Zaha Hadid

Help! It's an Inter-Dimensional Space Alien Invasion of the Twenty-first Century!

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“Really, John – You’ve gone too far!” says the alter ego.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, temporary instalation (July 12 -21, 2007) Zaha Hadid *

As some would have it, Hadid’s architecture skips over the Postmodern to a redefined more radical Modernism that more accurately defines contemporary Twenty-first Century culture. Instead, I would say that a rejection of the jaded Postmodern deconstruction of Modernism and reevaluation of the past implies the understanding of its presence. That is not to say that the rejection is not part of Hadid’s oeuvre, only that contemporary culture is more complex than most of us know. As with much of the most inventive “Metamodern” architecture Hadid’s buildings seem to be an invasion of their surroundings, as though something foreign to our history has materialized from another dimension. For instance, the organic form of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London looks like a giant conch-like apparition, alien to the park and rectangular urban architecture that surrounds it. At the same time, the temporary nature of the installation creates a "here today gone today" ironic response in this author. Never the less, the pavilion is one of the many curvilinear buildings proliferating the major urban centers of our world. And, there in lies a clue as to the location of this type of Twenty-first century architecture. Many of the major building projects worldwide are based in curved form that can only exist as a result of contemporary computer driven technology. Hadid’s architecture is part of a radicalized global architecture driven by bizarre and/or organic geometry that steers a course through the ubiquitous oppositional confusion of contemporary world culture(s).

More about Zaha Hadid and her buildings in my next entry.

Notes

* IT, The Terror From Beyond Space! (1958) United Artists, from the Website Posteropolis, http://posteropolis.com/store/. Viewed 11:00 PM EDT, Wednesday, August 10, 2011. It is thought that one time use of copyright material for intellectual purpose is within the limits of United States copyright law.

* Hadid, Zaha, Serpentine Gallery pavillion, London, in "Marcelo Zefarin's Blog," http://abduzeedo.com/architect-day-zaha-hadid, Viewed 10:30 AM, EDT, August 10, 2011. It is thought that one time use of copyright material for intellectual purpose is within the limits of United States copyright law.