Zaha Hadid Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan
- The Heydar Aliyev Center is an important cultural centre in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, housed in an iconic building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. It is located in a 10-hectare public park close to the Baku Convention Center.
- The centre takes its name from Heydar Aliyev (1923 – 2003), the national leader of Azerbaijan who is considered to be the founder of modern Azerbaijan.
- The centre is famous for its fluid shape, which the architects intended as a reaction to the rigid architecture of the Soviet era as well as a reference to Islamic calligraphy and elements of traditional Azeri architecture.
- Spanning eight levels, the array of column-free functional spaces of the centre is enclosed by a free-form curvilinear envelope made in Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete and Glass Fibre Reinforced Polyester.
Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris, France
- The building of the Fondation Louis Vuitton is sited within the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a children-and-family-oriented garden part of the Bois de Boulogne – an 846-hectare public park created in the mid-19th century in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris.
- Gehry’s design was inspired by both the traditional 19th-century glass-and-steel greenhouse architecture, and the image of a “sailing ship”.
- It is characterized by twelve large glass-and-steel “sails” enveloping a core, named “The Iceberg”, made in white Ultra-High-Performance Fiber-Reinforced Concrete.
- The Foundation’s building contains 11 galleries, storage areas, offices, education spaces, a museum store, a restaurant, and an auditorium – a concert hall which can accommodate from 350 to 1000 people depending on its configuration. A basin was also created around the Foundation to emphasize its dynamic forms and vessel-like appearance.
