When [Jonathan] Solomon asked Hadid about the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which features more than 100 works of contemporary design, including socially conscious works like Jeanne Gang's proposal to remake a Chicago police station in order to build trust between police and residents, the visitor damned the exhibition with faint praise.
"I think it's a cute show," she said ... The exhibition, she added, "doesn't give me an idea of what to expect in the next 10 years."
— chicagotribune.com
Hadid's comments on the Biennial resonated with what her office director and partner, Patrik Schumacher, had expressed earlier via a Facebook post, criticizing the lack of digital design work in favor of exhibitions that he said show "guilt and bad conscience" in the profession. After Hadid's event with Jonathan Solomon (director of the School of the Art Institute's department of architecture, interior architecture and designed objects), Schumacher also announced that he and the Biennial's co-artistic director, Joseph Grima, would debate the issue in 2016 at the Architectural Association in London.
More on the Chicago Architecture Biennial:
12 Comments
The queen is not impressed! Of course she hasn't any idea of what to expect in the next 10 years, she hasn't designed it yet.
I am not impressed by Zaha Hadid.
As far as her toady goes, the impression is entirely negative.
I am rather suspicious of these creative/artistic engagements with poverty. It sometimes risks mutating into a questionable aesthetization of poverty, a questionable romance. Questionable because what the poor of this world most probably (and rightly) aspire to requires little creativity and imagination because it is already plotted out for them by the ladder of development leading up to what has been achieved in the most advanced arenas of world civilization, where—in contrast—true, path-breaking creativity is indeed called for. I rather feel that our discourse has become far too moralizing and politicized.
While I agree (with no little amazement - and out of context) with the risk of aesthetization of poverty, the course already plotted out for them is detestable. From where I sit Herr Shoemuncher becomes more Nazi-like every day.
Lieberland Uber Alles
Cute words from a hack architect.
I don't know, there were so many buzzwords floating around the CAB: social responsibility, community driven, anti-Starchitect.... Then when you look at the content you get-- potato chips. It is cute, and it won't be relevant in 10 years because the cottage factory of politically correct will have nothing to show for it.
What the fuck - she is a shthead, and I hope that she will be extremely irrelevant after all her buildings are torn down.
I actually attended the lecture. I though it was (as) poignant (as a packed-house kiss-in with a terrible moderator can be).
The Biennial IS bad. Schumacher and Zaha aren't necessarily proposing something good, but it isn't bad. Orhan posted an article today... "What happened to Deleuze?"
Can it be both good and bad that we are looking at socially responsible architecture?
Yes, I agree, it is shit for architectural technology, the so-called state-of-the-art, but does it not have real intrinsic value in providing a service to people who need and deserve it?
Regardless, she is witty, well-spoken, and a damn good architect. Unfortunately she has oftentimes poor clients and expensive tastes. This self-selects for an echo chamber of clients and press which respond to attractive geometries and shiny things, not to architectural substance and substantive improvements to our urban condition.
Lebbeus Woods said of Hadid, “I feel abandoned and bereft because one of the most gifted architects of my time has been reduced to wrapping a conventional program of use in merely expressionistic forms, without letting a single ray of her genius illuminate the human condition.”
It seems that Dame Hadid has sold her talents to developers and those few willing to pay her fee and build her buildings as she envisions them - can you blame her?
One of her quotes from the evening, " This is such a dreadful profession."
Zahahaha...she cracks me up
"...one of the most gifted architects of my time has been reduced to wrapping a conventional program of use in merely expressionistic forms ,without letting a single ray of her genius illuminate the human condition.”"
Is he serious? What did he think his or her cool drawings where supposed to do for the human condition? The emperor never has clothes.
Agreed, the Empress has no clothes.
You can't have it both ways. If it's a dreadful profession you change or fight it - especially with the recognition she has received - or leave it altogether. If it discriminates against women you make an all-woman office, etc. etc.
Being a great architect means creating against whatever odds the situation in which great work is possible and then doing it. Now define 'great work'.
++ Nate, but I think Pringles would be more appropriate than potato chips.
aesthetization of poverty, aka giving the construction workers in qatar cute hats.
I think we should wait for the BIG analysis first.
Its officially OK now to make Fat jokes on Zaha.
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