Zaha Hadid / BMW Central Building

Knowlton School of Architecture The Ohio State University Todd Gannon, Series Editor

Zaha Hadid

BMW Central Building

Source Books Leipzig, Germany in Architecture

7

Todd Gannon, Volume Editor

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, NEW YORK

CONTENTS

Data and Chronology

6

Architect’s Statement

9

Conversations with Zaha Hadid

13

Competition Stage 1

25

Stage 2

41

competition panels

55

Design Development

69

Final Drawings

77

Execution

89

Completed Construction

133

Credits

158

Biography

160

Conversations with ZAHA HADID Compiled and edited by Todd Gannon

Todd Gannon: Bruce [Ferguson, Dean of the

that are very much a part of the modernist ethos

School of Arts at Columbia University] was very

of the assembly line. While at BMW you explore

complimentary during our visit to the BMW Central

both the high functionalism of Ford and the expres-

Building yesterday. He told me it was the first time

sionism of Fiat, you take a different approach.

he had experienced a twenty-first-century space.

Lars Teichmann: You are right; it is a different Zaha Hadid: Yes, he told me as well. It is, of

approach. Although BMW is doing serial production

course, a very flattering comment.

akin to the earlier projects you mention, it is serial

I think it springs from the idea that everything

production of a very different kind. If one takes into

moves through the building. The blue-collar and

account all possible options, the BMW 3 series

white-collar workers, the public, and, of course, the

made here can be assembled in 10 x 1017 different

cars themselves all move through the same space.

configurations. This is not the serialized production of

But actually, with its fascination with the car, with

the twentieth century. It is a totally different way of

ideas of movement and velocity, BMW really began

producing, one hundred years from the Fordist ideal.

as a twentieth-century project.

For us, it was important that this difference was reflected in the building.

TG: Yes, but I would argue that your development of those ideas differs fundamentally from the factory

TG: When I look at the BMW Central Building,

aesthetic of the twentieth century.

I see affinities with your recent work in Rome,

Think of the Fiat Factory in Turin or Albert Kahn’s projects for Ford Motors in Detroit—projects

Strasbourg, Weil am Rhein, and elsewhere, as well as to earlier projects such as the Vitra Fire Station CONVERSATIONs

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LEFT and RIGHT: Car park and terminus Hoenheim-Nord, Strasbourg, France, 1998–2001

and the Hong Kong Peak. How would you situate

interested in ideas of landscape for some time,

this project in relation to your other work?

stretching back to our work in Cologne and at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and later in Rome

ZH: This project is about making space through lines.

and BMW. The idea of the terraced interior at BMW

Like all of the projects you mention, it has to do with

draws on our experiments at the V&A, and perhaps

the simple idea of people moving through a space. In

also from spending so much time at Gund Hall at

each case, that space derives from a linear process,

Harvard. All of these experiences come to bear when

an exploration into the way a system of two-dimen-

one develops a design.

sional lines can devise a three-dimensional space.

In addition, we were determined to use engineer-

TG: In all of your buildings I find a very deliberate

ing to create space. Structure in our work is not a

choreography of spaces from the street into the

simple armature to support an abstract diagram; we

building. At BMW, when the landscape forms and

labor to deploy structural elements to heighten spatial

the showroom are completed, you will have con-

qualities. At BMW, a key device is the elimination of

structed an entry sequence that begins well outside

columns. Here, as at the Science Center in Wolfsburg

the proper entrance to the building. Could we talk

(Germany), we worked closely with the structural

about this project in terms of choreography and

engineers to develop nearly column-free spaces.

context?

This, of course, has a profound effect on the spatial experience.

Topography and landscape also suggest alternative ways to deal with a large building. We have been 14

CONVERSATIONs

ZH: I think this comes from years of training, of studying composition, figure-ground, urban organization. We have been pursuing this sort of investigation

LEFT: Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 1990–94 RIGHT: The Peak, Hong Kong, 1983

for years; it is simply the way we investigate

that the so-called paper architecture of the 1970s

architectural space. From the beginning, we have

arose. That work was very important for thirty years,

been obsessive about diagramming context.

and its influence on the current situation is phenomenal. I think all of this happened because we had lost

TG: Did these obsessive techniques develop out of your education at the Architectural Association (AA)?

faith in modernity.

The other reaction to this loss of faith was, of course, historicism. Though many of its practitioners claimed their work to be contextual, it was actually

ZH: There was never a definitive AA technique, but

just pastiche. Our work was a critique of these histor-

these ideas were certainly part of the discourse at the

icist fantasies. Of course, there was also the social

time. For us, context ceased to be about historicism

project, the various drawing projects—these were our

or traditional contextual relationships. It became

versions of contextualism.

critical. This led to a series of advances in technique.

Nineteen eighty-three was the critical year. In

We transformed the figure-ground as a method of

the span of one week, I was awarded the Peak com-

investigation.

petition and Bernard Tschumi won La Villette. At

Also, after the ’68 revolution, things collapsed. It

that moment, the AA’s importance shifted. It was

was at this time that the social project erased the for-

no longer a school that simply produced radical

mal project. That, I think, was the end of modernism.

designs. Its teachers and students were now seen as

When I came to school at the AA in 1972, the

capable of winning major competitions. Of course,

place was antiformal, antidesign. Everything was a

Rem Koolhaas was also very important. His entry to

discussion about the city, and it was from this context

the La Villette competition was a seminal project CONVERSATIONs

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LEFT and RIGHT: The Peak

at the time, even though it was Bernard’s entry that

identity in the U.S., a desire to compensate for a

was built.

perceived lack of history. The response was to adopt

All of that work garnered a tremendous amount

neoclassicism or postmodernism, which was easier.

of press interest. That was the beginning of public

This was a very dangerous moment when rationalism,

interest in alternative fantasies for the city. But the

postmodernism, and classicism converged and

historical project remained quite powerful.

became almost one.

TG: It is still powerful.

TG: Were you reacting directly against these trends?

ZH: Not in Europe. Here, it has vanished. In London,

ZH: Not exactly. In my third year at the AA, I was a

perhaps you see it in a few schlocky developers,

student of Leo Krier. It was then that I realized that I

but in most cases, their ambitions have shifted from

did not believe, as so many did, that the only way to

historicist and vernacular to pseudo-high-tech.

move forward was to go backward. At that time, Krier

It took a long time to develop these projects, sim-

had not yet embraced historicism. But in one year,

ply because there was no work. Through the 1980s,

he made the transition from a modernist/rationalist,

almost all of the available work was commercial—

whom I liked quite a bit, to a full-blown historicist.

there were very few public buildings and very little housing. In this way, I find the U.S. and the U.K.

TG: What happened?

to be similar—the dynamic is driven by economics,

16

and the clients tend to be less adventurous.

ZH: I think he really believed in it. Regardless, I had

In the 1980s, I think there was a desire for a new

a very positive experience with Krier. As a third year

CONVERSATIONs

LEFT: Bernard Tschumi, Parc de la Villette, Paris, France, 1983, folly isometrics RIGHT: Parc de la Villette, folly perspectives

student, I was engaged in large-scale urban projects,

In terms of my own work, I would say that after

while most of my colleagues were doing tiny things,

twenty years, an interest in fragmentation gave way

pavilions or whatever. My ambition was to understand

to an obsession with fluidity. The move was not a

the city, to understand urbanism through rigorous

break, but rather a continuous transformation. It was

analysis.

a slow transition away from Euclidean, ninety-degree

During my second year, I studied typology.

We would draw obsessively; we produced thousands of typological studies. By the end of that year, I

geometries to other paradigms. I began to develop an interest in linear spaces, but not linear processes.

At the same time, I was determined to deploy the

could draw any plan imaginable. This obsessiveness

ground plane as a predominantly public domain.

produced a generation of professionally minded

Over a series of projects, we began to multiply and

students. The work owed a debt to O. M. Ungers and

transform the ground plane, which led to a series

his seminal research on typology. Ungers was

of investigations that had to do with the idea of ter-

also obsessive, and very clear. His work transformed

racing, topology, and landscape.

everything.

After Krier, I joined Elia Zenghelis’s studio.

We were attempting to move away from the modernist ideal of a podium and a slab. For us, the

Zenghelis would come to Krier’s reviews during third

surrounding landscape and the inhabited surfaces of

year. He was the only one who understood what I

the architecture were a continuous system. A seminal

was trying to do, so I joined him. I did not yet know

project for us in terms of these ideas was Düsseldorf.

Koolhaas. He had just returned from the States, and

Here, we were obsessed with ideas of continuity

was writing and lecturing about Delirious New York—

and with proposing an alternative to the repetitive

it was an incredible experience.

floors of the traditional modernist office building. Of CONVERSATIONs

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Irish Prime Minister’s Residence, Dublin, Ireland, 1979–80

course, these ideas remain with us, and they are

In a way, the Irish house was a precursor to the land-

present at BMW.

scape projects we have explored since.

These ideas were also present, in a less devel-

Another important drawing was for the Dutch

oped form, in our proposal for the Irish Prime

houses. Here, we were concerned with illustrating

Minister’s Residence. Again, we worked to undermine

nonlinear connections, in developing new ways of

modernist repetition—every floor was different. We

drawing together parts of the city. Though these were

were able to study this by developing what we called

projects for specific buildings, the focus was really on

“x-ray drawings.” These were composite drawings

developing a response to the contemporary city, look-

composed of a series of transparent layers that

ing for new techniques for rebuilding the city. This

allowed one to see everything at the same time. It

was not the tabula rasa paradigm of modernism, but

would not have been possible without having spent

rather a project of juxtaposition and superposition

so much time drawing on Mylar and tracing paper

as methods for inserting new interventions into an

at the AA.

existing context.

We would first draw each component separately and then combine them into a single drawing. We

TG: And at BMW, where you were faced with a

worked to develop new ways of moving through

tabula rasa site, your intuition was to urbanize it.

space: rather than stack staircases as cores—the typ-

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ical solution of modernist building—we would peel

ZH: Yes, but continuity is crucial for a production

the various layers of the project and join them togeth-

facility. You cannot have a factory distributed over

er. This resulted in a proto-fluid organization, a conti-

eight levels. In this instance, we are responding

nuity of circulation that we continue to explore today.

as much to our own obsessions as to the realities

CONVERSATIONs

LEFT and RIGHT: BMW Central Building, interior views

of automobile production. Though the project refers

geneous, continuous materials such as concrete and

back to Fordism and the lineage of the assembly

welded steel; we strove to eliminate as many columns

line, we wanted to create a new field of production.

as possible; and we minimized the number of corners. Further, we attempted to have elements cross

Patrik Schumacher: The byline for BMW could

between levels as often as possible, producing a

be “articulated complexity.” In the building, we

layered space in which one can trace the trajectories

attempt to deploy architectural language and formal

of our initial diagrams through varied elements in the

discipline to organize a series of connections and

project. The eye is drawn along continuous concrete

to orient various flows—of people, of space, of

walls; seamless, welded steel handrails; even the

automobiles—within a very large, deep space. The

conveyor belts overhead. These lines flow in parallel,

ambition was not to invent complexity, but rather

they bifurcate, they travel up and down through the

to make apparent and clarify the complexities that

section, but always tangentially.

were already inherent within the project.

We mapped the project’s various flows as a series of linear diagrams. Translated into three dimensions, these linear flows become layers of bifurcating and intersecting trajectories, resulting in a layered space of movement with a strong emphasis on deep visual penetrations.

The architecture is characterized by key decisions made early in the project: We employed only homoCONVERSATIONs

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LEFT and RIGHT: MAXXI National Center of Contemporary Arts, Rome, Italy, under construction

One might call BMW a field project. Rather than

and intersecting, and with the spatial experience of

work with a series of segmented, enclosed, and static

moving through them. Conceptually, BMW is very

spaces, we endeavored to provide a continuous, fluid

similar to Rome, though the articulation differs.

space of movement. Here, the eye never comes to rest. As one moves around a corner, new vistas open

TG: In Rome, you appear very deliberate about

up in all directions. In the best instances, it almost

maintaining the integrity of each line. Each U-

gives one a sense of flying.

shaped channel, as it moves along, remains intact.

Such a space calls for a different manner of orien-

At BMW, on the other hand, you seem concerned

tation. In a static, compartmentalized space, one

with breaking down the integrity of each vector to

knows one’s location by memorizing position—now I

create a single, layered space.

am in compartment A, now I move to compartment B. We rejected this kind of spatial experience at

ZH: Yes. Rome is about flooding the entire site with

BMW. Instead, we worked to create a continuously

this system of lines. It is less layered, more about

differentiated space, a space structured by bundled,

how these different strands lay over each other.

converging, and bifurcating trajectories.

At BMW, we are making an office building—the

BMW continues investigations begun in earlier projects such as the Contemporary Arts Center in

space, we were able to differentiate that open space,

Rome and the LF-1 project in Weil am Rhein. Each

to bring a degree of specificity to the open plan. The

of these projects deals with the organization of a

idea is that one can spill through the building and

number of trajectories over different levels, with the

flow into the adjacent buildings.

complexity that arises from these trajectories crossing 20

ambition was to make an open plan. By terracing this

CONVERSATIONs

LFOne/Landesgartenschau, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 1996–99

PS: In either project, one will experience moments of

developed, opportunities for programmatic specificity

spatial intensity in zones of convergence and overlap

presented themselves. This is perhaps most apparent

and moments of repose where these bundled trajecto-

in the series of terraces that constitutes the main

ries branch apart. In Rome, we required more quiet

office area. In other instances, a glass wall might

spaces to accommodate the galleries, while at BMW

complete a domain. That space would get a name

we were able to amplify and celebrate the multiplicity

and a discreet function, but we were careful never to

of layered trajectories inherent in the factory and its

interrupt the flow. Our planning strategy, then, was

processes.

never an act of compartmentalization but rather a

These qualities are most intense at the entrance.

The vectors from the car park are collected here, then

kind of soft zoning or territorialization.

There are a lot of things going on in the factory,

fan out along various paths into the building. Above,

which created a constant struggle against cluttering,

the bridge element counters this inward momentum

against impediments to flow. Much of our work

with a strong cross current.

involved taming the chaos of elements and structures

Of course, all of this spatial agitation must

and infrastructures.

accommodate program, and we endeavored to bring the same organizational principles to the task. To

TG: I think that is not only one of the great

maintain the continuity of these trajectories, the open

achievements of the building, but also its great

office areas were not partitioned in traditional ways

irony. In the initial diagrams, the ambition was to

nor were they treated as a continuous field of undif-

tease out complexity in order to generate a rich

ferentiated space. Rather, we developed alternative

and layered space. This was achieved through the

methods for articulating different areas. As the design

multiplication, transformation, and agitation of CONVERSATIONs

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linear flows. This process transforms a tabula rasa

LT: That is the hardest and most time consuming part

site into a rich matrix of flows and intensities,

of the process, actually.

effectively urbanizing the rural landscape.

But almost immediately, this process of amplifying complexity had to be reversed. The clarity of these initial diagrams is threatened by the myriad requirements of construction, structure, program, and so forth. The process of generating complexity very quickly became, as you said, a struggle for clarity.

To visit BMW and not have one’s attention clamored for by sprinkler pipes, HVAC, signage, and all those workaday elements that undermine so many buildings is no small achievement. All of those elements are there, but each has been marshaled into alignment with the broader ambitions of the project. For me, that is the real achievement of the building. It demonstrates that it is possible for an architect not to throw her hands up in defeat in the face of the brute realities of construction.

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CONVERSATIONs