Zaha Hadid dreams a futurescape I'm ready to occupy

You don't find me talking about work much on this blog.  It's rare that the world of corporate communications in the IT services industry intersects with the culture, travel, food and wine I write about here.  But sometimes, the planets come together and there's a wonderful moment when my "work" world makes my "life" soul sit up and take notice.  Yesterday brought one, in the form of a senior director from Zaha Hadid Architects.

My company was sponsoring a conference in central London on innovation.  On the agenda: "smart cities".  That's the concept that with technology and connectivity we can do amazing things to make cities better places to live.  While having less impact on the environment.  The architects were there to point out that things can look good, too.

I'd long been aware of Hadid, whose buildings regularly show up in design magazines and culture supplements.  She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, and pretty much the only woman getting headlines in a thoroughly male industry.  I've only been in one of her buildings … the swimming pavilion in London's Olympic park, because most of her work is scattered around the world.  But I had an impression of buildings that were curvy, dramatic, elegant and beautiful.  In a word: feminine.

Turns out that's just the start.  The Hadid practice's philosophy is an organic, people-centric riposte to the brutalism of late 20th century architecture.  Probably more akin in its philosophical foundations to high Gothic than to Meis van der Rohe, as Director Patrick Schumacher explained in a fast-paced, intellectually rich illustrated talk.  I think some of the IT and corporate crowd were starting to drift.  I could have listened to him all day.

In Hadid's vision, social order requires spiritual order. Architecture is a force for good that can prevent a collapse into chaos.

The typical modern city, clustering streets and buildings with little reference to the unique topography around us, is creating ubiquitous urban sprawls with no local distinction.  They have no soul.  It's the natural topography that gives a place identity and order.  Schumacher used the outskirts of London as his example: "a cancerous outgrowth, identity-less."  The feature that gives it unique identity?  The sinuous meander of the Thames.  Thus Hadid's architectural prescription for modern London is round and meandering, something we saw in the aquatic pavilion.

Schumacher said this starting point creates "islands in the urban menace."  They further humanise their designs by focusing on, and celebrating, the spaces where people come together.  Entrances, atria and hallways are all big design features in Hadid buildings.  Rejecting the fashion for putting a building's guts on the outside, they clothe their work in "smart skins" which hide what's going on.  Just like a living creature.

There's no denying that Hadid buildings are boldly modern.  But this philosophy makes them human and organic as well.  Many are huge, but there's a warmth and intimacy about them.  The skin, the curves, the relationship with the surrounding topography … it all drew my mind back to the great Gothic architects, with their forests of columns branching into canopies of groin vaulting, illuminated by massive windows.  Hadid is modern, but the company philosophy is rooted in ancient truths.

Certainly, they're top of my list should I ever be called upon to found a utopian city.  And I'd love to attend a proper lecture from Hadid or one of her partners.  But for now, I'll just have to add more of their buildings to my travel "bucket list".