Zaha Hadid: Paper Museums

The Zaha Hadid Foundation’s exhibition Zaha Hadid: Paper Museums showcases paper reliefs from its collection and their significance to Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). 

The exhibition offers a rare insight into how paper reliefs were important to the design and presentation strategies for three of Zaha’s key museum designs: Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Cincinnati, USA (1997-2003), MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy (1998-2009) and Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar (1997, unrealised). These projects represent a period from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, when ZHA began realising Zaha’s architectural vision and unveiling the development of her radical ideas revolving around site and space.  

Building upon Zaha’s paintings, new architectural concepts arose in her reliefs, bridging the gap between her two and three-dimensional works. Central to the exhibition are highly abstract paper reliefs for CAC, as well as a series giving views of the building from the street level entrance and through stairways and gallery spaces; a large-scale relief of MAXXI that plays with perspective to show an aerial view of the final building within the urban site; and a range of Museum of Islamic Art reliefs, including exterior studies, site plans and roof studies exploring space optimisation, division and flow modelling.