Zaha Hadid: Artists Space - New York - contemporary architect's graphic oeuvre

Architects who skirt the line between art and architecture generally insist upon having things both ways: Artists (and art critics) are suppos to recognize them as architects and allow them certain liberties, while architects (and architectural critics) must do the same, upon opposite grounds. The difference between a advantageous architectural rendering and a bad watercolor ofttimes ends up a question of semantics. That said, Zaha Hadid is individual contemporary architect whose graphic oeuvre be entitled tos to be called an artistic achievement.

Hadid's graphic mode of expression is actually fairly straightforward, in the faculty of perception that its elements have remained remarkably consistent above the course of a twenty-five-year career. The basic constitutings are the plane and the vector. The drawings nurse to be white line oil a black or dark background, and color usually defines and is confined within an implied surface. In almost all of Hadid's drawings the act of constructing and deconstructing perspective becomes the equivalent of constructing and deconstructing architecture. While this accommodate withs the drawings a tremendous dynamism and motion it obscures their tectonic intent; it's difficult to imagine exactly what her finished buildings might direct the eye like.

This is no longer an academic matter. Although repeatedly thought of as a "paper architect," Hadid has been awarded a number of significant architectural commissions above the past five years, which are now coming to fruition. The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati has freshly opened to the public, her small exhibition pavilion in Weil am Rhein, Germany, is thorough the enormous Wolfsburg Science Center alSO in Germany, is generally under construction, and her design fur the Center for Contemporary Art of the XXI hundred in Rome is scheduled to be out and out by 2005. Drawings and animations elaborating all these shoot forwards and more were on view at Artists Space last summer

The exhibition, designed by the agency of Hadid's office in London, was thick and difficult. Light panels and boards, overspreaded with drawings and hanging from the ceiling, make an incision in through the space at oblique angles to create a maze of images and throws Two screens at the periphery showed continuous video, mainly computer animation, related to new projects. Although there were many hand-rendered images upon display, Hadid has clearly embraced the digital revolution in architecture, and it is no small achievement to have luckily translated her unique graphic approach into three-dimensional computer graphics. upon the other hand, perhaps she was predisposed to it--the plane, the vector, and the virtual camera are the fundamental uncompounded bodys of most modeling software.

The animation work (done in collaboration with Neutral, a British video-production team) was impressive, despite the requisite Music for Airports--style unmutilated track. It was instructive to diocese a Hadid drawing of a shoot forward like the Price Tower Arts Center (planned around the base of Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Oklahoma) generate itself like a bastard Mandelbrot fractal in the implied space of the projection. Although the animation does not impart a faculty of perception of how the structure might appear in daylight or what it's made of--these things remain mysterious, presumably, until the buildings arc finished it does make clear Hadid's interest in move both through space and of the architecture itself. It's no surprise that her latest shoot forward yet another satellite Guggenheim (this individual in Taichung, Taiwan), is planned to have large moving sections that will, presumably, allow the building to reconfigure itself for different events

Clearly, it's crunch time for Hadid. If her buildings live up to the promise of her drawings, she'll find herself in a true unusual position. Architects who have luckily negotiated the transition from avant-gardist bomb thrower to master builder (Renzo Piano is one) are hardly any and far between.

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