a few months ago, the chance to see several stunning designs by zaha hadid lured us to innsbruck, the capital of tyrol. little did we know, of course, that by the time of our arrival the world-famous iranian architect would just have passed away. hence, sadly enough, our trip turned into a long goodbye, an homage to one of the great artistic visionaries of our time.

hadid’s both elegant and joyous design of the bergiselschanze ranks amongst her best work and is, if not beloved, at least respected even by her harshest critics. rightfully so: its balancing system, whose mathematics are basically impossible to be explained concisely, is as complicated as it seems effortless. the official website describes it as follows:

“hereby the preload force is transferred into the stiffening girder as compressive force. the end cross girders and the spatial diagonal piping in the support frame take on the lateral distribution of the centric preload forces in the lateral frame supports.”

much rather, we would want you to have a look at our favorite shots…