Concept and design for a fourteen-level hotel on the Hungerford Bridge across the river Thames in London – linking 19th century buildings on the north shore with the Brutalist South Bank Complex. Inspired by the Russian Suprematist movement and utilizing the tektonik to create new possibilities for interior space.
Informed by the Russian Constructivist and Suprematist movements of the early 20th century, Zaha Hadid created concepts and designs for a fourteen-level hotel to be constructed on the Hungerford Bridge across the River Thames in London, linking 19th century buildings on the North shore with the Brutalist South Bank Complex.
Completed as an AA thesis, this early project, articulated through a series of drawings and acrylics, explores the ‘mutation’ factor – utilizing the apparently random composition of Suprematist tektonik forms to meet the unique demands of the construction and its urban context.
Each of the envisaged hotel’s fourteen levels systematically adhere to the tektonik, transforming its constraints into new spatial possibilities.
The project links thematically to later projects and events – in particular the Great Utopia exhibition at Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York (1992) at which Zaha Hadid first realized a number of these tektoniks in concrete form and the Habitable Bridge project, London (1996) which was also informed by tektonik form.
ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS
Zaha Hadid
