H E Y D A R A L I Y E V C U L T U R A L C E N T R E

Zaha Hadid Architects was appointed as design architects of the Heydar Aliyev Center following a

competition in 2007. The Center, designed to become the primary building for the nation’s cultural programs, breaks from the rigid and

often monumental Soviet architecture that is so prevalent in Baku, aspiring instead to express the sensibilities of Azeri culture and the optimism of a

nation that looks to the future.

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DESIGN CONCEPT

The outline of the Heydar Aliyev Center

sets up a persistent, liquid connection

between its encompassing square and

the building's inside. The square, as the

ground surface; open to all as a

component of Baku's urban texture,

ascends to wrap a similarly open inside

space and characterize an arrangement of

occasion spaces devoted to the

aggregate festival of contemporary and

customary Azeri culture. Expand

arrangements, for example, undulations,

bifurcations, folds, and enunciations alter

this court surface into a compositional

scene that plays out a huge number of

capacities: inviting, grasping, and

coordinating guests through various

levels of the inside.

Fluidity in architecture is not new to this region.

In historical Islamic architecture, rows, grids, or

sequences of columns flow to infinity like trees

in a forest, establishing non-hierarchical space.

Continuous calligraphic and ornamental patterns

flow from carpets to walls, walls to ceilings,

ceilings to domes, establishing seamless

relationships and blurring distinctions between

architectural elements and the ground they

inhabit. Our intention was to relate to that

historical understanding of architecture, not

through the use of mimicry or a limiting

adherence to the iconography of the past, but

rather by developing a firmly contemporary

interpretation, reflecting a more nuanced

understanding. Responding to the topographic

sheer drop that formerly split the site in two, the

project introduces a precisely terraced

landscape that establishes alternative

connections and routes between public plaza,

building, and underground parking. This solution

avoids additional excavation and landfill, and

successfully converts an initial disadvantage of

the site into a key design feature.

SITE LOCATION :Heydar Aliyev prospekti, Baku, Azerbaijan

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Sections

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MATERIALS USED FOR THE EXTERNAL

STRUCTURE

The Heydar Aliyev Center principally consists of two

collaborating systems: a concrete structure combined with a space

frame system. The particular surface geometry fosters

unconventional structural solutions, such as the introduction of curved

‘boot columns’ to achieve the inverse peel of the surface from

the ground to the West of the building, and the ‘dovetail’ tapering

of the cantilever beams that support the building envelope to

the East of the site. The space frame is composed of a special steel tube-and-nodes system (a

product of MERO-TSK International).Glass fiber reinforced

plastics (GFRP) and glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) panels

are the predominant materials used in the façade system. By eliminating the need for steel reinforcing, the panels offer a

lightweight construction method, and they can be individually

molded to form the curved shapes required by the design.

For Facade:- GFRP (Glass Fibre Reinforced Polyester)- GFRC (Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete)

For Main Structure:- Reinforced Concrete-SteelFrame Structure

-Composite Beams and Decks-Steel Tube and Node System for Space

Frame

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THE AUDITORIUM

- American White Oak

-CNC formed MDF members

For the Auditorium, the architects used "Engineered

Craftsmanship",that involved working with Rhino software to accurately

construct a carcass from horizontal and vertical MDF members.These

members were CNC-formed, so they could be assembled to form a shape,

which is a precise offset of the finished surface as modeled by Zaha

Hadid Architects. Next, this surface was covered with four layers

of accurately dimensioned 10 mm x 10 mm American white oak

strips, successively glued, nailed, worked, and adjusted until they precisely matched the geometry modeled by the architect, checked

with digitally generated templates. This was the

crafted stage of the operation. Each bay of

the auditorium comprises three sections, one for

the ceiling and two for its flanking walls,

assembled from 8 to 15 subcomponents.

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THE MUSEUM

-Marble -Metallic Finishing

-Day/Night reading LED Lighting

Other than the interesting contrast between the old

fashioned portraits with the irregular shaped modernist

infotables, a more interesting factor of the Hayder Aliyev

Museum is its lighting.To emphasize the continuous

relationship between the building’s exterior and interior,

the lighting of the Heydar Aliyev Center has been very carefully considered. The lighting design strategy differentiates the day

and night reading of the building. During the day, the

building’s volume reflects light, constantly altering the Center’s

appearance according to the time of day and viewing

perspective. 

During the daytime, the lighting is a

subtle shade while during the night the whole area transforms drastically

portraying the promising

modern future of Azerbaijan

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