Zaha Hadid Architects’ “Vertical Urbanism” is a virtual exhibition at the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI) Gallery and highlights ZHA’s innovative architectural breakthroughs by drawings, computer-generated visualizations, architectural models, video projections, and virtual reality experiences. It is an interactive online exhibition that provides an immersive environment for visitors to gain a perspective on the firm’s early projects as the “Essence of Design” program of HKDI. To explore the exhibition click here.
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As Zaha had brought a new sense of energy to architecture, the exhibition intended to demonstrate the ongoing research and approach the ZHA firm created sustainable and vibrant community-oriented spaces within densely populated urban areas. Zaha Hadid Architects’ groundbreaking work worldwide retains Hadid’s inquisitive spirit on which she built her career.
Through relationships with worldwide museums, design organizations, and designers, HKDI is dedicated to advancing design education and enabling discourse among industry professionals, students, and curators. The exhibition is mainly focused on three thematic aspects of the studio’s significant projects in the region, the Computation & Design research group (ZHA CODE) and the studio’s tower designs.
ZHA CODE is a collaboration between ZHA and some of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions to work on robots, artificial intelligence, and digital fabrication advancements. ZHA CODE integrates design and cutting-edge construction techniques to provide sustainable buildings that consume the least energy and materials during construction and operation.
The exhibition addresses ZHA’s immersive vertical architecture innovations extending beyond the existing paradigm of tower design to enrich urbanism in the twenty-first century, using a selection of the studio’s notable tower projects from across the world. The exhibition opens with the Peak Club (1982-1983), a remarkable work by Zaha. Forming a horizontal cluster of beams with a huge void space between the geological intervention, it was among Zaha’s crowning projects, though never built.
Patrik Schumacher, Principal of ZHA, explains the exhibition’s curatorial direction and highlights the demand for tower typology to find new life in core metropolitan areas. These highly dense structures will be serving as mixed-use Buildings where many life processes interact. According to Patrik, the tower appears to be stuck in a bygone Fordist paradigm of segmenting and serial repetition. This bygone era’s last bastion is the tower typology. The moment has come to confront the traditional tower typology and demand that it engages in Fordism’s social transition to Post-Fordism.
Photos courtesy of Hong Kong Design Institute
