital art platform will invariably become an art fair mainstay as the critical acceptance of the works and their medium continues to grow.

Going into this year’s rendition, many attendees and other interested observers were eager to see how Big A architecture might respond to the new mandate for metaverse spaces with showcase designs that offer real-world locations to host and display the blockchain technology.

Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid Architects took up the mantle with a virtual gallery that houses a dynamic multi-artist exhibition its curator compared, favorably, to a Trojan Horse. The studio says its spatial design focuses on the user’s experience and interaction with one another along with the theatrical presentation of the virtual exhibition itself.

Image courtes...

Settlement reached over Zaha Hadid's $133m estate

2020-11-20T13:16:00-05:00

In the four years since the celebrated Iraqi-born architect died suddenly in March 2016, a “toxic dispute” has been taking place between the executors of her estate [...]. The long-running feud has finally been settled in an explosive court hearing involving contested allegations of financial mismanagement, disregard for corporate governance and “clandestine relationships” between the current practice principal and junior members of staff.

The Guardian's architecture critic Oliver Wainwright provides an update on the four-year legal feud over the sizable estate of the late Zaha Hadid — now valued at around $133 million.

"The agreement will see the bulk of Hadid’s assets go to the Zaha Hadid Foundation," Wainwright writes, "a charitable body, with plans to establish a museum and award scholarships, focused on supporting the architectural education of Arab women in particular."

Zaha Hadid Architects principal director Patrik Schumacher will reportedly chair the employee benefit trust that holds shares in the architecture practice, Zaha Hadid Ltd (ZHL).

Listen to our 2018 conversation with Schumacher upon the passing of Zaha Hadid:

Previously on Archinect:

Zaha Hadid Architects hit with ransomware attack

2020-04-27T17:18:00-04:00

Information stolen from the servers of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) is being held at ransom by computer hackers.

The Architect’s Journal reports that the 348-person, London-based practice has been ensnared by a ransomware attack that has resulted in the loss of some unknown quantity of confidential information.

According to the report, ZHA alerted police on Tuesday, April 21st that the attack had taken place after office employees discovered messages from the hackers announcing that information stored on its internal server had been encrypted and would only be returned if the hackers were paid a ransom. According to AJ, instead of communicating with the hackers, ZHA is working with a cyber forensics team to investigate the situation.

The architecture firm maintains that the information had been previously backed up and that its work was not under threat, though it is unclear exactly what information was taken. A ZHA spokesperson tells AJ, “We immediately worked to secure our networ...

Whatever happened to Liberland?

2019-08-22T18:38:00-04:00

Liberland’s earthly domain is a constellation of locations and events that gravitate around the unoccupied Gornja Siga. These props, in various stages of construction, share a fundamental quality of ephemerality and mobility, as if recalling their origins as a dream spawned on the internet.

The self-declared libertarian micronation of Liberland has vanished somewhat from the media's spotlight since its founder and current President, Vít Jedlička, planted the utopia's state flag on Gornja Siga, an unoccupied Danube island between Serbia and Croatia, in 2015. Liberland instantly found an early and vocal supporter in Patrik Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects and outspoken evangelist for free market capitalism, but what has really been happening since then?

Hans Larsson's recent Volume piece brings us up to speed and talks about the Schumacher-juried Liberland master plan design competition, decentralized autonomous blockchain governance, and neo-metabolist-inspired off-grid floating settlements.

"When seen from the right angle, the elements coalesce into an image of a new country being born," Larsson writes. "Shift your position slightly and you see a banal hoax. But if enough people buy into it, does this even matter?"

How should Zaha Hadid be remembered? Patrik Schumacher has an idea

2019-04-01T20:17:00-04:00

Three years ago on March 31st, the world lost the great Dame Zaha Hadid. Identifiably one of the most revered architects of her time, Hadid's legacy continuously lives on through art, architecture, and fashion. Known for her larger than life personality, piercing leadership, and continuous creative output, Hadid was a trailblazer in design and a champion for the future of architecture. Her accomplishments and influence within the profession can be noted as relentless and groundbreaking.

Pulling from her long list of accolades, Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize in 2004 and the first awarded the Royal Gold Medal for architecture by the Royal Institute of British Architects. During an interview published in Icon magazine, Hadid stated "I never use the issue about being a woman architect...but if it helps younger people to know they can break through the glass ceiling, I don't mind that." Leaving a truly inspiring legacy, Hadid believed in pushing boundaries, prom...

Patrik Schumacher sues for control over Zaha Hadid's estate

2018-11-15T13:38:00-05:00

Patrik Schumacher has sued to become the sole executor of Zaha Hadid's $85 million estate, applying to remove developer Peter Palumbo, Hadid's niece Rana, and artist Brian Clarke from the late Dame's will.

Upon Hadid's death, Schumacher and five of the architect's relatives were each left a portion of her earnings. The remainder of her estate was to be held in trust for up to 125 years, with Schumacher, Palumbo, Hadid, and Clarke, given full discretion over its allocation.

In response to the court proceedings, the three executors stood firm against Schumacher with a statement made public by architecture critic Oliver Wainwirght.

Schumacher, who reportedly resigned as director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation back in June, is being accused by the other stewards of trying to gain financially by going to court to oust them. The two have been at odds since Hadid's confidantes distanced themselves from Schumacher's controversial remarks on social housing shortly after their friend's passi...

Zaha Hadid Architects design H-Line hat for Friends of the High Line fundraiser

2018-06-12T15:26:00-04:00

It's only been a few months since Zaha Hadid Architects' 520 West 28th development officially opened in Manhattan, and with its photogenic steel-and-glass split level facade, the 11-story condo mid-rise has quickly become a popular landmark of the adjacent High Line park.

520 West 28th, ZHA's first project in New York City. Photo: Hufton+Crow.

For an upcoming Hat Party-themed fundraiser event, hosted by Friends of the High Line, Patrik Schumacher and his team have fired up the parametric design engines one more time and created the head covering complimenting the building, the H-Line.

Photo: Luke Hayes

"The fluid chevrons of 520 West 28th’s façade weave up the building, conveying its split levels and demarcating each residence within," explains the design description. "The H-Line hat echoes these chevrons, weaving around the wearer with open and closed forms."

Photo: Luke Hayes

Project Details:
Designer: Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Patrik Schumacher
De...

Patrik Schumacher calls for a 'capitalist revolution' to fix housing

2018-05-15T15:06:00-04:00

Housing is one of our most essential and cherished commodities. It is rightly one of our biggest markets, but unfortunately one of the most politicised, suffocating under quasi-socialist political interventionism. The loss of prosperity in our whole society is enormous. Not only because of poor housing provision, but because of its stifling impact on all economic activities. That’s why the need for a capitalist revolution is so urgent.

It's been a bit quiet around Zaha Hadid Architects principal and outspoken free-market evangelist Patrik Schumacher since his last big public statement calling for the elimination of social housing caused an overwhelming backlash, but now he's back with a new commentary piece on how to fix housing via privatization and deregulation, published in The Guardian.

Zaha Hadid Architects design 3D-printed chairs for Nagami's Milan debut

2018-04-18T16:20:00-04:00

Milan Design Week just kicked off, and one impressive highlight is the debut exhibition Brave New World: Re-thinking Design in the New Age of Technology by brand-new Spanish company, Nagami.

Marking the brand's official launch event, the show at the Nagami pop-up showroom in Milan's Brera Design District features four exquisite chairs—designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, Ross Lovegrove, and Daniel Widrig—that combined computational design and large-scale robotic 3D printing.

The Robotica TM and Bow chairs © Delfino Sisto Legnani + Marco Cappelletti

Bow & Rise by Zaha Hadid Architects for Nagami

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Patrik Schumacher
Design Team: Sebastian Andia

The Bow and Rise chairs © Delfino Sisto Legnani + Marco Cappelletti

Design description: "Bow and Rise are the latest results of the extensive, ongoing research that Zaha Hadid Architects is conducting within the domains of 3D printing and material experimentation. These chairs combine pristine design informed b...

Patrik Schumacher addresses backlash against his statements on eliminating social housing and privatizing public spaces

2018-01-17T13:29:00-05:00

When Patrik Schumacher spoke at the 17th World Architecture Festival back in 2016, his speech, calling for an end to social housing and the privatization of public space, caused serious push-back, even from the firm he currently runs. Since, Schumacher has been trying to lay low—at least as far as spewing his politics is concerned.

“I was a bit shocked. I mean, I have a thick skin, but it was unexpected and troubling. And it did for a while make me pull away a bit and calm down, to hide my polemics for a little bit and let that storm kind of fly over. I was really ducking under for a while" the architect told the Guardian.

Now, however, Schumacher wants to clarify his stance, arguing that he has been misunderstood. In this recent article in the Guardian, the architect once again touts his neoliberal, privatization scheme clarifying that "it’s not about me attacking vulnerable groups in society and wanting to throw them on to the street...The headline premise here is how can we actu...

Almost two decades in the making, the ZHA-designed Napoli Afragola Station is finally inaugurated

2017-06-07T13:48:00-04:00

The cosmopolitan, bustling city of Naples serves as the gateway to the south of Italy—but the mechanics of that gate are a bit creaky. The main station of the city, Napoli Centrale, is over fifty years old and is currently being renovated. Even with renovations, however, the station will be congested. So, in the early 2000’s, the city looked north to the city of Afragola, within the Naples metropolitan area, for the site of an additional train station. Yesterday, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni inaugurated the building ahead of the start of regular services on June 11.

The gleaming new station was designed by the late Dame Zaha Hadid and bears many of her design signatures, from curved structural concrete elements to Corian-clad steel ribs. It’s designed as an “urbanized public bridge” connecting the communities on either side of the tracks. In fact, the passenger concourse is the walkway bridging the tracks, and houses all services for departing, arriving, and connecting passengers. ...

Zaha Hadid leaves £67 million fortune in her will

2017-01-16T13:38:00-05:00

[Hadid] bequeathed a lump sum of £500,000 to her business partner Patrik Schumacher. Hadid also left a total of £1.7m to four nieces and nephews, as well as her brother Haytham Hadid, whose share was £500,000 [...] Her will, obtained by the Architects’ Journal, shows that the net value of her estate was £67,249,458. The calculation was filed in the high court dated 14 December 2016 [...] The will shows Hadid is leaving her architecture practice, of which she was the sole owner, in trust.

Take a look at ZHA's competition entry for the Neue Nationalgalerie extension in Berlin

2017-01-09T17:06:00-05:00

Patrik Schumacher, the current head of Zaha Hadid Architects, posted a few photos on his Facebook showing the firm's designs for the Neue Nationalgalerie extension competition. Over 40 firms participated in the competition before Herzog and de Meuron were announced as the winners. The Danish office Lundgaard & Tranberg took second place and the third prize was awarded to the Berlin-based office Bruno Fioretti Marquez. The project brief stipulated that the design must complement the existing Neue Nationalgalerie building, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe.

HUD-winked: Ben Carson takes on housing for Trump and ZHA distances itself from Patrik Schumacher on Archinect Sessions #90, ft. special guest Marc Miller

2016-12-01T15:46:00-05:00

When president-elect Donald Trump nominated Ben Carson to lead the department of Housing and Urban Development, the response was resoundingly: huh?

The neurosurgeon came onto the national political scene in 2015, during his run for the Republican nomination, but after Trump took the presidency and started throwing around the idea of offering a Cabinet position to Carson, a spokesperson said "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency." Despite all that, Carson is now (almost definitely officially) secretary of HUD (which he knows just enough about to seriously backtrack the agency's work as pushed by Obama). So here we are.

Special guest Marc Miller joins us on the podcast to discuss the implications of Carson's inexperience for HUD, as well as chew on the latest Schumacher-induced controversy: when the architect promoted the privatization of public space an...

Zaha Hadid Architects rejects Patrik Schumacher's "manifesto" in open letter

2016-11-29T12:51:00-05:00

The perenially opinionated Patrik Schumacher, who gave a speech about his "urban policy manifesto" at the November 17th World Architecture Festival in which he called for an end to all social housing and privatization of public space, has attracted push-back from an unexpected source: the firm he currently runs, which was founded by the late, great Zaha Hadid. In an open letter from the architectural office, Zaha Hadid Architects states that Schumacher's manifesto does not reflect the future direction of the firm, noting that Zaha "deeply believed in the strongest international collaboration" and she "did not write manifestos. She built them." The full text of the letter follows below:

November 29, 2016

Patrik Schumacher’s ‘urban policy manifesto’ does not reflect Zaha Hadid Architects’ past—and will not be our future.

Zaha Hadid did not write manifestos. She built them.

Zaha Hadid Architects has delivered 56 projects for all members of the community in 45 cities around the world.

Refusi...

Patrik Schumacher on architectural discourse and leadership: "People who are frank are trusted"

2016-11-09T14:50:00-05:00

“It’s my life’s work — to let that slip would be tragic,” Schumacher says, making clear his dedication to the firm. But as for his campaign against “the PC takeover of architecture,” isn’t there a chance his iconoclasm will alienate potential clients, when the firm can least afford to do so? [...] “My positions might be controversial, but they are the result of a careful, informed deliberation,” he demurs. “I think people who are frank are trusted.”

"But always with Zaha’s DNA"

2016-10-29T13:33:00-04:00

"The importance to Zaha was the layering, setting a new structure over the old one” that would both read at a distance and liberate ground for public space. And Patrik wanted the new structure to overshoot the fire station and land on a single point."

On the occasion of the opening of Zaha Hadid Architects, Port House in Antwerp, Joseph Giovannini reflects on the afterlife of Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid, DBE.

Further images of the “floating” Port House in Antwerp were published previously, here.

Additionally, earlier this year Archinect shared the official announcement from Zaha Hadid Architects about plans to continue under Patrik Schumacher's leadership. More recently, Patrik Schumacher has further explained the parametric future he plans for ZHA.

Patrik Schumacher on the parametric future he plans for ZHA

2016-09-12T13:25:00-04:00

[Schumacher] sees parametricism as the architectural style of capitalism, to which he is a relatively recent convert. “My early heroes were Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, people who wanted to make an impact”, but he now believes that free enterprise is the best means of the “human development of prosperity and freedom”. The innate logic of parametricism means that, in a truly free market, with “freer utilisation of land”, it would eventually triumph.

Patrik Schumacher sits down with Rowan Moore, and share his plans to assert a parametricist future as Zaha Hadid's successor at ZHA. Moore isn't exactly convinced.

RIBA 2016 Stirling Prize Shortlist announced: includes Herzog & de Meuron, Wilkinson Eyre

2016-07-13T19:02:00-04:00

What does it take for a project to transcend from merely eye-catching architecture to a lasting, inspirational, nationally acclaimed building? The RIBA Stirling Prize, which awards the UK's best new building each year, has narrowed 2016's contenders down to a shortlist of six (two of which, the Weston Library by Wilkinson Eyre and Loyn & Co's Inside Outside House, were predicted for this list by Archinect's Ellen Hancock), which it announced today.

The list follows the National Awards and London Awards earlier this year, and comprises of some “usual suspects” shortlisted in previous years, as well as some newcomers; including previous winners Wilkinson Eyre and Herzog & de Meuron, and returning nominees Reiach and Hall, Caruso St John, and dRMM.

Nominees Michael Laird Architects and Loyn & Co Architects are relative newcomers, bringing (respectively) an education project and a private residence to the shortlist—the first private home to be nominated in 15 years. This year’s shortlist ...

The Salerno maritime terminal: Zaha Hadid's first posthumous project inaugurated in Italy

2016-04-26T14:05:00-04:00

On the long approach from the sea, the flowing, horizontal silhouette of this all-concrete structure, bracketed fore and aft by leaning walls, stands out from the heavyset classicized buildings along the waterfront promenade [...] Prime Minister Matteo Renzi visited the site on Sunday, calling it a masterpiece. The absence of Ms. Hadid, 65, who died on March 31 without ever seeing the finished terminal, was keenly felt both days.

The city of Salerno, some 60.5 km south of Naples, gained a major new architectural icon this week. A 50,000 sq. ft., €15 million maritime terminal, it's also the first project by ZHA to be inaugurated after their principal Zaha Hadid passed away last month.

Before the inauguration ceremony, portraits of the late architecture were plastered around the city. "Goodbye Zaha Hadid, Genius and Modernity. Inspiration and Transformation, Light that takes shape," they read. "Salerno will proudly care for and cherish the Maritime Terminal.” Half of the 400-person firm reportedly travelled to Salerno for the ceremony.

Actually, rather than a new project, the Salerno terminal was twelve years in the making, with contractor bankruptcies and other financial woes creating major delays. As such, the building was designed the old way: while computers were beginning to be used, the project was designed mainly with models and drafting.

Paola Cattarin, the project architect, describes to the Times: "It w...

ZHA after Zaha: Patrik Schumacher on Zaha and what's next for the firm, on Archinect Sessions #61

2016-04-21T17:25:00-04:00

The sudden death of Dame Zaha Hadid could not also mean the end of Zaha Hadid Architects. With major projects still ongoing all over the world, the firm had to keep things running strong, focusing on the future while managing grief. After working with Zaha for nearly thirty years, Patrik Schumacher has now taken over leadership at the firm, and joins us on the podcast to discuss what it was like collaborating with her "killer instinct", and how he can continue honoring the "DNA" of her work.

Listen to episode 61 of Archinect Sessions, "ZHA after Zaha":

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