ZAHA HADID FOUNDATION OPENS ITS LONDON STUDIO TO THE PUBLIC
Ten years after Zaha Hadid’s passing, the Zaha Hadid Foundation is opening the doors of the architect’s former London headquarters to the public. Located at 10 Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell, the Victorian schoolhouse that housed her practice for more than three decades has been transformed into a cultural space dedicated to architecture, design and the arts. Opening on November 3rd, 2026, following a preview on October 29th, the refurbished building will accommodate galleries, a lecture hall, learning facilities and collection displays, alongside exhibitions, workshops and creative residencies. What was once the nerve center of one of architecture’s most experimental practices is preparing to welcome a rather different audience.
The renovation, led by Studio KA, founded by Katherine Nolan and Alex Butterworth, takes a careful approach to the Grade II-listed building, originally constructed in the early 1870s. The ground floor has been reorganized to improve circulation, while original fireplaces and doorways have been reopened and new finishes introduce colors drawn from Hadid’s paintings. Rather than erasing the building’s more recent history, the intervention preserves distinctive details introduced during her occupation, including Z-shaped door pulls and shard-like flooring insets. Furniture and objects created by Zaha Hadid Design also inhabit the refurbished interiors, ensuring that the architect’s unmistakable visual language remains part of the everyday experience.
portait of Zaha Hadid | image by Giovanna Silva
ZAHA HADID’S STAGE DESIGNS ON DISPLAY
The opening program looks beyond the buildings that made Hadid famous, beginning with Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance, the Foundation’s first collection-based exhibition devoted to the architect’s stage and set designs. Curated by Catherine Howe and guest curator Libby Sellers, the exhibition traces her experiments with performance environments across dance, opera and pop music. Projects range from her 1989 collaboration with choreographer Rosemary Butcher and the Music Video Pavilion in Groningen to stage designs for the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife World Tour and Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Together, they reveal how her investigations into movement, abstraction and spatial geometry extended well beyond conventional architecture.
In the second gallery, London-based artist LionHeart presents The Rebar Beneath, a commissioned 11-minute, dual-channel video installation combining film, poetry and performance. Developed through research into Hadid’s archive, the work examines the structures beneath visible forms through layered projections and fragmented spatial compositions. Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Mona Chalabi contributes The Completely Exhausting Inexhaustibility of Zaha Hadid, a visual timeline mapping the architect’s life and creative output. Installed in the foyer, the animated work is projected onto a textile surface inspired by an Issey Miyake coat once worn by Hadid. The program also includes public talks, tours, workshops and a pop-up AA Bookshop.
Katherine Nolan and Alex Butterworth from Studio KA | image by Matthew Blunderfield
EXPERIMENTAL JETSET REIMAGINES ZAHA HADID’S IDENTITY
The reopening comes with a new graphic identity by Amsterdam-based Experimental Jetset, extending Hadid’s appetite for experimentation into the Foundation’s visual communications. Rather than relying on a static logo, the designers have developed a flexible typographic language shaped by a distorting grid, allowing letters and compositions to shift across different applications. The system draws on ideas of transformation and continuous questioning that characterized Hadid’s practice, translating them into a contemporary graphic framework. A redesigned website by London-based Made by ON, scheduled to launch during the week of October 12th, will incorporate the identity while offering expanded access to the Foundation’s programs and archive.
To mark this new chapter, the Foundation joins the Architectural Association and Serpentine for 89° of Zaha Hadid, a two-day symposium taking place across their respective London venues on October 30th and 31st, the latter marking what would have been the architect’s 76th birthday. The initiative reflects a broader ambition to activate the Foundation’s archive through research, education and exchanges with emerging creative voices. As Rana Hadid, Chair of the Foundation’s Trustees, explains, the intention is to ‘preserve her legacy while carrying her ideas forward.’ With a former schoolhouse turned architectural studio now becoming a public cultural destination, the Foundation is treating that legacy as something to keep experimenting with, rather than simply preserve behind glass.
Zaha Hadid Architects, Così Fan Tutte, Model, Los Angeles, USA, 2014 © Zaha Hadid Foundation