Zaha Hadid – Phaeno Science Centre

Dream:

Vitro Fire Station – Relief Model

Vitro Fire Station – Drawing

Different techniques allow architects to see in different ways. For Zaha Hadid, the tools of drawing,  paintings, and relief models inspired by Suprematism, not only became instruments of vision, but mediums of experimentation, taking up life of their own. During the earlier years of her career, Hadid continuously tested the capacity and nature of a design material interacting with the design concept itself. Instead of adopting the modernists’ question of “what the brick wants to be” as Louis Kahn would have, Hadid asked the representation medium what the design wanted to be. Tools such as the photocopier soon became a site for vigorous experimentation, smearing and distorting images.

Despite the highly skilled artistry, it did not make Hadid a technophobe. The practice constantly adopted newer computational platforms as sophisticated software succeeded each other. Although paintings had given way to the computer renderings in the studio today, the tradition of using mediums so that they were liberating rather than controlling, still remains within her practice. Rather than letting computer-aided design taking over the logic or identity of the practice, such that of the creation of architectural ‘blobs’, Hadid tensed undulating surfaces by creasing or ripping them, forcefully creating corners and edges; echoing her philosophy developed early in her career of fragmentation.

Driver:

Project: Phaeno Science Centre
Location: Wolfsburg, Germany
Architecture: Zaha Hadid Architects & Mayer Bahrle Freie Architekten
Structural Engineers: Adams Kara Taylor with Tokarz Frerichs Leipold

Phaeno Science Centre – Exterior

The realization of such dreams of architectural form would be exemplified by the renowned Phaeno Science Centre in Germany. It features a 12,000sqm main exhibition space above, a 15,000sqm underground car park, with the public plaza in between. The design was made possible by advances in AKT’s finite element analysis modeling software, enabling the complex forces within the entire structure, to be calculated and resolved as a single element, reducing the volume of the concrete to its absolute thinness. The entire structure act together as a single entity, forces change and interplay in between the façade, slab, and the cones; all depending on each other.

“Without advances in computer modeling this would have been virtually impossible a few years ago and the building would have been engineered in the traditional manner, broken down and engineered as separate structural systems which, when combined, would have produced a significantly over-designed structure, with walls twice as thick” AKT’s Paul Scott stated.

Phaeno Science Centre – Ground Floor, Cones

The casting of concrete from the foundation, through the cones to the floors slabs, in one continuous pour, involved pours of seven meters high with walls inclined up to 50º from the vertical became a primary issue to solve. Working in collaboration with engineers Adams Kara Taylor, a self-compacting concrete was developed which chemical additives are introduced into the concrete mix, significantly increasing its workability without any resultant loss in strength. Cast from 27,000 cubic meters of self-compacting concrete, the physical reality of Phaeno is that it is one of the world’s largest examples of seamless in-situ concrete.

Relation:

In the Pheano Science Center study, the elements of design philosophy, artistic formulation, computational tool, and construction methodology all played significant roles in pushing the boundaries of how the architectural process had previously been conceived and systemized. We should learn that computational platforms need not become constraints of design but as a platform to inform even more innovation and creativity in the process, and even try to experiment the limits of new tools of working outside its intentions. Most importantly in this process we also learn that advancement in technological tools prove not to constraint, but further allow the manufacturing of the bespoke in architecture.

Chapman Kan