Loading ...Zaha Hadid's Middle East Centre lands in Oxford
“Bridge building.” Dr Eugene Rogan, director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, employed these two words last week before, during and after the naming ceremony of the centre’s new Investcorp Building, which opens this month and has been designed by Zaha Hadid, who talked of bridge building, too.
In her keynote pre-dinner speech to friends of the centre, Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar also spoke of bridge building, as did Nemir Kirdar, the Iraqi-born founder and executive chairman of Investcorp, who has paid for the well-crafted new building that bridges a gap in taut and shimmering stainless steel between St Antony’s gentle scatter of modest Victorian buildings.
So many people spoke, in fact, of “bridge building”, it was just possible with eyes half-closed to mistake this event for a structural engineering conference. But the bridge building in question was clearly metaphorical as well as physical, while Zaha Hadid’s exquisite if modest new building is clearly the work of artistry and landscaping as well as structural ingenuity. No matter, though, how many times the phrase was bandied about, “bridge building” were the mots justes.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk