Five Little-Known Stage Designs from Zaha Hadid's Archives
A new London exhibition reveals Zaha Hadid's overlooked contributions to dance, opera, and music.
1Foundation Reopens in Clerkenwell
The Zaha Hadid Foundation has reopened its headquarters at 10 Bowling Green Lane in London following a refurbishment by Studio KA. This Victorian schoolhouse now hosts the exhibition Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance. The event marks the tenth anniversary of the architect's passing and showcases her previously overlooked work in stage design.
2Curating the Hidden Archives
Senior researcher Catherine Howe and guest curator Libby Sellers organized the exhibition after discovering numerous records while unpacking boxes. The collection features five specific projects illustrated through models, drawings, and costumes. These items highlight Hadid's desire to work across various media rather than being confined to traditional architectural building projects alone.
3Mozart at Disney Hall
In 2014, Hadid designed a dynamic stage for Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The set featured a spiralling white platform with sections that could rise and fall to mirror shifting performer relationships. Its curvature echoed the design language of her Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, completed in 2012.
4Pop Music Tour Innovation
Hadid’s 1999 commission for the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife World Tour marked her first major pop concert project. The design utilized an interconnected, reconfigurable system of ramps tailored for different venues. By incorporating projection surfaces, she transformed the stage into a multimedia environment, demonstrating her early interest in blending architecture with performance.
5Ballet and Digital Abstraction
The 1999 Metapolis Ballet project embodied Hadid’s signature abstract design language through digital drawings. The final stage elements consisted of lightweight bridge structures that dancers moved, reconfigured, and wore during performances. The exhibition displays these alongside a costume Hadid designed, showcasing the physical integration of her complex geometric forms with human movement.
6Music Video Pavilion Exploration
For the 1990 Groningen event What a Wonderful World!, Hadid developed a pavilion exploring how music videos translate into public space. The structure featured a bright color palette and angular walkways with shifting floors. She exhibited this alongside works by fellow deconstructivist architects including Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, and Peter Eisenman.
7Early Performance Experiments
The d1 project from 1989 originated as an abstract sketch for a Hamburg architectural commission. It later served as the basis for a dance performance by choreographer Rosemary Butcher. Dancers navigated a monochromatic network of lines on the floor, treating the stage as a cityscape, representing Hadid's first dedicated performance design work.
8Future Archival Discoveries
Chairman Rana Hadid noted that the foundation's archive contains approximately 300,000 items, ranging from sketches to digital material. This exhibition serves as an initial step in exploring these treasures to help younger generations understand Hadid's creative process. The show remains open to the public until March 27, 2027, in London.