There is a fury of hype surrounding Zaha Hadid at the moment. Indeed she is the architect of the moment with major commissions, recently completed, under consideration or construction in Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Cincinnati, Innsbruck, Leipzig, Rome, Salerno, Singapore, Strasbourg, Tokyo, Weil am Rhein and Wolfsburg. And these are not by any means run-of-the-mill commissions, they are in fact exciting designs for significant buildings and major pieces of urban infrastructure. Yet, there has been no recent developments in Hadid's oeuvre to account for this recent rise to prominence. It is the same techniques that Hadid flexed in the first, very conceptual project that brought her prominence, the winning competition entry for the Hong Kong Peak Competition in 1983, that she continues to exploit with her recent built commissions.

Written descriptions of these projects from Hadid's office read more like instructions for navigating a piece of landscape, and indeed the word "landscape" frequently appears as a metaphor for the undulating, collapsing, crashing built structures. However, Hadid's buildings do not so much co-opt or envelope the landscape as much as they supersede it. Often inhabiting tough urban environments these structures reform their sites so as to emerge as their own Palaeolithic territories. That they are buildings is a function of their programs; a magnetic field is a car park in Terminus Hoenheim-Nord and a gently rising bluff is the foyer of the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art. Note that these are not whimsical metaphors, they appear to be truly geological formations that have a programmatic function. The geological conceit is taken almost to its absurd conclusion in the names chosen for Hadid's recently developed furniture series manufactured by Sawaya and Moroni in Milan; a pair of sofas, Glacier and Moraine and accompanying tables, Stalactite and Stalagmite.

The most exciting exploration of this strategy will surely be its logical conclusion in the creation of a bespoke geography in the Science Hub Masterplan in Singapore. A billion dollar project which will cover 200 hectares and take 20 years to build. It will also provide Hadid with the opportunity to truly explore the range of her approach. The risk that this could easily become another super office-park even in a city that does bland better than the Paris does sexy is slim.

Hadid believes that her scheme's unifying geography will ensure that the whole is read as such, and that the overall tectonics will tie together disparate elements and individual components. By simultaneously developing the geography and the programmatic infrastructure, one can imagine that this could create an instant imitation of the organic and cohesive medieval European cities that were developed over hundreds of years around an in situ geography. Hadid further claims that the "natural" geometry of her scheme has an inherent advantage over traditional "Platonic" geometry (squares, circles, strict axes...) which is too easily corrupted by later adaptations. Recently awarded the gong of Commander of the British Empire, Hadid has yet to achieve a major commission in the UK. Perhaps a nostalgia for Platonic geometry is keeping us from embracing what seems to be becoming a groundswell in the rest of the world.

Leo Ryan
February 2003