Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

In person

Text Sheridan Becker

Image Steve Double

Zaha Hadid

One of the brightest stars in the world of architecture, Zaha Hadid is no stranger to making headlines with her controversial views and jaw-dropping structures. With Rome’s MAXXI contemporary art museum completed and soon to open to the public, Hadid has struck gold again. She talks to b.there! about what inspires her and where to go in Antwerp

My inspiration comes from observation: of the site, of nature, of people moving in the city.

It’s always about how you move people through a space, and how they use it. In all our work, we investigate and research the landscape, topography and circulation of the site. Then we bring into our design certain lines of visual connections with the local environment, and this helps to embed the design into its surroundings. So each design has a very strong relationship with its unique context.

One of my favourite places to visit is Moscow.

Moscow is a spectacular city. The scales are double or triple the size of any other city. If you go up to the Lenin Hills, you can look down on the city and see that those seven Stalinist skyscrapers were based on towers in the Kremlin, but on a much larger scale.

Currently we have over 40 architectural projects around the world.

And we are working on about 20 product designs that include jewellery, furniture and fashion projects. Over the next 12 months, several of our projects will be completed. The MAXXI: National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome; a skyscraper in Marseille. And our design for the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics will be completed next year.

We also won the Port House in Antwerp competition at the beginning of 2009.

It’s a very exciting project. We have taken an existing building and added another to it, changing its programme, allowing it to be reused. I think this is a very exacting design challenge, adding another layer to the existing fabric of the port and city. The Port House project coincides with our interest in the fractural, algorithmic geometry we have been researching for several years. This is evident in the faceted windows that reflect light from the harbour during the day, yet allow the building to offer a completely different presence at night. By adding another layer to the city, we have been able to create a new and exciting urban situation that re-engages the building with the city’s urban fabric, while the faceted windows reference Antwerp’s gem industry and make the most of the spectacular light reflected off the water.

I’ve discovered that teaching is a learning experience for me.

I teach at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. It’s not only about what I know, but it’s also very interesting for me to hear what my students know too. It’s reciprocal. Several of the people who work in our office were previously my students. You never know what can come out of the students’ work when they’re given an opportunity. They may be scared at first – not of me, of course! – but they just need to be given confidence to do their best, with a degree of freedom. I think that’s why people like to work in our office – their only obligation is to work hard and do their best. They feel they’re part of the process. You need to let people grow, and it’s exciting to see them and their work mature.

I’d love to build a whole city quarter.

To use all I have learnt about creating public spaces, as well as indoor and outdoor areas on a grand scale. We have learnt to apply our new architecture techniques to urbanism. As we’ve done in our buildings, where elements fit together to form a continuum, we have begun to apply this knowledge and research to entire cities. We can develop a whole field of buildings, each one different but logically connected to the next. With these techniques, we can do something radically different to what we saw at the beginning of the century, when buildings were oriented in disconnecting chaos.

We love using concrete in our buildings.

It is so fluid and continuous and allows us to pursue structurally ambitious projects with longer spans and cantilevers. I think the construction industry is very much capable and geared up to what we are doing. In Rome our MAXXI: National Museum of 21st Century Arts is due to be fully open to the public this spring. It is really pushing the boundaries of concrete technology and this advancement has allowed us to create the most beautiful, 12m high, 50m long concrete walls – cast in a single elegant span – with the highest surface quality.

Architecture is a vehicle through which I think you can address certain important social issues.

One of the greatest challenges of 21st -century contemporary architecture is the fundamental restructuring away from the concept of architecture as repetitive orthogonal blocks of industrial 20th -century society, towards a digital society of flexible specialisation that is then reflected in a much more fluid architecture for the 21st century.

Zaha’s Belgium

She loves a bit of Dries and Margiela

Best city

At the moment, Antwerp – our project for the new headquarters of the Port Authority is a seminal design for our office.

Best restaurant

I like the Pomphuis (Siberiastraat, tel. , www.hetpomphuis.be). It is very near our new project in Antwerp’s port.

Best shopping

I admire the clothing designers Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester

Best museum The Museum of Contemporary Art

(32 Leuvenstraat, muhka. be) in Antwerp is brilliant.

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