Moulded Room Shells for a Hotel Floor by Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid is well known for her highly expressive architectural designs. Dynamic shapes – pointed, angled or curved – are her trademark. However, these are not always easy to realise. Not without reason it took a long time for this now famous architect to be able to finally build one of her many competition-winning designs. Her buildings are now a familiar and accepted part of our modern architectural landscape. Often forgotten, however, is that behind those dynamically shaped concrete sculptures is a tremendous technical challenge and achievement. This was also the case with the floor of rooms that Zaha Hadid designed for the Hotel Puerta America in Madrid. Although the end result may look like an easily constructed flowing landscape, it was in fact a complex technical challenge. The walls, ceiling and furniture in these rooms form a single, continuous surface – adding to the complexity are the ever changing contours.