Project

Zaha Hadid Architects

Arum Installation
and Exhibition;
Venice Architecture
Biennale
Location

Venice, Italy
Date
01
2012
Client

Venice Architecture
Biennale

02 03

This year’s Biennale theme ‘Common

Arum Installation Venice Architecture Biennale 2012

Ground’ shows how the work of the major
protagonists of contemporary architecture
- often regarded as independent individual
creations - is in fact based on historical
lineages of collective research. This is also
true of the work of Zaha Hadid Architects.
It is well known that the early work was
initially inspired by Russian Suprematism.

In our installation and exhibition at the

Biennale we want to show that - apart from
the dialogue with the work of contemporary
competitors that existed all along - our
recent work connects to a rather different
historical strand of research. The more
our design research and work evolved on
the basis of algorithmic form generation,
the more we learned to appreciate the
work of pioneers like Frei Otto who had
achieved the most elegant designs on the
basis of material-structural form-finding
processes. From Frei Otto we learned
how the richness, organic coherence and
fluidity of the forms and spaces we desire
could emerge rationally from an intricate
balance of forces. We expanded Frei Otto’s
method to include environmental as well
as structural logics, and we moved from
material to computational simulations.

04
 Architect Coordinator Faculty of Size
Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid Architects Manon Janssens Architecture, ETH, Base

Zurich 2.8m x 2.8m
Design In collaboration with
Toni Kotnik
Zaha Hadid Studio Hadid, Universität Top
Patrik Schumacher für angewandte Kunst, Centro de 10m x 7.8m
Vienna Investigaciones
Exhibition Design Height
y Estudios de
Woody Yao Jens Mehlan 5.8 m
Posgrado, Faculty of
Margarita Valova Robert Neumayr
Architecture, UNAM,
Johann Traupmann
Installation Design and Mexico
Christian Kronaus
Presentation Juan Ignacio del Cueto
Mascha Veech
Shajay Bhooshan Ruiz-Funes
Mario Gasser
Saman Saffarian
Susanne John With the support of
Suryansh Chandra
Permasteelisa Spa
Mostafa El Sayed
ARTE & Partners
The BLOCK Research
Structural Engineering
Group
Rasti Bartek
Institute of Technology in
Buro Happold
Architecture, ETH, Zurich
Material & Fabrication Philippe Block
Technology Matthias Rippmann
Gregory Epps
RoboFOLD

One particular area of research we would like

Arum Installation Venice Architecture Biennale 2012

to explore with our installation is the domain

of light - weight shells in combination with
tensile structures. We have already designed
a number of complex shells as well as some
tensile structures. Here, for the first time,
we would like to integrate these two worlds.
The Arum shell is an installation made
from pleated metal. We will surround the
installation with the documentation of our
research, including key reference projects
of the pre-eminent precursors in this line
of research.

We will show the work of Felix Candela,

Heinz Isler among others and include work
by Philippe Block, a young, contemporary
researcher of stone compression shells.
05

06

01,04,05
Photography by Sergio Pirrone
02,03,06
Photography by Iwan Baan