Building Around Change

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Dec. 30, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES ARCHITECTURE CRITIC

Born in Baghdad in 1950, trained at London’s celebrated Architectural Assn., Zaha Hadid has become one of the luminaries of architecture’s avant-garde. A precocious talent known for the dynamic forms of her architecture, she broke onto the international scene in 1983 with her winning--albeit unbuilt--design for the Peak, a Hong Kong club. Much of her work, in fact, has been influential only in its drawn form. Among her noted projects is a design that won a 1994 competition for the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Cardiff, Wales, only to be overturned when Britain’s National Trust refused to fund it. A retrospective of her work is currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Question: Judging from the reaction to Frank O. Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, or Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Victoria and Albert Museum addition in London, do you believe that there is more acceptance of so-called cutting-edge work now than a few years ago?

Answer: I think that ideas are definitely still threatening. People feel an idea is too fixed and therefore they would rather do something that is idea-less and much more malleable. They think an idea might fix them in a particular way, limit them. That has always been the problem. There has always been a resistance to ideas.

Q: Have these projects become less threatening because they have been reduced to a recognizable style?

A: Well, in the U.K., the Labor Party has decided that talent--U.K. talent--will become an exportable commodity. They want to promote the idea of Britain as a place where there is creativity and talent--which is not wrong--but to package it. Therefore, it is still very superficial. If they want to use that talent in a strategic way, they have to use it to reorganize inner-city programs or suburban conditions, to really organize ideas of infrastructure or circulation, ideas of program, schooling, education, housing. That’s what they should use it for, not in this kind of facile way of how to do X, Y, Z. But I think that mood has been very important. Despite its shortcomings, it has been good.

Q: How have all the technological changes contributed to that shift in attitude?

A: In a very simple way, the idea of the house has radically changed, the idea of the office has radically changed. . . . I think what is going to happen is that people will have more time to go to public events--to opera, to museums, to parks. The idea of time will also change drastically because of the Net, because people are constantly talking to people from another sphere, from another side of the world. People work on shifts. One is maybe painting a world that is totally horrible. You might think, oh, this is ghastly, but I think we are moving toward this idea that the day is more than eight hours, it is 18 hours, and if we are very strategic, it could be rather fun; there is nothing fixed anymore.

Q: How can architecture begin to cope with these social and technological shifts?

A: Our changing conception of time will make public space much more important. That’s what I think and hope. I don’t mean [public] squares in a traditional sense, but [places] which are accessible in a city, where people can just go, whether cinemas or shopping, outdoor, indoor. Also, the boundaries about the house--where you live and where you go out--are breaking. It has an impact on the way the cityscape will change. It is no longer defined: This is where you work, you can only sleep here, you can only work here--that has changed. There is no question about that, and I think it will change even more.

Q: I know you often resist talking about your role as a woman in architecture, but it is in many ways an issue that is symbolic of how little the profession has changed--even among the supposedly more enlightened fringes.

A: I think as a woman it is really difficult. It’s more difficult for me now than ever before. On the one hand, you become more accepted and almost part of the establishment, but on the other hand, I think that [sexism] is more noticeable than before. First of all, you are alone. If you want another comrade to chitchat to, who is not a boy, it is impossible. And you are constantly patronized. I have to say my Cardiff experience was very patronizing as a woman. One of the reasons it collapsed is because I’m a woman. There is no question about that at all in my mind.

Q: Architecture schools are pretty much equally divided between men and women, but for any woman looking beyond school today, they see you as the only one among that elite. Where do they all go?

A: I don’t know. I have taught, as you well know, for many years, and my best students have always been women. Some of them still work very hard. They still try to push their careers. But, my God, unless you are very bloody-minded and really have incredible confidence, it’s tough. Men are very strange to women in offices. If you are a pretty girl, you are harassed. If you are not pretty, you are ignored. If you are good, my God, if you are talented, they hate you. Men are very threatened by women that are better than them in their work. And I think that eventually women get tired of it and they give up.

I’m not making excuses for them. I mean, the minute they have a child they give up. I have never had a child. I don’t know the significance of this. I can’t say. But I think maybe something comes into your life which is more important. In America, you [still] find many more women who pursue their careers and family than in Europe. In Europe it really is a problem.

I’m seen as difficult. Well, I’m only difficult because they’re not used to women having an opinion. I want to maintain ideas that, good or bad, have to be maintained. So you are constantly fighting and sometimes you think, is it worth it? Obviously, I think it’s worth it. I want to stick it out. Some people may think it’s not and just give up, and that’s why I don’t think you find many women on the scene. Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. Nobody understands why we are there day and night working. No money coming to us. No nothing. I think that it requires so much devotion of time, it is so obsessive, and, of course, it is fantastic but the rewards to some people--who are reasonable people--are ridiculous.

Q: So why do you do it then?

A: Because I love it. I think it’s very important. I’m a fool. I really believe that architecture is done not only for aesthetics--which is, of course, valid too--but it really does improve life. Whether aesthetically or socially, fundamentally. The city is made of architecture. It has an impact on what you do and see. If I incrementally can advance it or help it be understood more, or get better, you know, despite the pain we’ve gone through, I think it’s not a bad achievement.

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CROSSROADS

The daily Calendar section is presenting a series of interviews, which began Monday and will conclude Jan. 8, with arts and entertainment leaders. Here is the schedule:

Monday

Film: Harvey Weinstein

Today

Architecture: Zaha Hadid

Wednesday

Television: Martha Williamson

Thursday

Restaurants: Nancy Silverton

Friday

Theater: Peter Schneider

Saturday

Jazz: Bruce Lundvall