'Best known female architect' angrily defends gigantic vagina The architect behind Qatar's 2022 World Cup Al Wakrah stadium has denied her creation looks like a giant vagina, describing such comparisons as "nonsense". Artist's impression of the Al Wakrah stadium. Pic: Zaha Hadid Architects No sooner were the covers whipped off the Al Wakrah design, than pundits worldwide weighed in, …
I remember some years ago an architect I worked with designed a 12000m2 office with pitched roofs shaped like tits and in the center court a conference suite shaped like bollocks and penis.
He was not amused when I told him that I thought he had some form of fetish.
Seems all architects are the same.
And—for my part—, unfortunately, I'd never heard of this particular 'best-known female architect'. Not that I have posters of architects up on my walls or... whatever.
It's difficult to argue against the interpretation of the design as 'like a super-stylised vulva', given its bilateral symmetry, the opening at the top, and the general and generous swoop-i-ness throughout. Either that or a bicycle helmet. On reflection, I'm willing to concede that people tend to see in new things that with which they're familiar—or which they have on the brain.
Yeah, she's in the top dozen world architects, easily. Personally, I think of her as the architectural version of Helmut Newton (photographer) - ostentatious, glossy and completely soulless.
Most of her stuff tends towards the pointier end of the scale, but some more blobular shapes are happening lately.
I have to admit her design for the Broad Museum here at Michigan State leaves me cold.
But hell, what do I know about architecture? (A little, actually, having had a course on it in grammar school. But less than a enthusiast, to say nothing of a professional.) To be honest, I don't think I care for most of the architectural styles from the 20th century, to say nothing of this one. My own house is a Queen Anne, with its inefficient irregular massing and the interior chopped up into lots of rooms, and that's the way I like it. You kids get your open floorplans off my damn lawn!
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Not wanting to get too PC, but when men design giant pointy buildings everyone is like 'Oooh - look at the size of that.'
A girl puts a vag around the pitch, and suddenly she has archi-cooties and half of the Reg Office 11 become sniggering Viz-reading spotty teenagers (as usual).
Hadid's actually a damn fine architect, with an impressive track record.
She may or may not have done this as a joke. But even if she did - so what?
The gender of the architect had no bearing on what I thought the design looked like. Until this article, I had no idea if the person in question was male or female.
If something looks like a foo, it looks like a foo regardless of the designers ownership of biological inspiration.
I doubt that had it been designed by a man -as one or two commentors have already suggested- the comparrison would have been any different.
It's currently got a large sheet covering the offending (albeit not like the Qatari stadium) side.
Amusingly, the developers' defended themselves with (not verbatim): "this is a temporary problem as the sun will soon be at an angle that doesn't cause this problem"... somehow forgetting what seasons are...
But, as the other poster said, apparently they're going to coat the glass in something less reflective.
Now that they mentioned it, it kinda does look like one but, I don't get what the problem is anyway. There are plenty of guys and gals that like vaginas. I bet the detractors are mad that they can't make a stadium look like a prick, in which case this "problem" does make *them* look like pricks.
Vaginas are great things when there's a woman attached to them. A vagina without a woman is terribly out of context and doesn't make any sense. If you were walking down the street and saw a vagina just sitting there, by itself, on the sidewalk it would be really disturbing. I mean, what would you do with it? Is it ambulatory? Did someone drop it? Is it sentient? If I touch with my boot will my charge card be billed the regular fee plus a fetish charge?
The implications of a giant disembodied vagina are even worse. What if a giant alien flies by and sees it but notices it is crawling with what appears to be thousands of tiny critters will the space giant attempt to eliminate the infestation? It's already shaved, will it try to bleach the entire planet? Will all of mankind be killed by due to a vagina? I always figured vaginas would be our downfall.
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