The director of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), Patrik Schumacher, has vowed the studio will continue to flourish despite the death of their pioneering founder earlier this year, telling CLAD they remain “the go-to address when it comes to major projects of significance.”

In an exclusive, in-depth interview featured in the latest issue of CLADmag, Schumacher spoke of his ongoing grief following Zaha Hadid’s death in March, and the desire of the firm to continue her legacy.

“The focus at the moment is on establishing the notion in the world that ZHA is continuing; that there's a strong collective leadership which is the same as it was and that the way we develop projects – which was always collaborative – is continuing,” he said. “We remain in good spirits, we are ambitious.”

“The secret of Zaha’s success was that she didn’t insist on only using her own ideas,” he added. “She was someone who delivered a fantastic new universe of possibility through her radical innovations, but she also allowed younger staff to flourish and exercise their own creativity competitively. That’s the way I came into this.

“At ZHA, we filter out the best ideas, then we work together to develop them. It’s a very collaborative, collective process, and it's the secret of our versatility. Our projects share DNA but are quite diverse – more diverse than you find from other so-called star architects, where there’s more of a sense that one person is the creator. That wasn’t the case then, and it’s not the case now.”

At the time of Hadid’s death, the practice had 36 projects on-site in 21 countries, which they have vowed to complete. The first of these, the Salerno Maritime Museum, opened in Italy in June in a ceremony that ZHA staff flew from around the world to attend. The second project, the Port House in Antwerp, opened in September.

Two further projects are set to open this year: the King Abdullah Petroleum Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the Mathematics Gallery in London's Science Museum. Meanwhile new projects, such as the Urban Heritage Administration Centre in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, continue to arrive.

“Just as when Zaha was around, we are always looking for the next step of development,” Schumacher said. “There's a strong DNA in this company, a strong set of overall principles, but there's also a process of maturation and continuous innovation, and that's something I'm focusing on. I will be the main driver of this innovation, but we’ve also built a research team over the years, and have several other major creative figures within the team who will help pull this along.”

Asked about the types of project he wanted to focus on, Schumacher stated, “We’re curious and interested in nearly everything.”

“We want to demonstrate the universality of our approach,” he added. “We do look for an opportunity to innovate – most projects have some element of novelty and complexity, so that would be be a minimum criteria, but otherwise we are very open.”

In his own words

Patrik Schumacher on Zaha Hadid and the future of ZHA

When did you become aware of Zaha Hadid?

She was a star in the 1980s before I even stepped foot into her office. She had a radical influence. In schools of architecture around the world students looked at her drawings and started started to imitate them. That landscape-like flow was hugely influential.

What do you see as Zaha’s greatest achievement?

Something she could have achieved without ever having built anything, which is the radical transformation of what it means to design the repertoire; the fluidity, the curvilinear nature of it, the dynamism of the language she explored in her paintings.

What was she like as a person?

She was very, very driven in terms of always excelling, always outshining everybody else – in terms of the competition there was enormous pressure. She was very intense, and therefore could be very unhappy if things weren’t coming together, but that was born out of this will for excellence.

She was able to maintain close friendships with staff and students, people from all walks of life. There was no snobbery at all about her. She had very few filters in terms of formality in intimate circles. She was very frank, very entertaining and fun.

Would you like to grow ZHA in terms of numbers of employees?

I would be happy to grow, because I see the advantage of a larger portfolio so that you are more robust in case something goes wrong in one arena. I also like the idea of having more resources to invest in research, to have lecture series for our staff. These things make for a more exciting life for everybody.

Do you have a minimum budget when considering which projects to take on?

We’re competitive with our fees but we can’t compete with very run-of-the-mill firms or ideas that are just pulled out of a drawer.

Sometimes we’re willing to take a loss on a job if we find an opportunity that is intellectually interesting. Particular small projects usually apply a loss, but we're willing to do them because of the prominence of the site or the motivation for the staff – like the Serpentine Sackler Gallery [in London, UK] for instance.

We take a loss on many small projects, happily. But we can’t on big projects.

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FEATURE: Interview – Patrik Schumacher