ZAHA HADID

Curated by Woody Yao

27.05 – 27.11.2016

Palazzo Franchetti, Venice

In collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects and Zaha Hadid Design

In celebration of Zaha Hadid’s career in architecture and design that spans four decades, Fondazione Berengo hosted an abridged retrospective exhibition of her work at the 16th century Palazzo Franchetti.

The exhibition, coinciding with the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, showcased many of the seminal paintings, drawings and models of Hadid’s repertoire, conveying the ingenuity and dynamism of her architectural projects in a variety of media including photography and film.

Through Hadid’s designs – built, under-construction, in development and unrealized – the exhibition displayed the pioneering research and investigation that instigates and defines Zaha Hadid Architects’ work.

Hadid directly engaged with the experimentation of the Russian Avant-garde early in her career, exploring the compositional techniques of fragmentation, layering and porosity that transcend all her projects.

The leads and connections between all of Zaha Hadid Architects’ projects is evident in the exhibition’s juxtaposition of the early designs with projects such as the BMW Central Building in Leipzig (completed 2005) within a landscape of models that integrates project typologies, formal composition, geography and chronology.

All of Zaha Hadid Architects works in progress will be exhibited, including projects that were completed in the coming year.

Adriano Berengo, president of Fondazione Berengo said, “Visitors to the exhibition will have a greater understanding of Zaha Hadid’s pioneering vision that redefined architecture and design for the 21st century and captured imaginations across the globe. Although I work in the art world and Dame Zaha Hadid’s excellence was architecture, her work is also imbued with art, that patina that makes everything eternal, including the creator herself.”

Falconeri continued its partnership with Fondazione Berengo supporting creativity and innovation in the arts as the major sponsor of the exhibition and hosted a performance in tribute to Zaha Hadid at Palazzo Franchetti by soloist Anna Tikhomirova of the Bolshoi Ballet.

In her 2011 conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, Zaha Hadid stated, “I know from my experience that without research and experimentation not much can be discovered. With experimentation, you think you’re going to find out one thing, but you actually discover something else. That’s what I think is really exciting. You discover much more than you bargain for. I think there should be no end to experimentation.”