Introducing Via Zaha Hadid! Yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of her passing, the Municipality of Milan paid tribute to Zaha by dedicating a street in her name.
Winding through Milan’s CityLife district, where Zaha designed the Generali Tower (pictured), amongst others, Via Zaha Hadid was inaugurated in a ceremony led by Milan’s Councillor for Culture, Tommaso Sacchi, with additional tributes including some quite touching ones by students from the Umberto Boccioni arts high school.
What an honor to be there with our Trustee, Hanif Kara, on behalf of the Foundation and our other Trustees, Rana and Tala Hadid, and the Hadid family, who were very much there in words and spirit. A day to celebrate!
(And special thanks to Zaha’s longtime collaborator Davide Giordano for playing such an important role in the ceremony)
@zahahadidfoundation@communedimilano
What does it take to build and sustain institutions that meaningfully support architecture and design today?
This ~metalog(ue) titled ‘Building the Framework: Institutions, Patronage and the Future of Architecture & Design’ featured
- Sangita Jindal (Chairperson, JSW Foundation)
- Paul Goldberger (Architecture Critic & Author)
- Martha Thorne (Former Exec. Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize)
- Aric Chen (Director, Zaha Hadid Foundation)
The multilog(ue) reflected on lessons from decades of institution building, while probing what kinds of support creative programmes and institutions will need in the future and from whom.
The ~log(ue) programme at ADFF:STIR Mumbai 2026 was powered by JSW.
Watch the conversation now live on STIRworld.com at the Link in Bio.
@sangita.jindal@jsw.foundation@jsw.group@jswrealty@paulgoldberger@aricchen@adfilmfest
Aric Chen, architecture curator, writer, and Director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, visited the Kochi-Muziris Biennale yesterday.
#KochiMuzirisBiennale #KochiBiennaleFoundation #ForTheTimeBeing #NikhilChopra #KMB2025
Ended the year by wending our way up the western flank of Tunisia, from the Sahara to the Mediterranean, passing spectacular Roman era sites like Sbeitla, with its conjoined temples to Minerva, Jupiter and Juno (slide 1). But perhaps most striking was the mark left by the Numidians (Amazighs, formerly known as Berbers, who overlapped with the Romans), as with the stunning Libyco-Punic (didn’t know that was a thing!) mausoleum (2-3) at the well preserved city of Dougga (4-5), and the incredible mosaic-encrusted *underground* villas at Bulla Regia (6-8), where the subterranean Amazigh troglodyte dwellings of the south, which keep cool in the heat, were given a Roman villa makeover.
Highlights also included the quarries at Chemtou (9-10), which produced the precious yellow-ochre marble we saw (and that was sent throughout the Roman Empire). As was the lovely town of El Kef, with its Ottoman era mausoleum of Sidi Bou Makhlouf and Kasbah (11-12), and the Genoese fort at Tabarka (13). A lovely way to ring in the new year.
#Sbeitla, #Dougga, #BullaRegia, #Chemtou, #ElKef, Tabarka
After 10+ years, I finally made it back to Doha recently. How fantastic to see the IM Pei exhibition (which I co-curated at M+ with Shirley Surya) so impeccably installed at Al Riwaq (slides 1-2) and celebrated at Pei’s still-stunning Museum of Islamic Art (3), and to have such inspiring Qatari participants in a 2-day workshop on architectural archives that I ran with Setareh Noorani of Nieuwe Instituut (4).
Also amazing to see Zaha’s Al Janoub stadium (5-6); Rem and Samir Bantal’s latest iteration of their Countryside exhibition (7); Rem’s Qatar Foundation headquarters (8) and National Library (9); and Isozaki’s Convention Centre (10) and Weill Cornell Medical School building. ⭐️✨⭐️✨⭐️
Thank you @almayassabnthamad 🙏 and the teams at @qatar_museums@qatarcreates and @mplusmuseum , and as always, @s__surya and @unfolding_something .
#impei, #qatarcreates, @samirbantal@zahahadidfoundation@nieuweinstituut@oma.eu #ZahaHadid #RemKoolhaas, #SamirBantal, #ArataIsozaki
Last week’s unveiling of the Doshi Retreat brought a moment of sublime respite to the @vitracampus . Conceived by the great #BalkrishnaDoshi before his 2023 passing, and completed by his granddaughter @khushnu.hoof and @sonke_hoof of @studio_sangath , its intertwining paths descending into a chamber of water, light and sound was “born from a dream Doshi had of two interweaving cobras.” And how nice to have celebrated the occasion with a dinner at Zaha’s Vitra firehouse!
#vitracampus #studiosangath
Missed the 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 during #SingaporeDesignWeek? Catch the highlights here!
How can we confront the problems of the future when those problems seem too messy and tangled to be “solved”?
Organised by the DesignSingapore Council, the 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱: 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 invited us to rethink how we approach design – not as a problem-solving exercise, but as a dynamic, agile and iterative process better suited to tackling the complexities of the world we inhabit.
The forum explored design's shift away from simplistic solutionism towards new modes of negotiating complexity, and examined how everything – including Sustainability, Care, and Emerging Tech – is intricately intertwined.
Stay tuned to SDW.SG as we progressively roll out videos for all the segments.
#SDWSG25 #SingaporeDesignWeek #NationByDesign
A quick spin to Vienna a couple of weeks ago for the first time in 20 years (well, kind of) to (kind of) chair the jury for the Schindler Scholarship program at @mak_vienna . Thank you @lillihollein for the invitation—congrats to the recipients!—and for the chance to also learn a bit more about Zaha’s 15 years of teaching at @dieangewandte and to see her spectacular Library and Learning Center at WU Wien, with some bonus shots of Hans Hollein’s retail gems, still looking good after 40-60 years.
A few weeks ago, I spent some time in Hokkaido at Memu Open Research Campus (@memu_orc ), a remarkable rural site led by the indefatigable @yu_morishita that has been transitioning from architectural showcase—with buildings from the 2010s by Kengo Kuma, Toyo Ito and various universities—to a bioregional research, education and design hub.
It was an intense but inspiring week of kelp harvesting, mushroom foraging, hipster hunters, deer gutting, golf carting, (attempted) kayaking and most of all, rethinking design, institution-making and the future. Watch this space!
Thank you Yu, #FrancescaBertolottiBailey and the Memu team for the invitation, and colleagues @tomorrowmaybecolonykids , @suburbanelectrostar and @maelokko for the good times. 🐓🦌🍄🟫🍯
A real treat to be able to drop in on the first iteration of Lesley Lokko and colleagues’ Nomadic African Studio for the African Futures Institute. This time in Fes! Fantastic to see and meet the cohort of 27 under-35s from across the African continent and diaspora as they explored, learned and unlearned ways of approaching architecture under the blazing Moroccan sun. ☀️😎Thank you @lesleylokko , @african_futures_institute , @seanify22 , @martinetschanz and all!
Beirut!! ❤️❤️❤️ Though I landed, by sad coincidence, on the 5th anniversary of the 2020 port explosion (with its still-visible aftermath; slide 9)—and amid the constant, menacing hum of Israeli surveillance drones flying overhead—it was such a joy to finally visit this city I’ve wanted to see for so long. Even better to be there for the selection of the inaugural Zaha Hadid Scholarship recipients at Zaha’s alma mater, the American University of Beirut, part of a 3-year partnership between @zahahadidfoundation and @ard_aub .
A fantastic (and too short!) 3.5 days of lovely people, beautiful sights and incredible meals in a city where Zaha’s imprint lives on with her Issam Fares Institute building at AUB (slides 1-2) and under-completion Beirut Souks building (slides 5-6), whose 3000-some-odd facade panels are being individually made at a factory where designer Carlo Massoud and his sister also make their incredible concrete furniture (slide 7; thank you @carlomassoud for the visit!).
