July 11, 2008

Zaha and the Zaragoza Bridge: Expo 2008
Jamie Waugh

Zaha Hadid has taken her Phaeno Science Center design one step further: the IDA07 winner for Product Design (Mesa Table for Vitra) and Architecture, Institutional (Phaeno Science Center) has announced the opening of the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion, Zaragoza, Spain for this summer’s 208 Zaragoza Expo water festival.

The aptly-named structure marries bridge and pavilion: it crosses the River Ebro (read: shade) and was commissioned for this summer’s 2008 Zaragoza Expo water festival. Expo Zaragoza requested enclosed exhibition spaces to span the river; and Hadid’s bridge fulfills the request with gracefully executed engineering and contextual pathos, adding the layer of infrastructure to art in the pavilion to ultimately enrich the visitor’s interaction with the pieces.

The Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion is organized around four main elements, or “pods”, structures that each correspond to a specific exhibition space.

“All the forces operate at the same time, so that the view of the exhibition is inherently related to nature of the visitors’ path through the Bridge Pavilion…equally, the experience of the path shifts according to what the viewer is seeing at a given moment,” says Hadid.

As an umbrella separating art from the city’s recently blazing heat, the pavilion is celebrated as a river-hugging venue immune to the otherwise challenging weather. And after the expo? The bridge’s fate is unknown, but discussions have brought up the possibilities of everything from closing it or making it an inhabitable destination that otherwise connects populated Zaragoza to its more desolate nether side of the river.

Expo 2008 runs until September 14, 2008. For more information about Zaha Hadid, please go to www.zaha-hadid.com.

The 2008 International Design Awards deadline to submit projects for consideration for the title Designer of the Year is August 30, 2008: enter conceptual or realized projects in architecture and the design of interiors, products, graphics and fashion.

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