Parametrics

The new Basque Health Department headquarters is located at the last site that still remained unbuilt on the administrative and Business Center of Bilbao. Up to now, the institution was suffering the spread of its staff in several buildings, hardly recognizable by citizens, away from each other and uncomfortable for both users and technical services. The aim of the new building is bringing together staff in a recognizable place, in order to increase the efficiency of the service and identify easily the corporation. The project at the same time involves both economic and property profits. The site is located in the crossroad of two important streets of the Ensanche, designed in 1862. The restrictive city rules compel to repeat the shape o... More

The London Shooting Venue will accommodate the events in 10, 25 and 50 m Sport Shooting at the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in the southeast London district of Woolwich. The first Gold Medal of the London Olympic Games will be awarded at the venue for Women’s 10 m Air Pistol on the 28th July 2012. After the event the three temporary and mobile buildings will be dismantled and it is planned to rebuild them in Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Shooting is a sport in which the results and progress of the competition are hardly visible to the eye of the spectator. The design of the shooting venue was driven by the desire to evoke an experience of flow and precision inherent in the shooting sport through the dynamically curving sp... More

The location of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at the northern edge of the Michigan State University campus is influenced by a set of movements along and across it. The vital street life on the northern side of Grand River Avenue and the historic heart of the university campus at the south side generate a network of path and visual connections, some of them part of the current footpath layout, others as shortcuts between the city and the campus side of Grand River Avenue. This highly frequented interface between city and campus gets an additional layer by the traffic along Grand River Avenue in east-west-direction, the main road of East Lansing and the main approach street to the campus entrances east and west of the site. The bu... More

Our first completed bridge project, the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion is one of few in the world to merge two building typologies, combining engineering infrastructure with architectural elements. It is built diagonally over the River Ebro, smoothly and continuously connecting the main boulevard in the Delicias Intermodal Station to the Expo site, passing over a small isle. With a surface area of approximately 6,500 metres and a length of 280 metres, the Bridge Pavilion is the only inhabited bridge in Spain constituting the most daring building and the biggest construction challenge of the entire Expo, with its 68.5 metre foundations the deepest ever built in the country. The structure’s intersecting ‘pods’ allow its weight to be distributed acr... More

19-Dec-2017 Since December 2007, over 4.5 million passengers have made more than 8 million journeys on the funicular railway between the centre of Innsbruck up the Nordkette mountain to Hungerburg. In 2017 alone, over 600,000 passengers made 2.1 million journeys on the railway and used its four stations designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). The Hungerburg funicular (Hungerburgbahn) is part of Innsbruck’s Nordpark Cable Railway (Nordkettenbahnen) and begins at the Congress underground station in the centre of the city. Trains stop at Lowenhaus Station before crossing the bridge over the River Inn, then climbing to Alpenzoo Station and on to Hungerburg where passengers can continue their journey on the Seegrube and Hafelekar cable... More

As part of the former Soviet Union, the urbanism and architecture of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on the Western coast of the Caspian Sea, was heavily influenced by the planning of that era. Since its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan has invested heavily in modernising and developing Baku’s infrastructure and architecture, departing from its legacy of normative Soviet Modernism. Zaha Hadid Architects was appointed as design architects of the Heydar Aliyev Center following a competition in 2007. The Center, designed to become the primary building for the nation’s cultural programs, breaks from the rigid and often monumental Soviet architecture that is so prevalent in Baku, aspiring instead to express the sensibilities of Azeri culture and... More

Overlooking the Pearl River the Guangzhou Opera House is at the heart of Guangzhou’s cultural sites development. Adopting state of the art technology in its design and construction it will be a lasting monument to the New Millennium, confirming Guangzhou as one of Asia’s cultural centres. Its unique twin boulder design will enhance urban function by opening access to the riverside and dock areas and creating a new dialogue with the emerging new town. More

The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a collaboration between renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond. The Orbit engages with a new language of ‘tower’. Instead of going up, in a straight line, their creation is an ‘orbit’ - a continuous loop that goes around and comes back on itself. Balmond has described the ArcelorMittal Orbit as a “narrative in space” that “stretches the language of the icon.” Height: 114.5m Material: 1,500 tonnes of steel (57% recycled), 35,000 bolts and 19,000 litres of red RAL 3003 paint. Client: ArcelorMittal & Greater London Authority Location: London, U.K. Completion: May 2012 Program: Public Art Sculpture The ArcelorMittal Orbit is the tallest sculpture in the UK. It can receive up to 770 visitors per hou... More

The project brief called for a new boutique office and the reconstruction of a pair of heritage-listed shophouses. WOHA was commissioned only after their demolition to reconstruct the shopfront (up to 7.5m depth) in accordance with Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority's conservation and planning guidelines, and to design an entirely new, contemporary rear wing. As the original floor levels with their low ceiling heights were retained, the front end of the shophouses was deemed more suitable for meeting rooms, while the service end accommodated a mechanised carpark. The idea was to strategically lift up the open plan offices within the upper 4 floors where the floor plate size is maximised, higher headroom is gained, better views ar... More

Located in Suzhou Industrial Park, the Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University occupies a beautiful environment where there is a harmonious coexistence of the city’s rich cultural traditions and its rapid economic development. Aedas’ design for its Administration Information Building was inspired by the famous Taihu stone unearthed around the Suzhou city. Taihu stones are sometimes referred as scholar’s stones, as they are much appreciated by Chinese scholars. They are a kind of limestone exposed to long term wave erosion, resulting in pores and holes all over the stone. Peculiar and precipitous in appearance, the stones are of high ornamental value and have been a garden designers’ favourite since the ancient time. The porous nature of... More

Designed by mumbai-based firm sameeppadora and associates, the 'indigo deli', a delicatessen and dine-in restaurant transforms a mundane retail space within the palladium mall in mumbai, india. Denying the rigid geometries of the mall context, an undulating and interlocking structure swoops above the tables within the dining area. Combining the physicality of a dome and surface, the hybrid form employs the structural strengths of both applications. The wooden armature is formed with rough textured plywood, contrasting the sleek copper lighting fixtures and built in details. The design-build project began as a parametric exploration during the design process. Manufacturing of the unique sections began with CNC routing and systematic... More

"Metropol Parasol”, the Redevelopment of the Plaza de la Encarnacíon in Seville, designed by J.MAYER.H architects, becomes the new icon for Seville, – a place of identification and to articulate Seville’s role as one of the world’s most fascinating cultural destinations. “Metropol Parasol” explores the potential of the Plaza de la Encarnacion to become the new contemporary urban centre. Its role as a unique urban space within the dense fabric of the medieval inner city of Seville allows for a great variety of activities such as memory, leisure and commerce. A highly developed infrastructure helps to activate the square, making it an attractive destination for tourists and locals alike. The “... More

The World Horticultural Expo has become insti­gator and hub for the redevelopment of a large area between the air­port and the centre of Xi’an. The ancient capital of the Qin Dynasty city, home of the Terracotta Army is today a major business centre for the vast interior of the Chinese mainland. Plasma Studio, in collaboration with Ground­Lab, won this international com­petition with a radical self-sustain­able vision. The project comprises of a 5000m2 Creativity Pavilion, a 4000m2 Greenhouse and a 3500m2 pedestrian bridge set in a 37 ha landscape. The Expo opened in 2011 to approximately 15 Mio visitors. Accomodating and channeling the given flows of visitors whilst offering them choices and variety, Flowing Gardens unfolds into many sinuo... More

The Galaxy SOHO project in central Beijing for SOHO China is a 330 000m2 office, retail and entertainment complex that will become an integral part of the living city, inspired by the grand scale of Beijing. Its architecture is a composition of five continuous, flowing volumes that are set apart, fused or linked by stretched bridges. These volumes adapt to each other in all directions, generating a panoramic architecture without corners or abrupt transitions that break the fluidity of its formal composition. The great interior courts of the project are a reflection of traditional Chinese architecture where courtyards create an internal world of continuous open spaces. Here, the architecture is no longer composed of rigid blocks, but inst... More