‘A Glimpse of Another World’ - Zaha Hadid’s Mobile Art Pavilion

Abstract

This review of the Mobile Art Pavilion (MAP) designed by Zaha Hadid for the fashion house Chanel considers the innovative form, materials and space of the building, and ponders the irony of its permanent installation in the grounds of Paris’s Institute of the Arab World. In 2006, wishing to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Chanel 2.55 quilted purse, the French fashion house Chanel decided to stage a touring exhibition of artworks inspired by this vintage style handbag. An opportunistic exercise in brand awareness and promotion for Chanel, this exhibition was to feature photographs, films, sculpture, drawings, paintings and installations by twenty well-established contemporary artists from around the world. Chanel’s Creative Director, Karl Lagerfeld, believed that instead of touring international art galleries, the exhibition, like the handbag, should itself be mobile, contained in its own recognisable structure, which would travel from city to city. Lagerfeld approached the award-winning Iraqi British architect Zaha Hadid, convinced that there was nobody else for the commission. The result was the Mobile Art Pavilion (MAP), a white Taurus-shaped single-storey structure assembled from moulded plastic panels held in place by a steel frame (Figure 12.1). Not incidentally, the general effect is not unlike the quilted surface of the Chanel bag. Lagerfeld was likely familiar with Hadid’s innovative approach to design, and the fact that she had already in 2000 designed a slick, transportable pavilion – the first of the annual Serpentine Pavilions for London’s Kensington Park. However, unlike Hadid’s Serpentine Pavilion, which updates the tented pavilions of old with a folding angular steel-framed construction, the MAP is much more curvilinear, organic and asymmetrical. Like a couture dress, it has the impact of a confident and self-congratulatory aesthetic statement. In addition to the Venice Biennale, where it premiered in 2007, the MAP was originally intended to ‘tour’ five major cities: Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Moscow and London. It never reached the last two destinations. Each location was visited and studied in advance so that climatic and demographic factors could be incorporated into the design. The pavilion was built in an industrial zone in North Yorkshire, in northern England, and was then transported to Venice for the 52 Biennale. Over the next several months, it was installed at the Star Ferry Car Park in Hong Kong; the National Yoyogi Stadium in Tokyo’s Olympic Plaza; and the Rumsey Playfield in New York’s Central Park. In 2011 the MAP was then shipped to Paris, as it had been gifted to the Institute of the Arab World (IMA), a relevant and increasingly important museum since gaining status amongst the prestigious group of Paris’ Musees nationaux. There, it was happily received, and permanently installed in the forecourt, in honour of the architect Zaha Hadid’s Arab heritage, and to highlight the magnitude of contemporary Arab creativity (Figure 12.2). It has since become an annexe exhibition space known as Le Mobile Art. Ironically, though, it had now lost the very mobility that had lent it that name. The design of the MAP can be considered in the light of a recent trend in pavilion design, which has in part developed under the aegis of the Serpentine Gallery. Since 2000 when Hadid was commissioned to build the first Serpentine Pavilion, London’s Kensington Gardens have been witness to a temporary building being erected here every summer, by a contemporary architect (or artist) of international standing. In Figure 12.1: The Mobile Art Pavilion in Central Park, New York, 2008. Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects. Photograph: John Linden.