One with her surroundings

Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iran in 1950. She studied at the Architectural Association in London where she then received her Diploma in Architecture with Merit in 1977. Zaha opened her own architectural studio in 1979, and has taken first prize in at least four major competitions. She taught at the AA in London. She has then taught at universities all around the world, and is currently teaching at the University of Applied Arts of Vienna and in Yale University, Connecticut.

She has received the Mies Vander Rohe Prize for European Architecture in 2003. Zaha has also received the Pritzker Prize in 2004, and was the first woman to ever receive this award. She is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (in 2000). She has also designed a vast variety of things, such as restaurants, fire stations, a BMW Plant, furniture, appliances, and a model of a car called a "Z-car."

Zaha really seems to work with and around the environment. One example is in her piece "Ice Storm" she asks the owners of the building to ask that the visitors live and use the structure- to explore and to rethink all that you know. Although they ask that you mainly " rethink our ideas of posture, demeanour, and lifestyle." "Ice Storm" is also a latent instead of an manifested environment.

-----"In hope that outdated planning restraints might be abandoned, we presented a proposal that celebrated the dynamic possibilities of the urban landscape by extending the public realm into professional offices, thereby pushing forward the frontier where modern architecture can contribute to the quality of city life."

Humanitarian Ban

Shigeru Ban is a member of the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR), and with this he helps with building projects for disasterous areas. One example of his help in needed times would be the Paper Log Houses. There three small villages of these 'log' houses in Kobe, Kaynasli, Bhuj for the victims of earthquakes. These small houses are put up by volunteers very easily using small differences in each location. Like in Kaynasli, Turkey they made the cabins a bit bigger because of the larger average family size, and inside the paper tubes there was more insulation.

He also created a new 'tent' structure using the paper tubes mentioned before, to help the victims of other disasters. Before the tents were made from metal pipes, but the people would sell them for more money and them cut down a lot of trees, cauing major desruction on that particular area. These tents have help create a sort of home for those victims until they can get something more like the log houses.

He is really into keeping himself from using materials, for say a expo, that are just going to be taken down soon and throw away. Instead he has fiqured out ways to use exo-friendly materials that can be reused and up in a different place creating a entire different space. One example of this is the paper tubing that he uses in many of his designs, then recycles them and reuses them later on.

'Universal Space'

Shigeru Ban's main focus in his work is to create a 'univeral space' in the design. One way he has done that is by not just using a traditional four wall house with a couple windows splattered about. One exmaple of this would be Wall-less house.

The Wall-less house has no walls technically, but sliding glass panels that hide away instead. It seems to just be one wide open space with a few pieces of furniture scattered about. It is like you areone with nature in this indoor/outdoor house. This house has slidign glass panels that are hidden yet can be rolled out to protect the 'inside' of the house from weather.

Another example of the universal space concept is the Curtain Wall House. The Curtain Wall House has two walls in the back corner and separating the bathroom from the rest of the space, but just two big curtains as the front walls against the street, but like the Wall-less house, it has a glass wall the comes out by the balconies to protect the inside from weather.