Week One: Hadid, Badiou and Moore

Jonathan Meades’s Intelligent Life article on Zaha Hadid, contrary to it’s title The First Great Female Architect, is saying Zaha Hadid is, maybe, not so great after all!!

With this article being the first assigned reading in Architectural Association’s Theroy 750 seminar, I was alarmed of how much of it was not about her or the practice of architecture. As Meadas confessed, Hadid was more lively when talking about everything other than architecture and likewise, the article is hiding away from getting to the essence of her and her practice, which leaves the readers and maybe the author (too!) perplexed. Her works, embodying her, have an unexplainable dimension and unpredictability, which are essential in differentiating her from the rest.

The sense of mystery that Hadid either purposely or subconsciously embeds in her conversation and process of her works adds to her aura. Once the secret is revealed, the aura is gone. It could be because of her reluctance to reveal her design process; however when Meadas found her contradicting herself in finding her inspiration from and not from natural topography and landscape, I for a moment wonder if she is that forgetful.

The value of this article is in its confusion and opposition. Zaha is sometimes evasive; and Meadas incisive. The tug of wall between the star and the commoners is well illustrated through Meadas’s firing of questions wanting to know how she works, which is disappointingly fruitless. I have a suspicion, after reading, that Hadid might not know how and why either. She would disagree with a statement but not explaining why… sounds like a stubborn parent or boss who only gives order and expects a reflexive nod in return, demonstrated by her factory of taciturn employers in her school/office.

Zaha Hadid’s inability and reluctance to answer the inner-working of her practice remains me of a scene in Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” in which Moore interviewed a former investment banker and a Harvard professor who created but could not explain what derivatives are. Hadid and the investment banker are similar in their inability to put into words what they do. Maybe it’s just too hard to explain… or maybe they don’t even know!

When something becomes a brand, it needs no explanation and justification; religion only needs followers. Zaha becomes a brand and a style as someone would say the building looks ‘very Zaha’. Capitalism becomes a religion when people believe profit motive is just and morally right. Badiou’s and Moore’s critical attitude towards capitalism is crucial in our understanding of the architectural practice and the world economy. We have a few options:

1. A follower who is being led by nose

2. A thinker who critiques

3. A revolutionary who materializes critical thoughts into action