Baku, built on the western coast of the Caspian Sea, was once part of the past Soviet Union. Since its independence in 1991, however, Azerbaijan has directed substantial resources in the redevelopment of the infrastructure of Baku and its architectural landscape, taking a decidedly different route than its traditional Soviet Modernism influence.
Zaha Hadid Architects was appointed to design the Heydar Aliyev Centre following a competition in 2007. Forming the centrepiece of the city’s cultural agenda, the Centre hopefully breaks from the overly rigid and often monumental Soviet architecture still so common in Baku, and expresses its sensibilities and the optimism of a nation that looks to the future.
Design Concept
The design sought to create a continuous, fluid relationship between the plaza and the interior of the building. The plaza, acting as the ground surface; accessible to all as part of Baku’s urban fabric; it defines a new sequence of spaces for the collective celebration of contemporary and traditional Azeri culture and wraps around to envelop an equally public interior space. Elaborate formations such as undulations, bifurcations, folds, and inflections modify this plaza surface into an architectural landscape that performs a multitude of functions: It welcomes, embraces and directs visitors through different levels of the interior.
By way of this gesture the building blurs the boundary between architectural object and urban landscape, building envelope and urban plaza, the differentiation between figure and ground, and between interior and exterior – a quality one finds in the architecture of Zaha Hadid.
Fluidity in architecture is not new to this region. In historical Islamic architecture, space is non hierarchical space established with the flow to infinity of rows, grids, or sequences of columns that continue out line like trees in a forest. Continuous calligraphic and ornamental patterns that move seamlessly from carpets to walls, walls to ceilings, ceilings to domes establishing seamless relationships and blurring distinctions between architectural elements and the ground they inhabit. Therefore, the architect’s intention was not to mimic that history, or by limiting themselves to the iconography of those past, but to relate to the historical understanding of architecture in a contemporary way, with a more, well, nuanced understanding.
In response to the topographical sheer drop which once split the site in two, the project introduced a precisely terraced landscape which established alternative connections and routes between public plaza, building and underground parking. The advantage of this solution is the avoidance of additional excavation and landfill and the ability to turn an initial disadvantage of the site into a key design feature.
Geometry, Structure and Materiality
The architectural development of the building skin's was one of the most critical, but most challenging, parts of the project. An underlying ambition was to get a surface so continuous that looks like it is homogenous, to achieve this one needs to combine a wide range of different functions and construction logics and technical systems into the building’s envelope. Thanks to advanced computing the continuous control and communication of these complexities could be conducted across the numerous project participants.
The structure principally consists of two collaborating systems: a space frame system with a concrete structure. Vertical structural elements are subsumed to the envelope and curtain wall system in order to achieve large scale, column free spaces that provide the visitor a fluid experience of the interior. In particular, the imposed surface geometry is an enabler for achieving an unconventional sets of structural solutions; including the implementation of curved ‘boot columns’ to realize the inverse peeling of the surface from the ground to the west of the building, and a ‘dovetail’ tapered cantilever beams that sustain the building envelope to the east of the site.
In this architectural composition, the music is the surface, the rhythm is the seams between the panels. The surface geometry was rationalized and continuity maintained throughout the building and landscape through numerous studies. They help make scale of the project more understandable. Productive solution to practical construction issues of the shell's geometry such as manufacture, handling, transportation and assembly and can accommodate movement due to deflection, external loads, temperature change, seismic activity and wind loading.
The lighting of the Heydar Aliyev Centre was carefully considered to upkeep the flowing relationship from the exterior of the building into the interior. The way the building is being read differently during the day versus night of the day/array is what the lighting design structure is based on. The volume works as a reflector of the sun, therefore the center's spectrum changes depending on the day and the perspective on the building. The semi reflectivity of glass tantalizingly directs the eye within without disclosing its fluidity within the interior. In this configuration, the character is gradually unfolded at night-time, with content (the natural or cultural environment of the area) revealed through lighting that washes from the interior onto the exterior surfaces of the formal composition.
Project Information
Architect:
Zaha Hadid Architects
Location:
Baku, Azerbaijan
Design Team: Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher and Saffet Kaya Bekiroglu
Project Architect: Saffet Kaya Bekiroglu
Project Team: Sara Sheikh Akbari, Shiqi Li, Phil Soo Kim, Marc Boles, Yelda Gin, Liat Muller, Deniz Manisali, Lillie Liu, Jose Lemos, Simone Fuchs, Jose Ramon Tramoyeres, Yu Du, Tahmina Parvin, Erhan Patat, Fadi Mansour, Jaime Bartolome, Josef Glas, Micheal Grau, Deepti Zachariah, Ceyhun Baskin, Daniel Widrig, Charles Walker
Structural Engineer: AKT, Tuncel Engineers
Mechanical Engineer:
GMD Engineers
Main Contractor: DIA
Sub Contractors: Mero, Werner Sobek, MBLD, DBikes, Etik Engineering, BME Ltd. Co.
Area: 101 801 sqm
Status: Completed, 2012
Photographs: Iwan Baan, Hélène Binet, Hufton + Crow, Zaha Hadid Architects
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