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Witness History

Zaha Hadid's Cincinnati Arts Center

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati opened to the public in 2003 it wowed both the public and critics. With its undulating curves and galleries that interlock, it was the first major project that the renowned architect had completed, and also the first American museum to be designed by a woman. The New York Times hailed the Contemporary Arts Center as the most important building to be completed in the US since the Cold War. Farhana Haider has been listening to archive interviews with the late Zaha Hadid and speaking to Jay Chatterjee, Dean Emeritus at the college of Design Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. He was on the panel that chose her ground-breaking design.

Photo Credit Courtesy of the Contemporary Arts Center

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast with me for Hana Hiver and today as part of a week of programs about architecture around the world, we go back to 2003

0:48.0

when the late Zaha Hadid completed the contemporary art center in Cincinnati.

0:54.0

It was the renowned architect's first large building

0:57.0

and also the first American museum to be designed by a woman.

1:10.0

The building is great and it propels you always towards views to itself or to the outside. Every time you come in because of the walls are shifted.

1:14.0

This is Zaha Hadid describing the Cincinnati Arts Center in a BBC interview.

1:19.8

The Spectacular Museum has undulating curves on the inside and out, as well as galleries that interlock.

1:27.6

Some parts seem to float like a 3D jigsaw, and the flights of stairs don't stack on top of each other like a conventional building.

1:38.0

The staircases don't over line up.

1:40.0

Every time you move to a floor, there's another domain and when you go all the way to the top, looking down, you oversee space.

1:47.0

These things do make a difference.

1:50.0

Jay Chatterjee is Dean Emeritus at the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati.

1:57.0

He was on the panel that chose Zaha's design.

2:00.0

When she started explaining it to us, we were fascinated with Zaha's idea.

2:06.1

She was opposed to having art museums set up as a temple, a Greek temple literally up in the hills that a good art museum

...

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