A tribute of sorts to someone whose work I disagreed with entirely, but who I have to admit was a provocateur of the first order…Today’s discussion question in ARCH 517x:

“Given today’s news, it seems appropriate to consider Zaha Hadid’s architecture in relation to the course’s thesis. In particular, her powerful forms rarely coincided with any real structural or material logic, for which she’s been heavily criticized. But this argument could easily apply to many forms we’ve looked at today, in particular some of Candela’s more exuberant forms, or Saarinen’s or Utzon’s shells. Pick a structure by one of these three (Candela, Utzon, Saarinen) and compare and contrast the formal and structural rationales of these with those of your favorite Zaha building. Are there important philosophical differences–are the forms involved right, beautiful, true, and/or good? Or just geometrical and mathematical ones? How does the form of each example relate to the tools used to design it?”