Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects to refurbish Southbank Tower lobby in London

2019-12-04T03:00:00-05:00

In true parametric fashion, Patrik Schumacher and the team at ZHA have designed a striking new look for the lobby of the Southbank Tower in London. Considered to be "one of the UK's most ambitious renovation projects," the office building was completed in 1972 by Richard Seifert and then converted by Kohn Penderson Fox Associates (KPF) from a 30-story office tower to a 41-story mixed-use complex in 2015.

Render by Arch018 srl. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

According to a press statement by ZHA, the overall lobby design pulls inspiration of flower petals. Using these organic forms the design team took this concept to create a series of overlapping petals to conceal the lighting infrastructure within the lobby. Fluid in nature, the lobby's new look is shaped using class fibre reinforced gypsum and features furniture created using 3D digital fabrication techniques. According to ZHA, "...

New construction photos of Zaha Hadid Architects-designed metro station reveal a true feat of engineering

2019-07-10T15:07:00-04:00

Riyadh-based photographer Faisal Bin Zarah has documented the construction process of a major new project soon to be completed in his home city. The King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, is projected to be completed next year, eight years after construction began in 2012.

Construction photo of the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Photo by Faisal Bin Zarah.

But before the architecture world becomes familiar with the smooth uniformity of its final form when it's completed a year from now, the photos taken by Bin Zarah providing another, more rough-hewn perspective of the 485,000 square foot project. The metro station's webbed steel construction currently allows the citizens of Riyadh to see directly through it while still getting a preview of its monumental yet sinuous outline. In this phase, it is perhaps easiest to see that the building was designed by mapping the desired con...

Zaha Hadid pavilion displayed at Chatsworth House

2016-08-30T12:44:00-04:00

An enormous, curvy, mushroom-like pavilion designed by the late architect Dame Zaha Hadid has been installed in the grounds of one of Britain’s grandest stately homes. The pavilion was an unexpected addition to the roster of temporary pavilions commissioned each year by the Serpentine Gallery in London. When rising steel prices meant the 2007 pavilion coming from artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Kjetil Thorsen was delayed, Hadid offered to step in with a stopgap

Read more about impressive UK pavilions here:

The extra-architectural ventures of Zaha Hadid

2016-03-31T20:46:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid will rightfully go down in history for the tremendous mark she made on architecture. But buildings weren't the only things she designed.

In fact, for the majority of her career, she worked at smaller scales, whether with painting, furniture design, or some other venture. One of her first realized projects, from 1985, consisted entirely of furniture, shelves, and other additions to a pre-existing International Style home in London at 24 Cathcart Road.

Her interest in the expanded field of design, including interiors and the objects that fill them, continued throughout her career. For some, this work indicates a crass and unapologetic commercialism. Philip Kennicott, for example, wrote for the Washington Post earlier today, "She spoke the airy language of architectural theory, with all its utopian overtones, but she vigorously branded consumer products from candles to tableware to neckties."

ln any case, her influence exceeds architecture – extending to the runway, the showroo...

“We just loved her”: Frank Gehry remembers Zaha Hadid

2016-03-31T18:37:00-04:00

When news broke on Thursday morning that architect Zaha Hadid had died, she was quickly mourned by a trio of her peers: Frank Gehry and Joseph Giovannini sat together over breakfast and called Robert A.M. Stern to have a group cry. “We just loved her,” Gehry tells TIME. “We’d just seen her a few weeks ago at Yale,” where he and Hadid were teaching concurrent studios. “It’s one of the things we do—we time them so we’re all together at Yale at the same time so we can sort of hang out.”

In a touching piece, TIME records Frank Gehry's reactions to the death of Zaha Hadid, a close personal friend and colleague.

Gehry helped Hadid obtain her first major commission, the Vitra Fire Station in Germany. “She did an extraordinary job with it,” Gehry recalls. “Everybody was impressed, and she took off.”

Among the other quotable moments in the article, Gehry notes that "she was one of the guys," before correcting himself: “[That’s] sexist in its own way I suppose. I don’t mean it that way ... She was undaunted by all the stuff that would be against a woman coming into a field at that level. She didn’t pay attention to it … She was very confident."

More on the untimely passing of Zaha Hadid: