This volume juxtaposes the dynamic, sweeping planes and angles of the buildings of Zaha Hadid (born 1950) with the equally dynamic art of the Russian Suprematist and Constructivist avant garde-as exemplified in works by Ilya Chashnik, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko and Nikolai Suetin. The book documents an extraordinary, imaginative exhibition curated and designed by Hadid, which examines this conjunction across four themes or aesthetic qualities: Abstraction, Distortion, Fragmentation and Flotation. The exhibition, held in the Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich in the summer of 2010, was effectively a continuous art installation or environment, with the rooms dramatically striated and sculpted in angular black and white patterns. Hadid first explored the Russian avant garde in her graduation project in 1976-77, and this project consequently represents both a culmination and a labor of love for the architect.
