Google has added the works of Zaha Hadid, a world-renowned architect and painter, to their ever-growing list of virtual reality-based cultural and art experiences. The VR content is crafted from an exhibit devoted to the late Hadid at the Serpentine Galleries in London. Google used their super high-resolution art camera to capture Hadid’s creations and craft the VR exhibit in exquisite detail. Just like with some previous efforts at putting paintings into VR, Google has brought the content to life, and put the user inside of it to experience it firsthand, as seen in the attached 360 degree, Cardboard-compatible YouTube videos. The VR exhibit was made in a concerted effort between the Serpentine Galleries, the Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Group, and Google Arts & Culture.
Zaha Hadid lived from 1950 to 2016. Though she lived out most of her 66 years primarily as an architect, she also received praise for her painting talent, becoming one of the most famous modern artists in the world. Her first love in the art world was also the way that she conveyed many of her design concepts. Hadid’s work did not shun technology or lean far enough toward the abstract to exclude it; rather, Hadid embraced the technological advances happening around her, and it shows in her work. In the VR exhibits, massive cityscapes and insanely innovative building proposals spring up right before a user’s eyes, allowing them to get a small glimpse into how everything interlocks, and perhaps into Hadid’s mindset and intentions in creating the proposals.
Hadid was a big believer in the power of innovation and experimentation, which does quite a lot to explain her fascination with technology and her willingness to build architectural design proposals around it. Bold predictions, stark lines, and imaginative application and combination of otherwise cliche architectural tropes like minimalism and neoclassical flair characterize Hadid’s earlier works, which are the ones on show in the gallery and in Google’s VR experience. A number of Hadid’s incredibly innovative proposals have come to life over the years, but all of the ones shown here have never seen the light of day outside of the canvas, and now in the virtual world.