Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled designs for a complex of towers in Bratislava's city centre (+ slideshow).
The architects won a competition in 2010 to design the mixed-use masterplan, which proposes seven curving tower blocks surrounding a public plaza in the east of the Slovakian capital.
A decommissioned coal-fire power station sits at the centre of the site and will be converted into an art gallery as part of the project, while a series of additional pavilions will be constructed alongside.
The plans are laid out as a network of circular and elliptical patterns, with pathways weaving between residential and commercial buildings, plus landscaped seating areas stepping up over the rooftops of shop units.
An underground parking area will be included on a basement floor and will be accessed by raised entrances around the site perimeter.
Also this month, Zaha Hadid has been appointed by the Mayor of London to develop plans for a major new airport and launched a range of twisting auditorium seats. See more design by Zaha Hadid.
Here's a project description from Zaha Hadid Architects:
Bratislava Culenova New City Centre
The design is based on a dynamic field strategy which organises the new city centre's program along a gradient of circular and elliptical patterns. A fluid field emerges from the underlying matrix in a series of larger tower extrusions towards the site's perimeter and intermediate scale pavilion-like structures surrounding the cultural plaza adjacent to an existing decommissioned power station.
Above: building design diagram
To activate the ground throughout the whole site and provide public spaces of the highest quality, the underground car parking is covered by a one storey high modulated platform, which is perforated at strategic points for day-lit spaces that accommodate retailing, landscaped parks and various points of interest such as the cultural centre, museum shop, conference space and event halls.
Above: landscape design diagram
Towards the site's perimeter the platform is slightly raised at specific points to define the site's edge and accommodate programmatic points of interest, access points to the parking levels below and access to office and residential towers above. At other strategic zones, the platform lowers to merge with the surrounding city level to link the new urban parks and plazas with the surrounding city fabric.
Above: concept masterplan - click for larger image
The scheme creates density via efficient high-rise structures while providing a generous and highly activated ground level with public spaces that are gradually differentiated within a 3-dimensional field condition.
3D tampons!
Because normally tampons are only two dimensional?
I don’t like this project, although I admire Zaha Hadid.
Please stop her. We don’t need Star Wars towns everywhere.
Nobody who has never read this article, or one like it, will walk onto the site and go:
“Oh, it looks like the design is based on a dynamic field strategy which organises the new city centre’s program along a gradient of circular and elliptical patterns. Furthermore, it looks as if the building’s forms are derived from the underlying matrix that emerges from this fluid field.”
They’re going to say: “All these curvy paths and interrupted sight lines leave me highly disorientated.”
This is a terrible project; not original at all. It looks like all the 1960s inhuman tower projects that led to alienation and urban decay. Except this time, the towers are a little curvy. Well done Hadid: you’re really scraping the barrel here.
Why do we see Zaha Hadid’s projects coming up everywhere? It’s worse and worse every time!
Who would like to live here? Tell me!
Another copy of a Zaha Hadid project in China!
More a copy of Torre Agbar by Jean Nouvel, Barcelona, 2003.
Good project. I hope it will be realised. At least it would bring some color and excitement to a boring and grey city.
Dildos.
Such a pity the language abused by (among others) architects cannot fight back.
Just plain ugly. Why?
It reminds me of Warsaw – her office had designed a Lilium Tower, then she came to the city and after a 10 minute ride in a cab she was heard saying: “Oh, I see there’s more space so we could do five more Lilium skyscrapers”. Please, stop her.
Other than the beveled, edges what is the differnce in between Hadid’s towers and neighboring communist-era tower blocks? Same out-of-scale megalomaniac inhumanity now and then.
Who lets her run around raping cities?
People, can we please try and do better with our criticism than “tampons” and “dildos”? It doesn’t add anything to the conversation and if you’re trying to be funny you need to try a bit harder.
I think the level of criticism is equal to the level of thought that was placed in the work, which is very little. The project is derivative 1960s-era planning hiding behind shiny renderings and computer-modelled form-making. It will look dated before it’s even built.
It cheapens the word "criticism" to say this work deserves criticism.
Nice commercial architecture.
Complex of giant bananas.
I honestly think she might be just joking now.
Pointy towers look suspiciously like giant toys. Batteries not included?
Architecture of this theme should aim to capture the future of modern buildings. This does not do this. It simply paints a wacky picture with a novelty value that, in years to come, people will not call the beginning of a new era but a weird and pointless experiment.
Zaha’s product for eastern Europe. Thanks Zaha, we are ok.
I think she has thousands of similar projects on the hard drive just waiting for plain plots to arrange them there with some wacky landscape. Her first projects were really innovative and individually unique, but more and more her architectural language gets implausible and tiresome. Quantity is really not quality in this case. Sad.