"Cities of the Future" exhibition by ZHA


'Future Cites' exhibition was recently inaugurated at the Future Design Arts Centre in Chengdu, examining how the work of Zaha Hadid Architects has redefined urban landscapes around the world. The monographic show highlights the trends and innovations shaping contemporary urbanism and traces the ideas and concepts that defined ZHA's body of work. The exhibition displays the office's ongoing research and various urban design approaches, presented through visualizations, architectural models and video projections.


With more than 70 built projects and 60 others currently in development, ZHA benefits from a vast experience in a wide range of urban environments, constantly adapting to technological advancements and evolutions in the way we live, work and interact. The exhibition, which will be on display at the Future Design Arts Centre until May 8th, highlights the concepts behind these projects and how they reflect on the ideas that shape 21st-century urban design.


The motivation to move into cities, ever larger, ever denser cities, and into ever-larger buildings is clear: we come together to network, to synergize 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.

- Patrik Schumacher, principal of ZHA