Further on from Post Modernism - Zaha Hadid, The Parametric Style

Zaha Hadid, love her or hate her, you have to give the woman some credits since she was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Price and is arguably one of the most influential architect of today. But what is the architecture of today? What is the style of the future? I believed that most of us would recognize the flowing, organic buildings of Zaha Hadid but few would be able to label the style in which many claimed to be the style of today’s architecture, the “Parametric” style. Known as “the great new style after modernism”, parametric style is all about “articulation” along with the idea that society is made up of differences, different forces influences us in different ways, shaped us into different forms and therefore sparks different reactions. It is a also a reaction to oppose the mass produced idea of “Fordism”, which leads on to the word “Post-Fordism” which Zaha’s partner, Patric Schumacher uses to describe the style. Despite the almost random “freeform” of Zaha’s buildings, the different curves represented the different forces of society and as you travel through her buildings, these forces changed, shaping/ manipulating us as we moved through it. The key to achieve these almost impossible forms is the use of the computer program to generate formulas and calculate to the exact pieces that will, when constructed together, create that free form, flowing buildings. Thus, this represent a contradiction, the forms of Zaha buildings might seems flowing and free, because it was all about the differences in each building that in a whole, flow together in harmony, just like the society that made up of differences but as a whole operates as one. Yet, when it comes to the way her buildings are to be built, in involved one of the most complicated, precise and laborious process as each piece of her buildings are unique and different, meaning that if one piece doesn’t exactly followed that pattern, in other word, if that piece does not come as perfect as planned, the whole system will fail and a building will not be complete. To just give you a better idea of how notoriously laborious the creation of Zaha’s buildings are, once an engineer has to make 7000 sections of a particular building in the order to understand the structure because it is indeed, different at 7000 points of the building.

Master Plan of Singapore - each building is different yet part of a flow.

As to my response whether, do I like this style or not, the answer is quite ambiguous. I appreciated her contribution to the architectural world; she has really brought the parametric into the light, and made it quite well known. I like the flow and the free form of her buildings since it has never been done in the past before, However, I felt that the complexity involved in the creation of her buildings works against her as it sparks the question; Do we really need to do this after all? Since her curves and free forms does not contributes to the main functions of the building after all, do we really need to go through all of this troubles in the order to get the aesthetics and the meaning of the building just right? Perhaps, good architecture is not only about inventive, exciting forms but also more importantly, the experience of the building and how it uses specific context of the site, the environment and the habitants to create an “experience”. Nevertheless, like I said before, it is non-arguable that Zaha has became such an influential part of today’s architecture and thus, deserves all of the credits she received.