the home of science, arts and inspiration

Celebrating Zaha Hadid in South Kensington

This winter, South Kensington will celebrate Zaha Hadid – the architect, designer and artist – as the new Mathematics Gallery opens at the Science Museum and a new exhibition of paintings and drawings by Zaha Hadid opens at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. Both open to the public on Thursday 8th December 2016.

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), the Science Museum’s pioneering new gallery will explore how mathematicians, their tools and ideas have helped to shape the modern world over the last four hundred years. Mathematics: The Winton Gallery will become Zaha Hadid’s only permanent public exhibition anywhere in the world. Featuring over 100 treasures from the Science Museum’s world-class collections, the gallery will bring mathematics to life for millions of visitors through remarkable stories, artefacts and design.

The Serpentine Galleries present an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Zaha Hadid, first conceived with the visionary architect before she died, that will reveal her as an artist with drawing at the very heart of her work. It will include calligraphic drawings and rarely seen private notebooks, showing her complex thoughts about architecture’s forms and relationship to the world we live in.

Focusing on early works from the 1970s to the early 1990s, before Hadid’s first building (1993’s Vitra Fire Station, Germany) was erected, the exhibition fittingly takes place at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and opened in 2013.  The exhibition runs until 12th February 2017.

From December, South Kensington will be home to two stunning galleries designed by ZHA. The evolution of ZHA’s buildings demonstrates a consistent desire to question and innovate with form and space woven within their structures, , providing an immersive and experimental experience for visitors. ZHA continue to see endless possibilities in rapidly advancing design, material and construction technologies. Their inventiveness progresses in a repertoire of projects that becomes more innovative spatially and formally, more inventive structurally, more polished materially, more ambitious technologically—and more resolved and daring—with each new design.

South Kensington is one of the world’s most popular cultural destinations and home to an extraordinary cluster of world-leading organisations pioneering innovation and learning in science and the arts. This winter we look forward to celebrating the life of Zaha Hadid in the home of science, arts and inspiration.

For more information about the Mathematics: The Winton Gallery, click here. To view details on Zaha Hadid at the Serpentine Galleries, click here.

Zaha Hadid Painting and Drawings
‘Vision for Madrid’, Spain, 1992; Copyright Zaha Hadid Architects. Serpentine Galleries
Zara Hadid: Paintings and drawings at the Serpentine Galleries
‘Vision for Madrid’, Spain, 1992; Copyright Zaha Hadid Architects. Serpentine Galleries
Mathematics: The Winton Gallery
Mathematics: The Winton Gallery (credit: Zaha Hadid Architects)