Parc de la Villette Project, Paris, France (Planetary/Water Strip)
Zaha Hadid
British, born Iraq. 1950–2016
1982-83
A colored-pencil on tracing-paper concept drawing for Zaha Hadid’s Parc de la Villette competition entry that seeks to reconfigure the park as a set of flowing, intersecting routes and programmatic strips.
What strikes you is an almost surgical economy of mark-making: a bold, electric-blue arc meets a crisply angled cluster of thin, multicolored strokes so that the white paper reads as a field of movement and tension.
Executed in the early 1980s, this work reveals Hadid’s painterly method of conceiving architecture and helped introduce a deconstructive, dynamic vocabulary of fragmented plans and circulation that influenced later contemporary urban design.
Medium
Colored pencil on tracing paper
Dimensions
11 3/4 x 16 1/2" (29.8 x 41.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the architect in honor of Philip Johnson
Accession
357.1996.7
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
