Burnham Pavilion | Zaha Hadid Architects

In 2008 Zaha Hadid Architects, the first woman architect to be given the Pritzker Prize, was chosen along with Ben van Berkel – both avant-garde modernists, to design a unique pavilion structure for Chicago. The aim was to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago from1909 through the means of design and acknowledge the city’s wish to progress in architectural planning and continue Burnham’s legacy.

Photography by © Roland Halbe

Zaha Hadid Architects’ architectural feast measures no more than a small space, therefore it helps the viewer/visitor become well at ease with its scale and cavernous interior.

Photography by © Roland Halbe

In terms of the how-it’s-made structure, architecture critic Blair Kamin [a Pulitzer-prize winner for architecture criticism] celebrates the ingenuity, originality, and aesthetics of Hadid’s work. So let’s have a closer look at the pavilion structure: it is a repetition of a single sectioned profile and this orthographic projection is hence repeated several times with its parameters and components modified in such a way, that it forms a canopy-like structural environment.

Photography by © Roland Halbe

Because Hadid’s designs are complex [and highly emotional] in their nature, the need for turning the cut-through into a central element is a vital part of the architect’s proper execution of the project. And afterward, its repetition or should I say, multiplication across the X/Y axis is a very simple, yet effective technique.

Photography by © Roland Halbe

A tensioned fabric shell covers the futuristic camping tent, as analogically described according to people’s perception. When the pavilion finally opened on 4^th August 2009, the design revealed wasn’t Hadid’s initial concept as she was asked to submit a cost-conscious proposal and it indeed offered a lightweight structure with a cloth shell and the aluminum ribs represented the above analyzed sectioned profile of Zaha’s computer-aided design methods.

Photography by © Roland Halbe

In the end, the female architect’s pavilion turned out to be quite a celebration of architecture, space, light, and emotion, embracing futurism with its alien-like cocoon shape from the outside and dazzling video installations from the inside.

Photography by © Roland Halbe

Project Info:
Architects: Zaha Hadid Architects
Location: Chicago, IL, United States
Area: 120.0 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Roland Halbe, Michelle Litvin, Thomas Gray
Project Name: Burnham Pavilion
By: Yoana Chepisheva