Architecture · Profile
ZAHAHADID
A visionary architect, a building that refused to behave—and Cincinnati at the moment architecture became the event.
Selected excerptsA visionary architect, a building that refused to behave—and Cincinnati at the moment architecture became the event.
Selected excerptsZaha Hadid arrived with an entourage, wearing a white silk coat, black miniskirt and Manolo Blahnik sandals with Day-Glo green straps.
By 9:30 p.m., nearly 5,000 people had mobbed Hadid’s glass-and-concrete monument to contemporary art. Men with martinis dangled from behind burgundy velvet ropes; women in saris and American Indian headdresses worked the crowd. The building was no backdrop. It was the event.
The building begins before the building: lines collide, planes slip, and space becomes movement.
Study for the Contemporary Arts Center · image courtesy Contemporary Arts Center / Zaha Hadid ArchitectsFloor, wall and stair refuse to stay in their assigned roles. The visitor is pulled upward through a sequence of compressed and open spaces.
Hadid’s new building is in tune with the times, as is the architect herself. An imposing woman who dresses in signature black, she was born in Baghdad, educated in Beirut and established her own firm in London. She is a hands-on modernist with a potent combination of creativity and pragmatism. Her geometric language, perhaps a holdover from her studies in mathematics, is distinctive and thrilling. She is a teacher, an artist and a plucky individualist with plenty of opinions.
“Architecture is about well-being and about shelter,” Hadid said. “You have to feel good in a space, even if it is a small space. It doesn’t really matter. Luxury is the quality of space and it is an important component of modern existence. Architecture changes our lives.”
Her ideas about public space were equally direct. “Our daily routines are very different than they were in the 19th century in Europe or the 18th century in America. The position of public space has changed over the years from one central space as it is in Italy to the variety we have today. Therefore architects have to reflect on the way we handle space and how that space can invigorate us or challenge us or excite us or make us comfortable.”
Hadid wanted the Rosenthal Center to do exactly that. “The new center should reflect the variety of contemporary art in the way the building articulates its settings and spaces. Instead of your seeing the sanctified object fixed in its niche, multiple perceptions and distant views create a richer, more perplexing but exciting experience, taking your body through a journey of compression, release and reflection.”
She believed the building could change expectations in Cincinnati, too. “It is downtown and central to the city so people who are just walking around can go in and have a coffee downstairs or hang around the lobby or go upstairs to quickly see a show. It is very accessible.”
At the opening, those ideas became physical.
Behind a table of DJs, a never-ending stream of people climbed the sleek black stairs zigzagging through the building’s six floors. So even was their pacing that they seemed to be moving on an escalator. “I love the building, and I love what it means for Cincinnati,” said Jeanne Golliher of North Avondale. “It means a new beginning for the city. I’m sick of people putting us down. We are so not dead.”
Upstairs, visitors plunged into Monica Bonvicini’s simulated tropical storm, where winds reached 75 miles per hour. “There goes $80,” said Katja Lundgren of Clifton, referring to her hair.
Cincinnati art dealer Carl Solway called the show “incredibly ambitious and successful,” marveling that curator Thom Collins had assembled an exhibition that worked so well in a space he had never experienced.
Nearby, Jason Owen of Covington studied the building’s angles and shapes. “Everything opens up and flows,” he said. “The building is as much art as the art inside. I think it’s gorgeous and provocative.”
The result was the first American museum designed by Hadid: a building of shifting planes, vertiginous stairs and an “urban carpet” that draws the city from the sidewalk into the galleries.