The ‘Future Cities’ monographic exhibition examines the innovations shaping 21st century urbanism and traces the renowned projects and research by ZHA that are redefining urban landscapes around the world. Charting the multi-disciplinary approach that places ZHA at the forefront in developing new ideas and concepts to improve how the industry designs and constructs, the exhibition showcases the investigative spirit within ZHA’s ground-breaking architecture.

In more than 70 award-winning projects in cities on six continents, together with almost 60 works currently in development, ZHA is one of the world’s most consistently inventive architectural studios. Over the last 40 years ZHA has collaborated with visionary clients, communities and industry experts while receiving the highest honours from civic, professional, and academic institutions across the globe.

Since ZHA’s founder, the late Zaha Hadid, first visited China more than 40 years ago, the company’s architecture has evolved from the same organisational and structural systems evident within nature that have defined China’s historic architectural traditions.

Marrying pioneering digital design methods with ecologically sound materials and sustainable construction practices, ZHA does not consider the disparate parts, but instead works to understand them as a whole. The aim is to deliver practical solutions for the defining challenges of our generation. In an era of technological advancements that are rapidly changing the way we live, work and interact, the spirit of creativity and innovation within ZHA’s architecture nurtures the myriad of possibilities that enable urban societies to flourish.

Patrik Schumacher, principal of ZHA, explains: “The motivation to move into cities, ever larger, ever denser cities, and into ever larger buildings, is clear: we come together to network, to synergise knowledge, to exchange and to cooperate. The built environment becomes an information-rich, empowering and exhilarating 360-degree interface of communication and networking machine. “In the future, even more than is evident already now, this super-dense build up will be a mixed-use build up, where multiple life-processes intersect. These life-processes need to be ordered in intricate ways that nevertheless remain legible and thereby empowering.”