One of the most influential and visionary architects of our times, Zaha Hadid has redefined the architecture of the twenty-first century and captured the imagination of the whole world.

One year since her untimely death, MAXXI is devoting to her The exhibition Zaha Hadid in Italy. Focusing on Hadid’s projects in Italy, the exhibition highlights her intense and productive relationship with our country, presenting projects and works created by means of various instruments of representation, research, and experimentation that she honed in the course of her career; from pictorial and conceptual sketches to three-dimensional models, from virtual representations to the more recent interdisciplinary studies addressed to the application of new solutions and technologies, in a pioneering effort of investigation in design.

The exhibition presents a portrait of Hadid’s multifarious personality, it is conceived as a walk through; starting from the built work and projects in design development in Italy, to product design. The gaze of Hélène Binet, a photographer who has been one of the most mindful of Hadid’s production over the years, interprets the strength and the dynamism of the architecture with a series of intense photographs that provide new details of her works. The constant drive towards an interdisciplinary search for new design methods is also presented in the sections dedicated to CoDe (Computational Design) and to ZHA Design DNA, a window on the creative legacy that the studio has fully welcomed. To paraphrase Zaha Hadid, there should be no end to experimentation.

In addition to the Italian projects that constitute the backbone of the exhibition, a selection of other projects that made up a significant transition in the evolution of Zaha Hadid’s language and architectural research are also on display, from the very beginnings to the more recent works that are still under way. In this evolution, the Italian projects have often represented a juncture and a turning point towards new research and experimentational horizons. MAXXI is the most evident proof of this.