File:Baden-Württemberg Weil am Rhein Vitra Fire station 01.jpg|
Vitra Fire Station in
Weil am Rhein (1993). Hadid's first building complex. File:12-06-05-innsbruck-by-ralfr-189.jpg|
Bergisel Ski Jump in
Innsbruck (2002) File:Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 2019.jpg|
Contemporary Arts Center in
Cincinnati, Ohio, US (2003) File:Donaukanal Zahahadidhäuser.JPG|Spittelau Viaducts Housing Project in
Vienna (2005) File:Phaeno Science Center.jpg|
Phaeno Science Center in
Wolfsburg (2005) File:BMW Leipzig.JPG|Administration building of
BMW Factory in
Leipzig (2005) File:Ordrupgaard Museum extension.jpg|Extension of
Ordrupgaard Museum in
Copenhagen (2005)
Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany (1991–1993) One of her first clients was
Rolf Fehlbaum, the president-director general of the Swiss furniture firm
Vitra, and later, from 2004 to 2010, a member of the jury for the prestigious
Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1989, Fehlbaum had invited
Frank Gehry, then little-known, to build a design museum at the Vitra factory in
Weil-am-Rhein. In 1993, he invited Hadid to design a small fire station for the factory. Her design, made of raw concrete and glass, was a sculptural work composed of sharp diagonal forms colliding together in the centre. The design plans appeared in architecture magazines before construction. When completed, it only served as a fire station for a short period of time, as Weil am Rhein soon opened their own fire station. It became an exhibit space instead, and is now on display with the works of Gehry and other well-known architects. It was the launching pad of her architectural career.
Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria (1999–2002) Hadid designed a public housing estate in Berlin (1986–1993) and organised an exhibition, "The Great Utopia" (1992), at the
Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her next major project was a ski jump at Bergisel, in
Innsbruck Austria. The old ski jump, built in 1926, had been used in the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. The new structure was to contain not only a ski jump, but also a cafe with 150 seats offering a 360-degree view of the mountains. Hadid had to fight against traditionalists and against time; the project had to be completed in one year, before the next international competition. Her design is 48 metres high and rests on a base seven metres by seven metres. She described it as "an organic hybrid", a cross between a bridge and a tower, which by its form gives a sense of movement and speed.
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States (1997–2003) At the end of the 1990s, her career began to gather momentum, as she won commissions for two museums and a large industrial building. She competed against
Rem Koolhaas and other well-known architects for the design of the
Contemporary Arts Center in
Cincinnati, Ohio (1997–2003). She won, and became the first woman to design an art museum in the United States. At 8,500 square metres, the museum was not huge, and her design did not have the flamboyance of the
Guggenheim Bilbao of
Frank Gehry, built at the same time. But the project demonstrated Hadid's ability to use architectural forms to create interior drama, including its central element, a 30-metre long black stairway that passes between massive curving and angular concrete walls.
Spittelau Viaducts Housing Project, Vienna, Austria (1994–2005) In 1994, Hadid was commissioned by the city of Vienna to design and construct a three-part scheme for the urban redevelopment of an area adjacent to the Danube Canal. Situated along the Spittelauer Lände, the series of buildings interact with and cross over the railway viaduct by
Viennese Modernist architect
Otto Wagner, a protected structure. In its initial design consisting of five buildings, the mixed-use scheme, described as a "sculpture-like overbuilding" of the historic Stadtbahn railway, was designed by Hadid's practice
ZHA. Hadid, together with British architectural artist
Brian Clarke, developed an unexecuted collaborative proposal for the project that incorporated integral artworks by Clarke as part of the
Neo-Futurist structures, with interrelated glass mosaic and traditionally-leaded stained glass forming part of the cladding and fenestration of the complex. Clarke developed a new type of mouth-blown glass for the scheme, which he christened 'Zaha-Glas'. Later reduced to three buildings, the project, which experienced delays in construction, was completed in 2006, in
Wolfsburg, Germany (2002–2005). The new museum was only a little larger than the Cincinnati Museum, with 9,000 square metres of space, but the plan was much more ambitious. It was similar in concept to the buildings of
Le Corbusier, raised up seven metres on concrete pylons. Unlike Corbusier's buildings, she planned for the space under the building to be filled with activity, and each of the 10 massive inverted cone-shaped columns that hold up the building contains a cafe, a shop, or a museum entrance. The tilting columns reach up through the building and also support the roof. The museum structure resembles an enormous ship, with sloping walls and asymmetric scatterings of windows, and the interior, with its angular columns and exposed steel roof framework, gives the illusion of being inside a working vessel or laboratory.
BMW Administration Building, Leipzig, Germany (2001–2005) In 2002, she won the competition to design a new administrative building for the factory of the auto manufacturer
BMW in Leipzig, Germany. The three assembly buildings adjoining it were designed by other architects; her building served as the entrance and what she called the "nerve centre" of the complex. As with the
Phaeno Science Center, the building is hoisted above street level on leaning concrete pylons. The interior contains a series of levels and floors which seem to cascade, sheltered by tilting concrete beams and a roof supported by steel beams in the shape of an 'H'. The open interior inside was intended, she wrote, to avoid "the traditional segregation of working groups" and to show the "global transparence of the internal organisation" of the enterprise, and wrote that she had given particular attention to the parking lot in front of the building, with the intent, she wrote, of "transforming it into a dynamic spectacle of its own".
Ordrupgaard Museum extension, Copenhagen, Denmark (2001–2005) In 2001, she began another museum project, an extension of the
Ordrupgaard Museum near Copenhagen, Denmark, a museum featuring a collection of 19th century French and Danish art in the 19th-century mansion of its collector. The new building is 87 metres long and 20 metres wide, and is connected by a five-metre wide passage to the old museum. There are no right angles – only diagonals – in the concrete shell of the museum. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the gallery make the garden the backdrop of the exhibits.
Pritzker Architecture Prize In 2004, she won the
Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture, though she had only completed four buildings – the Vitra Fire Station, the Ski Lift in Innsbruck Austria, the Car Park and Terminus Hoenheim North in France, and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. In making the announcement,
Thomas Pritzker, the head of the jury, announced: "Although her body of work is relatively small, she has achieved great acclaim and her energy and ideas show even greater promise for the future." ==Major projects (2006–2010)==