As well as landmark buildings for performance and opera, Zaha Hadid also designed for the stage. This model is a spatial sequence study for the Pet Shop Boys, who invited Hadid to create the stage set for their 1999-2000 Nightlife World Tour. For singer Neil Tennant, Hadid’s dynamic architecture was a perfect fit for the artists’ cutting-edge, collaborative performances. Of her buildings, he told The Guardian: ‘I can just imagine standing on the edge of one with the wind machine on and a big coat fluttering in the breeze.’
The tour presented an architectural challenge: to design a set suitable for a diverse roster of venues around the world. Hadid’s response was a modular and morphing scenography that contained and directed the choreography, adding a further ‘temporal layer’ to the narrative of the concert.
While this model presents a scenario of three connecting parts, its fragmentary planes and forms were ultimately developed into a continuous, luminous surface that could open up, rotate and contract. As a triangulation of floor, podium and backdrop, the installation worked together with lighting and projections to form a unique landscape for performance that fused music, action and architecture into a spectacular whole.
