Zaha Hadid was the most original architect of her generation, whose work emerged from a new synthesis of Modernism she experienced while a student at the Architectural Association School in the late 1970s. Influenced by her tutors, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, she soon developed her own interpretation of an alternate modern tradition based on the Suprematist and Constructivist traditions- highly visible in art, but almost entirely unrealised in architecture. Winning numerous architectural competitions in the 1980s, starting with the Peak club in Hong Kong (1983), her exhilarating drawings and large-scale paintings were inspiring and exciting. But while a few small projects were realised, her work was largely developed in graphic and theoretical terms until the late 1990s. The translation of her work into large-scale built form, including the London Olympic Aquatics Centre and BMW in Munich, has not been without its problems, but it may be the Museum of the 21st century in Rome- MAXXI- is the most successful in realising the dynamic spaces that her early designs represented.
She spoke of the building as a field, of the flows and pathways that create this fluid continuity of spaces: that the building was not a static enclosure, but a temporary crystallisation of forces. Surely an appropriate vehicle for the presentation of contemporary art, and despite what some have said, on my recent (and first) visit it seemed to work well as a place to show art, but also as a dynamic experience of space.
