Zaha Hadid’s notebooks: the sketch in architecture: Fid-Bau Portal

Zaha Hadid’s notebooks: the sketch in architecture

Luscombe, Desley

The sketch has long occupied a privileged position in architecture as the conceptual origin of a realised building. However, this privilege is also problematic, as it obscures the greater intellectual basis of the sketch. This contributes to architecture’s disciplinary development and experimentation. Analysing one sketch drawn by Zaha Hadid in the process of designing the MAXXI in Rome, this article aims to offer ways to reconsider the role of the sketch. Two analyses are carried out to unravel the greater significance of the sketch in architecture. The first relies on the ideational function of the line in architectural practice, as proposed by Andrew Benjamin. The second studies the line in relation to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of ‘smooth space’. These writings on the role of the line form an important basis that questions the nature of abstraction in the sketch. Taken together, these two analyses and Hadid’s earlier explorations of architectural space generate alternative meanings to the lines of her sketch for the MAXXI. Finally, the article questions the figure of the architect in relation to their own sketches. I argue that it is often the architect who redefines how sketches are interpreted over time, and find their place in a specific teleology of development. In conclusion, the sketch is a complex fragment in the realisation of a building. It has broad experimental implications for the discipline.