Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance

Through archival drawings, models, digital renders, costume designs, photographs and film, it presents performance not as an adjunct to architecture, but as another medium through which Hadid’s ideas were realised.

Among the generation of architects associated with deconstructivism, Hadid stood out for the breadth of her multidisciplinary projects, returning repeatedly to dance and music. The exhibition follows this trajectory over twenty-five years and five international projects. In d1. (1989), Rosemary Butcher’s choreography unfolded across a drawn floor, turning a site plan into a score for movement. The Music Video Pavilion (1990) shifted attention from movement to spectatorship, examining how architecture could frame ways of seeing and being seen. At a time when Hadid was yet to complete a permanent building, these projects were significant opportunities for her urban interventions to be made manifest.

By the turn of the millennium, Hadid’s interest in fluid surfaces and the increasing importance of the digital found expression in the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife world tour (1999–2000) and Frédéric Flamand’s contemporary ballet, Metapolis (1999–2000). In both, the conventional static stage was usurped by constantly evolving multimedia environments in which architecture itself performed. Finally, Così fan tutte (2014) for the Los Angeles Philharmonic combined the innovative curves of Hadid’s late architecture with Hussein Chalayan’s transformable costume designs to great dramaturgical effect.

These collaborations with choreographers, musicians, fashion designers, filmmakers and production specialists offer insights into Hadid’s creative influences and the wider cultural shifts that shaped her work. They span the interdisciplinary ideals of the twentieth-century avant-garde, particularly those of Kazimir Malevich, through to the transition from analogue drawing to digital design in Hadid’s office, the pervading impact of popular culture, and the opportunities and uncertainties of an increasingly networked world. Developed alongside major building commissions and independently of them, these designs show a continuous exchange between architecture and performance in which each informed the other.

Acknowledgements

Curator
Catherine Howe

Guest Curator
Libby Sellers

Project Team
Charlotte Allan, Serena Lawrance, Lydia Powell, Phil Sofer, Wilson Yau, supported by Jihane Dyer, Francesco Fiammenghi, Ajeng Hendriati and Jennifer Hicks

Graphic Design
Experimental Jetset

With thanks to
Rebecca Ash, Michele Beacham, Bas Beets, Becker Brown, Hussein Chalayan, Wayne Chisnall, Oliver Domeisen, Herman van Doorn, Frédéric Flamand, David Gomersall, Saffet Kaya Bekiroglu, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Ian MacNeil, Ben van der Meer, Graham Modlen, Clare Molloy, National Resource Centre for Dance (University of Surrey), Omni, Out of the Blue Fabrications Ltd. Technicians, Pet Shop Boys, Ludovica Riccardi, Helen Roberts, Stefanie Sachsenmaier, Susann Schweizer, Andy Short, Nicky Smerin, Spenic Limited, Niek Verdonk, Caroline Voet, Warner Music UK Ltd, Watch TV, Neil Webster, Gesa Werner, Sam Williams, Zaha Hadid Design.