Zaha Hadid's Futuristic Burnham Pavilion for Chicago

As part of the Burnham Plan Centennial celebrations, the Burnham Pavilion by Zaha Hadid Architects triggers the visitors’ curiosity and encourages them to consider the future of Chicago. The design merges new formal concepts with the memory of Burnham’s bold, historic urban planning. Superimpositions of spatial structures with hidden traces of Burnham’s Plan are overlaid and inscribed within the structure to create unexpected results.

“The Burnham Plan Centennial is all about celebrating the bold plans and big dreams of Daniel Burnham’s visionary Plan of Chicago.  It’s about reinvention and improvement on an urban scale and about welcoming the future with innovative ideas and technologies. Our design continues Chicago’s renowned tradition of cutting edge architecture and engineering, at the scale of a temporary pavilion, whilst referencing the organizational systems of Burnham’s Plan.” said Zaha Hadid. “The structure is aligned with a diagonal in Burnham’s early 20th Century Plan of Chicago. We then overlay fabric using contemporary 21st Century techniques to generate the fluid, organic form – while the structure is always articulated through the tensioned fabric as a reminder of Burnham’s original ideas.”

The pavilion is composed of an intricate curved aluminum structure, with each element shaped and welded in order to create its unique fluid form. Fabric skins have been tightly zipped around the metal frame to create the curvilinear shape. The interior skin also serves as the screen for a video installation by Thomas Gray that explores Chicago’s past and future.

“Fabric is both a traditional and a high-tech material whose form is directly related to the forces applied to it - creating beautiful geometries that are never arbitrary. I find this very exciting.” explained Hadid.

Designed and built for re-use after its role in Millennium Park, the pavilion can be re-installed at other sites. The Burnham Pavilions will be open and free to the public in Millennium Park through October 31, 2009. For further information and details of the Burnham Plan Centennial, visit www.burnhamplan100.org.

PROGRAM: Temporary pavilion to house multimedia installation
CLIENT: Burnham Plan Centennial
ARCHITECT: Zaha Hadid Architects
LOCAL ARCHITECT: Thomas Roszak
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS: Rockey Structures
FABRICATOR: Fabric Images
LIGHTING & ELECTRICAL: Tracey Dear
MULTIMEDIA CONTENT: The Gray Circle

Here are some more images and drawings of the pavilion: