Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Vilnius
Burnham Pavilion, Chicago
Jens Borstelmann & Thomas Vietzke - Zaha Hadid Architects


Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Vilnius

This proposal for a museum and cultural centre in Vilnius was the winner of an international competition between Zaha Hadid Architects, Studio Daniel Libeskind and Studio Fuksas. The new centre for international art will house pieces from collections of both the New York based Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the St. Petersburg based State Hermitage Museum.

The museums sculptural volume is designed along Zaha Hadid’s characteristic conceptual terms of fluidity, velocity and lightness. The building appears like a mystical object floating above the extensive artificial landscape strip, seemingly defying gravity by exposing dramatic undercuts towards the surrounding entrance plazas. Large activated green fields flow around the museums sculptural mass, underlining its enigmatic presence with curvilinear lines echoing the elongated contours of the building. Contrasting with the vertical business district skyline it is a manifestation of Vilnius’ new cultural significance.

The design points towards a future architectural language matching the cultural aims of the new Hermitage Guggenheim Vilnius Project. It is part of an innovative research trajectory within ZHA that embraces latest digital design technology and digital fabrication methods. The application of advanced digital technology throughout the course of the project enables a seamless workflow from the fluid shapes of the drawing board to the realisation process. An innovative architectural language meets new technologies in order to articulate this project’s complexities. By means of ZHA’s characteristic dynamic acceleration curves and sculpted surface modulations the design expresses the project’s vision coherently.

Burnham Pavilion, Chicago

Zaha Hadid Architects participation in the Burnham Plan Centennial celebrations is a great opportunity to participate in Chicago’s ongoing tradition of bold plans and big dreams with an architectural design at the scale of a pavilion. Our design will echo Chicago’s cutting edge cultural and architectural landscape by introducing a new Zaha Hadid Pavilion Concept into Millennium Park.

The form of the pavilion is derived from the intersection of ellipsoids creating arching interior spaces that envelope the visitor flow. The structure is expressed via a series of diagonal sections that are in line with the historic axis of the unbuilt Plan of Chicago. These arching structural devices are erected along a gradient and therefore display areas of lesser density towards the centre of the pavilion in order to allow controlled daylight into the structure. The louvers in the ceiling underline the design intent of referring to the historic diagonal that cuts through the site and help to create a vivacious interior space that changes throughout the day according to sun angles and weather conditions. They appear like cuts in a canvas and cohere with the choice of material and construction method.

The pavilion is made from a light weight aluminium structure that is then “dressed” in a tensile fabric.  As fabric behaves in specific ways, once tensile forces are applied, the resulting exterior skin undulates in anticlastic curvatures along the guiding rails of the aluminium substructure. The aluminium ribs are deliberately expressed through the external skin.

In the pavilions interior the materiality corresponds with its exterior. The continuity of material allows for a coherent overall look and feel. Since the pavilion will serve as a display for projections layers of fabric are integrated in its interior walls that allow for front and back as well as for double projections taking place throughout the day. Layering of fabric and of images create visual highlights and involve the visitor in a unique overall experience. The superimposition of visual materials and the visitor within the pavilion leads to the integration of the pavilion, the visitor and the display. The pavilion becomes the display and the visitor becomes part of the image.