Are architects running out of ideas???

Zaha Hadid's Performing Arts Center in Abu Dhabi


Zaha Hadid's Museum for Contemporary Arts in Bahrain

I love Zaha Hadid. She comes up with these extraordinary forms which evoke all sorts of thoughts inside your head. But like other Deconstructivist architects she is beginning to repeat herself. Looking at her proposals for an arts center in Abu Dhabi and an art museum in Bahrain, I can't help but think of them as developing phases of the same scheme with slight variations in materials and functions. These projects are supposed to be landmarks, and even though they look great, copying a design idea and pasting it in different countries will take away its uniqueness. If you look at traditional architecture of each country, you can say that they are very repetitive even identical in many cases. Yet its difficult to say that the identical tower houses of Shibam are not unique, or the repeated skyscrapers of Manhatten lack soul.


An arial view of the center in Abu Dhabi


An arial view of the museum in Bahrain