Heydar Aliyev Center
Zaha Hadid's curving white cultural centre of 2012, with a museum, galleries and auditorium.
The Heydar Aliyev Center opened in 2012 on a sloping site east of central Baku. Zaha Hadid Architects designed a continuous folded surface that rises out of the plaza and wraps the building without a single right angle, clad in glass-fibre reinforced concrete and polyester panels set on a space-frame structure. The interior is organised around a white atrium with a sweeping staircase, and the building won the Design Museum's Design of the Year award in 2014, the first time a woman had taken that prize.
Inside are a museum of Azerbaijani history and culture, temporary exhibition galleries, a library and an auditorium seating about a thousand. The museum floors display carpets, national costume, musical instruments, ceramics and miniature books, together with material on Heydar Aliyev including his collection of cars. The centre programmes visiting exhibitions of international art and design, concerts and conferences, and the surrounding park holds outdoor sculpture and is open beyond museum hours.
Highlights
- Continuous folded white shell with no right angles
- Design of the Year award, Design Museum, 2014
- Museum floors of carpets, costume, instruments and miniature books
- Auditorium seating about 1,000 and temporary exhibition galleries
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