Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Experiences: The Peak 1982-83

Zaha Hadid's first internationally acclaimed project and a critical moment in Hadid's career

Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Experiences 2016: The Peak (2016) by Zaha HadidSerpentine Galleries

Zaha Hadid: Virtual Reality Experience 2016, The Peak: Blue Slabs, 1983 © Zaha Hadid Foundation 2016

Blue Slabs (1982/1983) by Zaha HabidSerpentine Galleries

"I used painting to develop my proposals for the Peak Leisure Club in Hong Kong (1982-83), a building that was to be based on the landscape, and intended as a new man-made geology or ecology…The continuous line with many trajectories on the same surface evolved in my drawings and paintings at this time; I was using different perspectives to develop distortion." – Zaha Hadid

Screenshot. Zaha Hadid: Virtual Reality Experience 2016 (2016) by Zaha HadidSerpentine Galleries

Suprematist Geology

The Peak was awarded first prize in a global competition to design a leisure club for a private client in the hills surrounding Hong Kong. Included in the seminal exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA, New York, in 1988, The Peak marks a critical moment in Hadid’s career. The design and creation of a building – in this case a leisure club – as an architectural landmark in a major city such as Hong Kong is not necessarily a difficult formal exercise, but it does raise important conceptual and programmatic issues in the context of 20th-century architectural design. The site demands a certain inventiveness in its relationship to, and as a relief from the congestion of the city. Set high on a hill overlooking the city, the site is free from the condensed urban environment yet is still integrated with the land and water below. Constructive elements of various materials accentuate the dramatic visual conditions and natural arterial features of the site,creating a kind of Suprematist geology, both vertically and horizontally.

Screenshot. Zaha Hadid: Virtual Reality Experience 2016 (2016) by Zaha HadidSerpentine Galleries

‘…the lesson to be learned through fragmentation is you cannot really occupy just any kind of moment. We decided we were going to look at these compositions as a way of organising space. I think this is the most important lesson I have learned: the idea of reorganising space in a different way.– Zaha Hadid

Overall Isometric, Day View, Zaha Hadid, 1982/1983, From the collection of: Serpentine Galleries
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The Peak - Night (1982/1983) by Zaha HadidSerpentine Galleries

"The whole idea of lightness, floating, structure and how it lands gently on the ground. It all comes from [Suprematism]”– Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine Galleries

Credits: Story

Blue Slabs
1982 – 83
Acrylic on canvas
260 x 150 x 5 cm

From the project:
The Peak, 1982 – 83

© Zaha Hadid Foundation 2016

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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Zaha Hadid at Serpentine Galleries
Explore the visionary architect’s early paintings and drawings in virtual reality in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Group
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