London-based Zaha Hadid Architects have completed the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, a new arts venue in Baku created to celebrate Azerbaijani culture through an on-going programme of exhibitions and presentations on the country’s history and language.
Scheduled to open in September 2013, the 57,000 square-metre building is designed as a fluid volume that folds up from the landscape to form a single continuous surface. Not a single straight line was used throughout the 12,027 composite panels that create a skin of over 90 linear kilometres of metal beams with a roof covering 40,000 square metres. Glazed openings between folds offer several entrances that lead into the five inside floors that contain exhibition spaces, a library, a museum and a conference centre.
