This video series is realized in collaboration with ‘Architectures’ — a series presented by the Arts and Culture Bureau — offering unique views into the concepts and forms of built landmarks. every week, we present one building, accompanied by a short video from their youtube channel.
Located in Wolfsburg — a German town of 120,000 habitants founded by Volkswagen in 1938 — Zaha Hadid’s swooping Phaeno Science Center is a signature piece of the late architect’s work and style. Aiming to harness the “Bilbao Effect” for its own town, the science center is a center of learning and amusement and centrally located in the city’s urban fabric and features a striking architecture that gives Wolfsburg a powerful symbol of identity and pride.
At the time the design was presented, Hadid was mostly known for theoretical “paper architecture,” along with a few built projects such as the Vitra fire station, a tram terminus in Strasbourg and a ski jump. However, her determination to design a new icon for the town resonated, and she was awarded this project, a milestone for her firm.
Standing 16 meters (52 feet) high and 150 meters (492 feet) long, the Phaeno Science Center is a single triangular block, all in concrete. The project satisfies both an accomplishment for the architect and the town of Wolfsburg as well as the creation of a space for experimentation, curiosity and discovery.
Concrete and glass make the forms of the building, without giving away too much about what the building houses. Standing atop 10 upside-down cones — each unique in its curvature and inclination — the Phaeno Center seems to lean dangerously on itself, emphasizing the geometry and tension of the floating volume. The legs of the building are habitable, containing various functional amenities to service the above exhibition floor and facilitate vertical circulation.
“A long time ago I did many studies on how buildings should land on the ground, how they should occupy the ground,” explains Zaha. “Some buildings need a light presence on the ground, other buildings need a much heavier presence, so we moved away from the idea of the piloti lifting the building off the ground, to a much more complex idea where the structure is occupied.”
Below the Phaeno Science Center; photo by Werner Huthmacher, courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
In an interview, Hadid explains that when she first left Iraq — where she was studying mathematics — she had never seen much connection between architecture and mathematics. It was only 25 years later when she returned to Eastern countries after studying architecture in London that she starts to recognize the links between geometry, trigonometry and architecture, “and it began to make sense.”
The Phaeno Science Center is a space where 250 scientific experiments are displayed for the curious visitor — divided into thematic families such as vision, energy, matter, movement and information. The large open space is one for play, letting visitors wander at will in a free plan punctuated by slopes, galleries, prospects. Those architectural elements create the landscape of the visitor’s visit, comparing to the craters, canyons, slopes and valleys of an organic formation.
It is up to the visitor to construct his or her voyage through the building, as all elements make for an invitation to go from one point to the next, exciting the curiosity of visitors while they interact both with the scientific experiment of the center and the building itself.
Interior of the Phaeno Science Center; (left) photo by Hélène Binet, courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
“Through complexity [ … ] you can create a spatial experience, which can be equally calming or equally thrilling,” says Zaha. “I would call it a landscape. Although the idea is not to copy landscape literally, it is a process where you begin with a new organization of the plan, then you move towards a fluid kind of morphology and flexibility.”
Finally, the building is a medium between the city’s center and the industrial landscape of the Volkswagen factory, where over 50,000 people work. The constellation of windows on the south-facing façade allows the light to filter so that the objects used in experiments do not subdue damage. They evoke speed while fragmenting the cityscape. On the other hand, the northern façade features large windows, looking over the industrial landscape and reminding of the city’s roots and identity.
Enjoy this video feature? You can check out similar movies on buildings like Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus, French architect Jean Prouvé’s House, SANAA’s Rolex Learning Center and the House of Sugimoto.
Cover image: Phaeno Science Center by Zaha Hadid Architects; photo by Werner Huthmacher, courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
This video is directed by Richard Copans and coproduced by the Ministere de la Culture et de la Communication Direction de l’Architecture et du Patrimonies, the Centre Pompidou, ARTE France and Les Films d’Ici, with the support of the Centre National de la Cinématographie.