MAM Shanghai presents the first exhibition of Zaha Hadid Architects in mainland China.

Defined by a timeline of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) formative works in China, ZHA Close Up at MAM Shanghai explores the pioneering research and interconnecting relationships that unite their projects around the globe, detailing the technological innovations that are transforming how the studio imagines, designs and constructs built environments.

Running from 26 June – 15 September 2021, the exhibition examines the evolution of Zaha Hadid Architects’ buildings over the last 40 years—from the flowing urban spaces of the MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome (2010) and Leeza SOHO in Beijing (2019) to the studio’s ground-breaking projects currently in development across six continents—demonstrating a consistent desire to innovate and inspire.

Founded by the late Zaha Hadid in 1979, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) redefined architecture for the 21st century with a repertoire of projects that have captured imaginations across the globe. Hadid was a major figure in the world of architecture and the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. She first travelled to China in 1981 at the very beginning of her career. Like her birthplace Iraq, carved by the Euphrates and the Tigris, China’s natural landscapes and urban settlements have been shaped through history by its great rivers and waterways. Travelling from north to south, visiting many Chinese cities to experience its art and architecture, Hadid studied the methods that embed its historic architecture within the great theatre of natural landscapes.

ZHA’s competition-winning design for the Peak Club in Hong Kong (1982-1983) manifests Hadid’s investigations into the fluid relationships between building and site, interior and exterior, architecture and engineering. Defined by the topography of the surrounding mountainside, in this and later seminal projects such as the Guangzhou Opera House (2010) and Beijing Daxing International Airport (2019), ZHA’s work echoes the coherence of the nature in an organic architectural language generating unrivalled spatial experiences that are intuitive to navigate and recognised around the world.

ZHA Close Up explores the journey of four decades of experimentation that are inscribed within ZHA’s architecture and has seen their designs become more spatially inventive, more structurally efficient, more technologically advanced and more environmentally sensitive with each new design and positions their work at the forefront of architectural practice.

Showcasing projects that have received highest honours from civic, professional and academic institutions worldwide, ZHA Close Up will present the studio’s pioneering research to improve how the industry designs and constructs.

ZHA Close Up – Work & Research runs from 26 June – 15 September 2021