When
I sighted him at the Eko Atlantic City Sales Office Showroom, my heart
skipped a couple of beats. The first fluttering of hope stirred in my soul. Dare
I conceive the idea? Time would certainly tell I thought to myself.
You
see, ‘him’ happened to be Paolo Zilli of Zaha Hadid Architects who was one of
the keynote speakers at the May 2015 edition of the Lagos Architects Forum LAF,
the flagship seminar of the Nigerian Institute of Architects Lagos State
Chapter. The local architectural community was agog to have Zaha Hadid in our
midst, albeit in the form of a representative. On my part, I hoped that perhaps
some of the Zaha Hadid magic design ‘twinkle-dust’ would rub off on me!
During
the course of the seminar, I had enquired about his views on the Chinese government’s
tough stance on the halting of what it had termed ‘weird architecture’. Surely that
classification of their major projects in China was a source of worry for Zaha
Hadid Architects. This was apparently a non- issue as it had been casually
brushed aside as mere propaganda and grandstanding by the Chinese authorities.
Fast
forward to Thursday 31th March, 2016 when the local and international
architectural design community was greeted with the shocking news of the
untimely demise of famous Iraqi born British architect, Zaha Hadid from a
sudden heart attack at the age of 65.
Now,
to the uninitiated, Zaha Hadid is to world of architecture what Steve Jobs is to
the information technology world- a revolutionary. Aside from being one of the
most brilliant contemporary architects with her avant-garde and award winning designs, she was a prolific interior
and product designer lending her famous design skills to a seemingly endless array
of jewellery, furniture, automobiles, household accessories, footwear. Some of
her product designs were showcased as recently as April 2016 at this year’s
Milan Design Week and included a metal and crystal table centrepiece for famous
crystal brand Swarovski for its debut home ware range.
