Irish Prime Minister’s Residence, Overall Isometric Plan (1980) formed part of Zaha Hadid’s competition entry for the Taoiseach’s (Prime Minister) new residence and state guest house in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland. Although unsuccessful, the competition entry marked Hadid’s establishment of her eponymous office, and the first time she had entered an architectural competition under her own name.
Throughout the 1980s, Hadid used abstract paintings depicting exploded interiors, buildings and cityscapes to explore the possibilities of a site or programme: ‘We decided that we were going to look at these compositions as a way of organising space’. The painting depicts the connection between the spatial and volumetric components of the project, and envisioned the domestic quarters being attached to the representational rooms through a walkway, whereas the guest house would sit in an enclosed garden. For Hadid, it was ‘truly about taking a drawing apart, not taking the building apart, but taking the actual drawing apart’.
