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Zaha
Hadid: BMW Central Building, edited by Todd
Gannon.
The seventh book in Knowlton School of Architecture's Source
Books in Architecture series focuses on the Central Building
at BMW's Leipzig
Plant by Zaha
Hadid. The already immensely popular building can be
seen as part of a series of works by the Pritzker Prize-winning
architect that also includes the completed Phaeno
Science Center and the Contemporary
Arts Center now under construction in Rome. Each project
continues her exploration of long, linear spaces, though
in these we see an overlapping and integration of spaces
that's much more fluid and complex than her earlier designs,
perhaps owing to the larger scale of these recent buildings.
This book presents the BMW
Plant Leipzig from the competition's first stage in
2001 to the building's 2005 completion. Sketches, models,
renderings, architectural drawings, construction photos
and photos of the finished building give a thorough visual
record of the process. Along with these images are interviews
with Hadid, designer Patrik
Schumacher, and project architect Lars Teichmann. These
interviews give a candid insight into the various parts
of the process, explaining, for example, how the studio
translated Hadid's sketches into a functional and buildable
design. While the books layout and graphic design lacks
a certain elegance or punch to make the book a beautiful
artifact, its content makes up for this fact, helping the
book become a thorough case study on an exceptional building.
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