The Modernity of Zaha Hadid

During the heyday of postmodernism in the 1980s, as architects turned to historical styles, urban traditions, and popular culture to rebuild the public support that modernism had lost, Zaha Hadid declared that modernity was an incomplete project that deserved to be continued. This was an inspiring message and its bold vision was matched by projects such as the competition-winning design for The Peak in Hong Kong (1982-1983). Hadid's luminous paintings depicted the city and the hillside above it as a prismatic field in which buildings and landform were amalgamated into the same geological formation of shifting lines, vibrant planes, and shimmering colors, at once tangible and intangible, infused with the transformative energy that Cubist, Futurist, and Expressionist landscapes had sought to capture.