One of the first completed projects from Zaha Hadid’s office since her untimely death, at 65 in March this year, the new Port House on the sprawling docks of Antwerp, Belgium, is a bravura, if distinctly eccentric work. This nine-story headquarters building for the Antwerp Port Authority is not just by Hadid, of course: her long-term codirector, Patrik Schumacher, is equally credited, along with a large team at Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). But Zaha was closely involved in this creation, according to Schumacher, which displays her wit, sense of mischief, and knowledge of the history of heroic modernism from Futurism and Russian Constructivism onward. Many of her later buildings, such as her gigantic Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan (RECORD, November 2013) became softer, more organic in form. Not this one: this comes from the earlier Zaha mindset, the time of glittering, jagged edges.
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