Zaha Hadid: from sketch to substance
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Hadid: designing for twenty years before anything was built
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Creating a portable stage set has been a creative challenge for world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid, used to planning subtantial buildings.
For "Desire," a contemporary opera about the Greek god Orpheus, Austrian theatergoers were joined by architectural fans more interested in Hadid's set than the singing.
"Designing a set is quite different to doing something else because there is another dynamic, the dynamic of the audience, and there is a dynamic of the sound," Hadid told CNN.
"Its...technology is different and...you have to think about material. What kind of material do you use? How this can move very easily and how you pack and unpack and assemble it very easily."
Her usual commissions are more permanent, a lasting monument to her talent.
Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid's radical edge first came to light in the 70s through her artwork of her architectural designs.
"If I go back, 20, 25 years ago, everybody's interpretation of architecture was not very ambitious. They thought we had reached the point of no return."
But even in the nineties, after winning ten competitions, none of Hadid's sketches had made it off the drawing board.
"People were so used to seeing the drawings and anyway thought the drawings are so amazing you can never do a building to match the...drawings."
One that did make it beyond paper was the Vitra Fire Station in Switzerland. Finished in 1993, it was one of Hadid's first – and most celebrated – built works.
More commissions followed, including temporary installations, as seen in the Guggenheim Museum in Tokyo, and a tram station in Strasbourg.
Hadid is working on a various projects now, such as the BMW plant in Leipzig and a contemporary art center in Cincinnati.
She is not limiting herself with future projects, saying: "If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography you are able to do that -- they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella."
