The building on Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell where Zaha Hadid ran her architecture practice for 30 years opened to the public on Tuesday 3 November as the home of the Zaha Hadid Foundation. Entry is free.
The first exhibition, Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance, looks at the stage sets she designed for dance, opera and pop music. It includes her modular stage for the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife world tour of 1999 and 2000, the first major pop concert she worked on.
The show runs until 27 March 2027, open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 6pm, ianVisits reported. A second gallery shows The Rebar Beneath, a two-screen film work by the artist LionHeart made from Hadid’s archive, until 24 April 2027.
The building
The foundation is in a Grade II-listed Victorian school building from the 1870s. Studio KA, a London practice, has refurbished it with galleries, a learning space, a lecture hall and a display of the collection, The Architects’ Journal reported.
Zaha Hadid Architects moved out of the building in 2021. Hadid died in 2016, and the opening falls in the tenth year since her death. Zaha Hadid Design, which makes furniture and objects from her and her studio’s designs, stays in the building.
What is in the show
The exhibition follows five projects over 25 years, starting with lines taped across a ballroom floor for a 1989 dance piece. The Pet Shop Boys section has ramps, projection surfaces and removable panels, plus an edited concert film of about 33 minutes that includes West End Girls and It’s a Sin. It ends with Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which she designed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2014.
The entrance is hard to find, inside a former school surrounded by taller buildings, ianVisits said. Its advice is to look for the small girls’ entrance.
The essentials
- What: Zaha Hadid Foundation; exhibitions Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance (to 27 March 2027) and LionHeart: The Rebar Beneath (to 24 April 2027)
- Where: 10 Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0BQ
- Open: Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm; closed Sunday and Monday
- Price: free