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Stunning…Zaha at her best!

holy f**cking wow!! a stunning building.

This is an interesting development on the interlocking rotating pod rhombus filter system that I have not seen before. Apparently if you introduce a 3d centrifuge with a dual cyclone, it collects 45% more dust and dirt particles that its nearest competitor, with no loss of suction.

Zaha is God

if it is to have crap like this why not as Calatrava to do his thing…. holly waste of money and effort….

you guys are either students or just have generally bad taste all round!

a bridge is a bridge is a bridge…it is a brigde…

@jamie, ever tried to deconstruct your gods? it can be liberating.

Fling that was brilliant!

Wow.. over the top.. but I guess that’s the idea.
Too much.. Wasn’t less is more at a point in time? hmm.. Mies, where are you?

Looks like a little bit heavy for a bridge, but why not. Another nice project from Zaha. I think i like the rendering much more…

WTF do you guys want then?, all you posters that dislike this. it’s the 21st century! do you want more golden gate bridges, or brooklyn bridges?
the whole less is more ideal is so lame, the reason they did less and is cause they HAD to do less, there was no technology to build things like this all those years ago. the hype back then is the same as the hype of today, only now days, people are draw to the Zaha’s and not giving the finger to the arrogance of the Le Corbs.

this thing IS stunning, it’s prob an experience just walking through it. you guys need to quit living in the past and get with the now.

I thought Spain was having economic troubles but maybe not of they can piss
off money like this.

wow!…much props to the interns who made all the coding on this amazing scripts. In the end the sketch only takes this so far!

Looks like 6 projects at once. Seems from these images that it probably has some fantastic moments, like in the second to last image where it looks a bit quieter and cohesive but generally the geometry looks unresolved/modeled quickly. Messy.

there is something provocative about it, but its not in line with the exhibition’s theme of sustainability.

Hadid is a genius. Who can do better than her?

I could rip on zaha all day long for her shallow forms but she gets her work done and it will be around for a long time, and that is imminently respectable.

she’s borrow dream into real world
and combine art, architecture, science
into the iconic sign of the place,,

Ugly thing - it is not about architecture

completely irrelevant structure..
love to see it within a few years, full of junkies and pigeons.. smelling like piss.. does zaha consider this part of life too? or is it just about the image (take it quick, before the building gets old!!)
think about that zaha-lovers

Is this architecture? yes!

zaha is a 3d artist and her “art” has function and meaning so it must be “architecture”, maybe not in the old fashioned way or maybe exactly like to the old fashioned way. are the roman temples architecture? isn’t this just the modern version of ornament.?

it is certainly not the way i would design a building, but to say it is not architecture, is just narrowminded! zaha for me is one of very few architects who get’s away with it. bravo!

superugly

what the hell! crazy! i love it! simply amazing!~

Zaha won the competition to built this pavilion bridge and fortunately the other proposals lost the award. If you had seen them you would not critize Zaha’s bridge.

Mirtec, I am sorry, but you are stupid. No offence…

Honestly, what is the connection between these forms and taking a leak in this bridge? Or anywhere else? Why do you think junkies would come to this building, or if they would, what other kind of form do you think would keep them away? How these things are coming together in your head? Or you might tnink that architecture is the tool, the universal device to solve the problems of mankind? Pruit Igoe’s message: it is not. Or if still it is, it is much more about branding and the good old Bilbao-effect.

You superficialy pick some elements of sociology, human beaviour and mix it, and create a syncretistic connection between them and architecture.

i agree with fling!

Im not a fan of this form as a bridge because instead of embracing views along the river, she has created a covered walkway (in the images shown above at least), similar to an under-pass, losing the benefit of being a bridge. I would have liked to have seen external areas of some sort, to give the users the chance to stop and admire the surrounding area… as often happens on the Thames when visitors, photographers, children stop and view the banks from different angles.

So in this sense a more traditional bridge would offer a lot more to the user than this horrible looking form does. If she could step away from everything having to be a ridiculous shape, then she could have probably come up with a far more interesting form, blending modernism with function! It is almost as though she refuses to have anything with any form of convention within her designs now and it is a shame because some of them are great shapes, but would benefit as designs with just a bit more thought!

is so GREAT!!!!! i lover zaha hadid designer !

Another good example of how we continue to disconnect with our environment.

WGA,

you don’t get my point..

this thing cost billions of dollars, while spain suffers from poverty.. and yes: pigeons and junkies are everywhere.. and every guy pisses on bridges like this.. my only point is that people should look further than the beautifull images.. this kind of architecture is nice, but to build it it costs a lot of money and in the end people will piss on it.. it’s way to temporary to my opinion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the image itself.. that one is beautifull, but a rendering has the same effect and people can’t piss on that one

awful…..but well….that kind of design is “hot” or “in” nowadays….as someone pointed it won’t “age” well, in 20 years from now it would be like seeing today those futuristics glass fiber constructions from the 60’s. I remember I saw in some blog last year, pictures from Zaha’s Landesgardenschau in Germany (the building that was in the cover of Autocad some versions ago) it looks like a set from a Mad Max movie, leaking, graffitis, tall grass, etc…looked creepy and awful, and its only like 8 years old.

I agree it must be quite an experience to walk there, but Im not sure if that only supports the case of building such a giant worm like form, totally out of context and probably overbudget.

that’s not a bridge. it’s a tunnel lifted 5 meters of the ground! i think this could be built in another place, with no water theme concept… maybe they will built in dubai another of these.
And if the beauty it’s so relative, what remains of?

why are these discussions always about “how great zaha hadid is?” I mean clearly the firm is incredibly talented, but architecture criticism isn’t about “how good zaha hadid is or isn’t”…It should be about, “THE WORK.” 90% of these comments are a waste of time, why don’t we improve the discussion about this and say what you think is good or bad about “the work” and start talking about “architecture?”

zaha is hot.

ia it just abridge or abuilding aswell..
looks like abuilding not like a bridge, but should be a bridge or what…
as a bridge over the ebro river it’s much too heavy.. or maybe the pictures present that wrong.
why do they need a building (which really should be a bridge) to represent water? the structure,the cladding, the space itself maybe great but there is the surrounding which they nearly always forget to cope with.
so what is the sense of that buildingbridgebuildingpavilionbridge what the f*

architec-STAR, they can build whatever they want, only must be a beatiful sculpture.

i worked in cultural architecture and we know the people need a cultural image for appropriating of the space. A beatiful form is’t just that, a beatiful form.

well is not so bad, nobody wanted the eiffel tower the first time, now everybody loves the tower, but it’s a sculture.

P.D. sorry my english, is not my native language.

“The pods are stacked according to precise criteria - aimed at reducing the section of the bridge”
-right!

personally i do not like it, but this is my opinion!

one thing that seems really… kind of ended up in the wrong project is the strange flat pattern (a little contradiction there miss?) makes it look like cheap fake carbon imported from china!
-can someone explain this please
best regards
Luke Skywalker

ok. first of all O.M.F.G!
THAT THING IS MAD SEXY !
secondly, ok guys seriously. there r two kinds of architecture. One which relies on familiar and another which tries to recreate, and invent. It might look bla, but the bridge has a cool structural concept and idea, its new, so thats why i appreciate it.

I want to flood it w/ river water and kayak through it.

Most of the latest comments seem to express a rather conservative and narrow-minded discomfort with the hybrid (bridge & building) nature of the project, which instead is its real added value in architectural terms.

No comment is worth spending on those who think that a curved space is gratuitous wackiness, even less on others who ignorantly think the fastest-growing economy in Europe is in fact poor.

well gama, you’ve got me thinking..
but first: when your economy is poor, it’s more easy to let it grow (=logic), so that is not an argument: they are still poor.. but with the help of a union called europe they will manage for sure..
in that case it’s a clever economic (touristic) trick to place a bridge like this over there (like they did with the museum in Bilbao)..
It will atract lots of tourists for sure.. and it will be an exciting thing to experience too..
expensive, but also ‘cheap’ (if you know what I mean)..

Mirtec, have you ever been in Spain?
Spain has already benefited of Europeans founds in the last 10 years, that’s how they managed to regenerate Bilbao and build the Guggenheim museum. It is now has the 8th biggest GDP in the world, and is the second worldwide tourist destination. Surely all this is due to their forward looking and innovative investment policy, in the economy as much as in architecture.

i think there’s enough places for ceveral kinds of styles to be built nowadays.
the main thing is to see it built and test it ,that’s the only way we can improve , we cannot impose theories on things that are not there yet .
am not against the(tried and tested) kind of thing , but sometimes it’s good to take some risks.
we need designers like zaha,and others, just to push the envelope a bit and see what happens.
cheers M

I ‘ve worked on the engineering and construction of the facades. It is wrong that “Some shingles can rotate around a pivot, allowing for temporary opening or closing of part of the façade”. Only “smoke vents” have the possibility to go open…but we will hope that’s not needded.

BestRgds

juan

I won’t recommend anyone coming to Zaragoza, a city that is becoming even more unhabitable thanks to this Exposition. This Expo has nothing to do with sustainable development; it has everything to do with unscrupulous businesses. Zaragoza is a torrid, windy city surrounded by the Monegros desert. It’s not a turistic place, and I’ll never be.

Expo Zaragoza 2008 is unsustainable in terms of ecological, economic, social, environmental, legal and cultural. The Ebro river ecosystem is being destroyed: cutting down thousand of trees, irresponsible dredgings in order to allow ships sail, cutting the bottom of the Stone Bridge medieval archs, etc.

The experience of previous universal exhibitions (and that of Zaragoza is not: it is `international’, ie, a second class exposition) and the most recent Forum in Barcelona, showed that these events are ruinous to the Treasury, but very profitable for construction companies and real state speculators.

Politicians have been lying with a straight face for years, in order to get population’s support for this project. However, people is increasingly aware that they’ve been cheated.

I could go on and on. Please visit http://www.expo-no.es , where there is a lot of information (mostly in Spanish, but there is also some in English).

Definately an interesting building. But the question is at the end of the expo, ‘Will it stay or will it go?’

If you think it’s got 67 m deep foundations, i believe it will definitely and luckily stay.

“against expo blah blah” : thanks for not going on!

not good, it is boring

I believe this building looks much cooler in real, than in the renders - actually most of zaha’s renders are pretty crappy - , and I’ve been wandering about, how her newest designs will look in the middle east area after their completition.
I especially love those interior spaces in the bridge, love to see the structure instead of some crappy “fluid” surfaces covering them.

yo hablo español y espero que si alguien entiende este idioma sea lo suficientemente inteleginte para conciderase mente receptora de mis ideas sobre la arquitectura…yo soy un genio incomprendido que no comprende para nada a zaha y su arquitectura, es verda que si me pongo mentalmente jugueton entrar a este pasadizo me da la sensacion de estar dentro de las vertebras que tiene una baca en el cuello y por supuesto que resulta entretenido y muy interesante ver como logra esta arquitecta tras una intencion dudosa, mas bien una intuicion poderosa acercarme a la naturaleza a traves del uso de elementos relativamente frios e inorganicos…ahhhhh…la forma…la forma y alguna vagancia tecnologica….es superficial, aunque siendolo sea de las buenas cosas superficiales, por que…el mindo es todo, como tambien lo es lo bueno…sigue asi

como hago para dar mi opinion que es tambien la de ustedes

MANUELA GATTO rocks! congrats! looks great.

‘Most of the latest comments seem to express a rather conservative and narrow-minded discomfort with the hybrid (bridge & building) nature of the project, which instead is its real added value in architectural terms.’

Look at Hadid’s early work, the tectonics, this project is a reversion back to those theme’s. I agree, it’s a very narrow and conservative view of the blurring of typology, which I agree adds real value to the project. It’s just another part of a the tradition of the promenade in architecture, it could ‘touch’ the water more lightly I think, but it’s still a elegant structure.

someone made a relevant arguement pointing out how the view from the bridge obstructs the view of the river, however, what we should aslo keep in mind is that context and concept (product) do not always have to share the same indiffrence. Maybe the idea here is for concept to contrast context. There are several modes of contextualism, Zaha just chooses to take a nondenominational approach on the issue. I mean, she litrally peed in calvaterra’s mouth with this one, and the sad part is that he swallowed it. Sick!

Zaragoza in summer: up to 42 degrees
maybe less views on the river, but the blessing of shadow

For all the “postmodern critics” here and there pessimistic whinge:

This bridge is an update on the theme of habitable bridge like the Ponte Vecchio of Florence, the Rialto Bridge in Venice and the Chateau Chenonceau in the Loire Valley.

To be more specific from those bridges you would not see the river, but use the bridge as a succession of program along an enclosed path.

If the shark skin pattern works as it is specified in the text, it would be a breakthrough in this typology, making it the first environmentaly responsive habitable bridge.

Please guys, read and be respectful about history and other people’s work… before whinging about your good taste and your fetichisms.

que fantastico es saber hacer cualquier cosa .gastar millones en algo que particularme para mi , no tiene sentido ,pero como es unas de las vacas sagrada de la prensa .ahi esta ………..me parece un muestrario y alarde tecnologico .el resto ya lo dijo moya says …disculpen mi criterio sin criterio

This is a great CG than an architecture.

Althought beautiful, it doesn’t fit the surroundings…Unless she is about to built the rest of the city.

ah, and why is that, Gianfranco, because it doesn’t quite look like a 60s apartment block?

The majority of the -ve comments are from the losers whom I am glad are totally irrelevant in the big scheme of civilizations. Where would we be if CT Scanners, MRI machines, linear accelerators, Cars and airplanes were not invented?
Get off your … and move on.

This is an exceptionally interesting work of bridge building, (my favorite area of architecture) as it seems to combine modernist building styles and gallery space with what we consider the main purpose of a bridge (gettin places over things!) I recall it was meant to have open sections to expose the chassis but it was impractical. Shame. It would make the thing less monolithic and solid… but its monolithic and solid in a good way! Good work.