Design in high-rise. Zaha Hadid

I will start by saying that I like this building, confession not always easy in certain contexts when we talk about Zaha Hadid. This is the Jockey Club Innovation Center at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. * On the website of the Zaha Hadid studio you can find a good number of documents of this building (www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/jockey-club-innovation-tower/).

The first thing that draws my attention in this building is the complex exercise of integrating a school of design in 15 floors including Architecture, Environmental Design, Industrial and Product Design, Visual Communication, Advertising and Digital Design, exhibition and lecture areas, etc. The architecture schools I was used to visit in Europe did not exceed 5 floors. However, this building is in Hong Kong, a city whose urban plan is close to being three-dimensional.

To solve this "high rise school" the building is intersected botton-up by a "very Zaha Hadid" element, a stair that looks like ramp, with a sculptural character that generates an intense spatial game in the 13 floors atrium (great effort of Arup engineers who were in charge of the structure, MEP, geotechnical analysis, facade and, above all, fire protection). This staircase is spectacular and contributes to bring a smooth continuity along different levels that communicate visually through transparent walls in practically all the rooms of the building.

On each floor, students move through a series of inclined planes that generate different levels which, together with the facade design, create a ambiguity between floors, intensifying, thus, that continuity. Lines of light mark that infinite flow always present in Zaha's drawings from her early works.

Another challenge building had to face wass the relationship with its surroundings. In this respect, architects have taken the usual position of this office, especially in Asia, which is to introduce an autonomous element, independent of its surroundings, in this case some media have used the term iceberg, in other cases times we have heard UFO, spaceship, etc.

The building is located in a campus which first buildings were built in 1972. The complex consists of about 20 volumes, several of them interconnected, with a regular geometry and homogeneous red brick façades. In the image below we can see the map of the campus, I do not think it is necessary to indicate which building is Zaha Hadid's.

While this type of architecture would generate more controversy in Europe, in Hong Kong, as well as density and high-rise buildings, the abrupt overlapping of different layers, designs, materials, uncontrolled eclecticism, is accepted more normally. In the case of some other buildings designed by Zaha Hadid's studio that I have been able to visit in China, such as Galaxy Soho (www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/galaxy-soho/), Wangjing Soho (www.zaha- Hadid.com/architecture/wangjing-soho/) in Beijing or the Guanzhou Opera House (www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/guangzhou-opera-house/), the placement of these buildings as an alien to its surroundings might seem even more abrupt, but in these cases it works well within the dynamic fragmentation of new Chinese cities, where the urban frame is a mere aggregation of elements with the aim to impress.

If we observe the integration of the building in the site, we get to one of the points of the design that attracts me the most. Its concrete base, which reminds me of some lines of Miralles, which offers us its stereotomic dimension when we walk around the campus. In spite of the fact that this concrete work appears colder and more hermetic than the tectonics of white metal panels, it remains more human and plastic, as a gray extension of the sculptural stair that serves to engage with the elements of its surroundings.

Regarding the white sunscreens that make up the facade, I have to say that I do not get it. It is difficult to find an explanation for the recurrence in this color after observing the devastating effects of dirt, especially in cities like Hong Kong or Beijing. Its Dongdaemun Plaza project in Seoul with aluminum color offers a great image (www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/dongdaemun-design-park-plaza/), I wonder why they don't use this color tonalities more often.

This building was completed in 2013, two years later than originally planned. In less than 4 years, the building shows a very fast aging, both in the interiors, in its corners of which few are orthogonal, and the facade. Twenty years ago, it was almost unthinkable that the suprematist lines of Zaha Hadid could be realized, at the present, these lines are being built. I suppose, over time, we will learn how to keep those lines in good condition.

A project like this is not possible without the charismatic personalityu and strength of Zaha Hadid throughout her career. In addition to the insane work of all the architects who have worked day and night to make this project come true, discussions with the engineers or tenacious negotiation with the urban department (the building has stretched the limits of height and surface of the regulation).

Zaha Hadid drew the first lines of this project in 1982 when she won a competition for a Leisure Club in the Peak (Hong Kong) that was never built (www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/the-peak-leisure-club/) . Since then, the architect has sought to create an icon that stands out above the congestion and intensity of the metropolis "architectural landmark to stand apart above the congestion and intensity of Hong Kong - centered on the creation of a man made polished granite mountain". Below you can find couple of images of that project.

As a final anecdote, it seems that the pool of the story told by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York that left Moscow in the early 30's and arrived in New York in 1976, passed through the mind of Zaha Hadid in 1983 heading to Hong Kong.

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