Zaha

Malevich’s Tektonik 1977

London - United Kingdom

For the graduation project at the Architectural Association, Zaha Hadid explored the ‘mutation’ factor for the programme requirements of a hotel on the Hungerford Bridge over the Thames. The horizontal ‘tektonik’ conforms to and makes use of the apparantly random composition of Suprematist forms to meet the demands of the programme and the site.

The bridge links the nineteenth century side of the river with the South Bank, which is dominated by the Brutalist forms of a 1950’s arts complex. The fourteen levels of the building systematically adhere to the tektonik, turning all conceivable constraints into new possibilities for space.

The project has particular resonance with Hadid’s later projects. First, in the Great Utopia show at the Guggenheim, she was able to realize some of these tektoniks in concrete form, and second in the Habitable Bridge project, which considered the possibilities of a mixed-use development over the Thames.

- Zaha Hadid Architects press release

Malevich’s Tektonik 1977

London, United Kingdom - Part I

If we examine the project Malevich’s Tektonik, considering the problematic of the first half of the 1970’s, which we recall as the years in which the historicist influence is strong (The Language of Post-Modernism by Charles Jencks comes out in 1977), we will see that the messages promoted by Hadid are at least four;

01. To rediscover, through Malevich, the abstract surge upon which the Bauhaus drew, Dutch Neo-plasticism, and finally, Mies. It is the refusal to deny the modern and decisive opposition towards the classical tradition, as had been reproposed in those years by Graves, Rossi, Krier, and Stirling.

02. To work with agile, intense and dynamic geometries. In short, a return to a fluid space marked by points, lines, and surfaces. It also recovers not only the neo-plastic of Mondrian and Van Doesburg but also the more fluid one of Kandinsky, with whom Malevich was frequently in touch. Also here a return to the sources, this time to the origins of the abstract when two lines, the rigidly geometric of neo-plasticism and the intensely emotional of the Russians, were no longer separate.

03. To declare a real disinterest in every dispute of a semantic nature. The 1970’s are anguished by the problem of language, by the attempt to recover meaning from architecture, often through iconic values or the reference to signs and symbols codified by tradition. Bringing up again the Suprematist aesthetic, Hadid affirms that the goal of architecture is not linguistic but expressive: it is the research of formal values, that is, of a new sculptural sensibility.

Malevich’s Tektonik 1977

London, United Kingdom - Part II

04. To declare inconsistent every disciplinary division between the arts. If art is a pure sculptural sensibility, it no longer makes sense to speak of painting, sculpture, and architecture as distinct activities because they all contribute to a single goal: the construction of a space in which every difference between figural and existential ceases, that is, in which art and life coincide. In 1923 Malevich conceived a project for Planeta, a house of the future that would have permitted living in a rigorously geometric environment.

This house profoundly touched Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg, who in 1925 had a prototype built. Rietveld was so influenced by it also in his work that it is difficult to determine the borders between painting, interior design and architecture. And Mies himself, who was educated in this cultural environment, had a strongly pictorial vision of architectural space. Up to this point these are innovative aspects of the design. Which is, nevertheless, a first attempt not without its ingenuity. Above all, for the processes of decomposition adopted that more than to stress the forces at play, emphasizing their intensity and directions, tend to reduce them (the forces) to an unstable system of balances.

Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi (Architettura.it)

Interview with Alvin Boyarsky

October 1987, Part I

The following is excerpted from a series of discussions on the occasion of Zaha Hadid’s 1987 exhibition of furniture at the Architectural Association (AA), England’s oldest school of architecture. Alvin Boyarsky, Chairman of the AA from 1971 to 1990, created a legacy of globalism at the school decades before such ideas as the Internet and multiculturalism were widely considered. Hadid studied at the AA from 1972 – 1977, when she was awarded the Diploma Prize. She returned to the AA to teach and ran her own studio at the school from 1980 until 1987.

AB: Tell me about the origins of your architectural style, in particular your unusual way of depicting architectural plans.

ZH: My work has developed out of certain early precedents in modern architecture. My original intention was to inject the ideas of Suprematism into architecture. I was curious about Rem Koolhaas’s bent plan for Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion (1928-29). Another influence is one of Mies’s patio houses, the Gericke House (Berlin, 1932) – it’s the only one where he bent his plan, and here the energy is not static. If you compare De Stijl to Suprematism, there is a kind of equilibrium in both cases, the former arrived at through total control and the later through total energy, not unlike a photographic free frame.

Mondrian would rework his composition until it was balanced and frozen. Malevich’s compositions were definitive, or finite, but they also functioned as a picture frame. If it could move, it would frame something else. In this way, his work suggests that the whole planet is connected. You might even say that its guiding force was not bound by earthly conditions. The implication is one of liberation. It’s from this notion that we arrive at the idea of the liberation of the plan.

Interview with Alvin Boyarsky - Part II

ZH: The question was how to free the plan in a different way than had been done in the past, how to free it to allow certain elements to operate independently. These parts are able to impose themselves more assertively on the urban condition. What may seem to be frivolous graphics has a special logic of its own. It may not be rational in the European sense, but it is logical in the way it moves people, in the way the building is used. It also has to do with release and compression between the different zones of the plan.

Energy is compressed into linear conditions, or it is released in an urban sense, and causes certain forms to flow – in this case, the flow of the people. It was through observing how Mies did certain things to liberate the plan - how he energized the ground condition, for example - that my work on the Irish Prime Minister’s Residence (Dublin, 1979–80) developed. Afterward people said the design was Kandinsky-like. Then the connection with Arab calligraphy struck me. They all have the same roots: 1950s architecture was related to Kandinsky’s work and Kandinsky’s work to Arab calligraphy.

It’s my belief that early-twentieth-century abstract painters often turned to primitive, figurative art - generally African - or to Chinese and Arabic calligraphy and geometric design. These were the only abstract forms of art available at the time. There are various ways of doing a plan. There are urban conditions and there are points of release. The plan interprets the architectural program - and it can manifest this free-flowing nonlinear form. It’s similar to the study of engineering.

Most engineers study structure in a linear way and can’t deal with it when it’s nonlinear. Peter Rice and I had a conversation the other day about an engineer’s understanding of the nonlinear condition of architecture. What is very nice about Peter is that he understands it - that’s really quite exciting.

Interview with Alvin Boyarsky - Part III

AB: What if we were to take a sequence of sketches – any sequence, six, a dozen, fifteen sketches – lay them out like decks of cards, and discuss the significance?

ZH: The plan develops from a composite of my early sketches. The Peak (Hong Kong, 1982–83), Parc de la Villette (Paris, 1982–83), and the Irish Prime Minister’s Residence were each done differently, but there are also many similarities between them. The Residence was done through cut-outs; at that point I was opening the space by eliminating elements.

The notion of layering the plan and the building came accidentally in the case of La Villette, but deliberately in The Peak. The building was represented in the geological plane of Hong Kong. In the beginning, I didn’t know that the building would be dug into the topography of the island. From there I became aware of differences between a linear space that is cellular and a linear space that is fluid. Every project has certain limitations. The architect’s relationship to those limitation is very interesting. You can study these limitations and responses.

AB: Let’s say we’re planning a document that would lead you to what you’re thinking about right now. We would begin by looking at a few paintings and drawings by other people, and also plans and drawings. We would use Mies, Oscar Niemeyer, and perhaps Le Corbusier. A variety of significant examples could be discussed in terms of the content that interests you; it would tersely but effectively demonstrate your plan. Next to this we would place another, almost parallel sequence of some of your own experiments.

ZH: Fundamentally one has to expose the idea that there is a modern culture and that it never came to full fruition. It’s not a matter of borrowing from here and there and blending it all together in a composite. Rather, there’s a stream of events, each of which is an experiment. In the end all these projects are a kind of experiment. My own work tests the realm of possibilities. It never stays at the same point.

Interview with Alvin Boyarsky - Part IV

AB: It’s very interesting that you don’t use the word “space” at all.

ZH: I always think of a given space – I mean “space” in a broad sense, because you can never perceive small spaces. If you use the term “space,” as in public space, you mean a sort of overall concept, like air. You can never perceive the whole only if it’s an open space and not on the ground.

AB: But you do use the word “energy” quite a lot. It signals a kind of empathy, the narrow and wide and low. In the 1930’s a lot of people, particularly Italians, began to write about the space of architecture as being continuous. They would reverse the plan and make models of the space of a building.

ZH: That’s what’s interesting about Niemeyer’s work. He spoke to us about the lightness of the structure, how you do things to free certain zones. In the case of Mies’s New National Gallery (Berlin 1962-68) you have an empty space – a place you go to but shouldn’t occupy, like a public room. When I go to places like that, I find it staggering that the occupants don’t understand this viewing condition. Take the Mies show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (Mies in Berlin, 1986). The exhibition organizers didn’t understand that if you have a Mies show, you have to express something of what he taught you. You can’t create a space as Mies would have done; that’s too difficult to do. But you have to try to give back something, and they couldn’t do it.

AB: Unfortunately, I missed that exhibition. What are you working on now, Zaha?

ZH: Right now, my interest is the given ground condition, which has been one of the weakest aspects of modern architecture. The ground condition was never properly resolved, except in New York, where you see lobbies and various ground-floor spaces that resolve the problem, not in a conservative but in a modern way. If you look at all the postwar housing, the CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) housing, Brasília – it all suffers from this problem of the ground.

Interview with Alvin Boyarsky - Part V

ZH: The ground could be anywhere, but once you establish a ground, you have to operate on it, especially in an urban situation. I think Brasília (for which Niemeyer was chief architect) operates on two levels. The wings of the plane suffer from the nonresolution on the ground. The reason that the central government buildings operate better than the residential housing on the wings is that they have a ground condition.

They have a lobby and two entrances, a grand entrance and a secondary entrance, which implies a datum that is private and operates in all the buildings on the first floor. There is a second datum on the ground and a third below ground. I’m not sure how intentional these things were; they were never declared, and on the wings - the housing -  there is this notion that the ground is free. The architecture leaves out the life of the ground.

AB: A small piece of one of the wings of Brasília was landscaped by Burle Marx. It doesn’t have the kind of life that you’re speaking about, but it does have a kind of articulation. It’s the only part of the housing in Brasília that I could feel was reasonable.

ZH: I don’t think the wings operate well, and that is the problem with Brasília. If they want to resolve the problem of Brasília, they should begin with this.

AB: But Brasília is interesting as a plan for something. One can see it growing as a sequence of analyses that develops into a thesis. You work in a similar way, with a parallel series of sketches and plans that grow increasingly more intense. But first you need to identify the problem you’re trying to resolve. Where do you start? You spoke of Mies. It starts with painting, doesn’t it?

ZH: Let me explain how I developed Malevich’s Tektonik (London, 1976–77). There were two layers. First was the program that I developed almost intuitively. A year later I did the plans, but I didn’t like them. That’s when I started the shipwreck. The shipwreck was very important, because it’s my connection to Rem Koolhaas. I did it totally intuitively because I had a nightclub in the Malevich, which was a shipwreck. Rem came to my jury - he wasn’t there the first time - and he said, “How odd, I’m also working on a shipwreck.” It wasn’t designed or published at the time; he was still working on it.