The graphic forms of the Silver Paintings and Dot-Paintings are translated step by step into tectonic structures. Hadid’s images are representational without being naturalistic, because they do not show physical realities but rather architectural possibilities: Detlef Mertins explains in the catalogue to Hadid’s 2006 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum: “Hadid’s paintings bring mathematical and geological geometries into greater alignment.”
The Iceberg furniture piece, designed for Sawaya & Moroni, is part of a line of formal research that explores the idea of liquid territories. The outstanding and apparent features of this bench are two icicles – like extensions. One is darting into horizontality whereas the other points vertical. Although these two shapes are opposing and contrasting each other there is mediation between them through a diagonal fold that “morphs” one form into the other. The Gyre chair, from the 2006 Seamless Collection by Zaha Hadid for Established & Sons, is an obvious evolution of the architectural language explored: soft meets sharp, convex and concave, and a sculptural sensibility that impactness on our self-conception. The rhythm of folds, niches, recesses and protrusions follows a coherent formal logic. With the formal dynamic of a fluid mass, Hadid emphasizes the continuous nature of the design and the smooth evolution between otherwise disparate elements.
