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Burnham Pavilions, Chicago, USA
Daniel Burnham, a well-known figure, was one of the authors of the Plan of Chicago, also known as the Burnham Plan, reshaped Chicago's central area starting from 1909. London-based Zaha Hadid and Amsterdam-based Ben van Berkel of UNStudio have designed architectural exhibits in Millennium Park to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this plan. The statues are located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, in the Chase Promenade South.
Zaha Hadid is the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Her pavilion is a tensioned fabric shell fitted over a curving aluminum framework that is composed of 7,000 individually bent pieces, no two of which are alike. The shell is made up of a mere 24 custom-made panels of fabric. The interior skin also serves as the screen for a video installation that explores Chicago's past and future. It is by London-based, Chicago-trained filmmaker Thomas Gray. Hadid represents avant-garde modern architecture while Burnham was a classicist, so local architects had some arguments around this fact. The pavilion is described as resembling a "futuristic camping tent". As Hadid said "the structure is about reinvention and improvement on an urban scale and about welcoming the future with innovative ideas and technologies".
The words are unable to describe the beauty and perfectness of this pavilion when at night you're plunged into the world of fantastic illumination.
By Lilit Khalatyan, www.building.am
