Memorial day - 23

The subject of Memorial day 16, published on 26th September, was Urban Nebula a work by Zaha Hadid installed on the Royal Festival Hall podium as part of this years London Design Festival.

Also installed in the Hall's square, adjacent to Belvedere Road, was Amanda Levete's 18 metre long curved wall composed of 300 Corian "Prototile leaves".

Asked if the work "Prototile" is a piece of public art, the Welsh architect, Levete was reported to reply "it's in an in-between territory where we're exploring a material and producing a non-functional subject."









Corian is the registered trademark of one of many building materials collectively known as solid surface. A thermosetting plastic composed of acrylic polymer and alumina trihydrate made by DuPont. The 300 pieces were vacuum-formed.

Memorial day - 16

The majority of subjects of the Wednesday "Memorial Day" blogs have been in location for many years and are permanent installations. But today's work of public art was a temporary exhibit outside the Royal Festival Hall, as part of the London Design Festival.




The work is described as -

"Urban Nebula by Zaha Hadid is an in-between project, hovering between street furniture, sculpture and a furniture piece in its own right. Composed of 150 pre-cast concrete blocks, courtesy of concrete company Aggregate Industries. It stands 2.5 metres high.





With its polished and fluid surface,
the piece explores sensuality in a material that doesn't often evoke that idea.

Charles Walker, of Hadid's office, who worked on the project says, 'Ben Evans was interested in Zaha working with concrete because of its plastic potential. When you look at the history of concrete, there's always been experimentation with its plastic form, but at a monolithic level'"


Zaha Hadid was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in its 26 year history. She has defined a radically new approach to architecture by creating buildings, such as the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, with multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, she received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to London to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. After graduating she worked with her former teacher, Dutch architect Rem Kolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977.