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November 13, 2007
Zaha Hadid and Architecture of the Mind
Zaha Hadid designs a funicular. An architecture reviewer for Times Online:
Modern computer-aided design – here car-design programmes – mean that ever more complex curves can be designed. Every inch of Nordpark’s stations drip and curl in a different direction. The greatest challenge of all, though, is actually creating in three real dimensions the seamless, airbrushed, digital skin in Hadid’s imagination. On a steel bone structure are hung moulded, white toughened glass panels, each one unique. You can see the ultimate object of Hadid’s gaze: the uninterrupted skin of an aerodynamic plane, boat or car.
She isn’t there yet. The stations are shiny, liquid, but get too close and the imperfections glower, like the first scratch on an iPod, a stain on an all-white carpet. The panels are warped with unintended curves unavoidable in such massive, curved glass sheets, so that where they meet each other ugly junctions clash. Such is the price of progress.
Progress. Hmm.
But what about how much worse it will look after a few years?
This architecture of the mind, conceptual art we're forced to live in, is that it ages especially poorly. Imagine these 'ugly junctions' after the funicular has been running for a few years, jostling, shaking, and generally loosening up fitted panels - and the expense of replacing those unique glass panels when they have problems!
Oh, well - Innsbruck gets another brief monument, and it is a gorgeous piece of sculpture.
I blogged about the Hadid show at the Guggenheim in 2006. I would like to see a building or 3 in real life (is there any possibility that MAXXI will open while I'm in Rome?) before I'm certain about the work.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at November 13, 2007 6:36 AM