Kamiar Ahari has kindly donated two of his amazing 2.5m long drawings made in Diploma Unit 9, 1978-79. The unit, ran by Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, was ‘concentrated on development of three categories of ‘modern textures’ that could respond to three urbanistic ‘crises’ in the European city’ (Projects Review 1978-79). The meticulously made drawings describe a hotel and a residential building in Bijlmermeer, modernist town in the Netherlands. It comprises of a plan and a beautiful axonometric drawing, mixing exterior and interior, a favoured projection technique in the unit. The design reveals a tension between a modernist repetition and Postmodern details, creating a sort of ‘welfare-state hedonism’.
Talia Davidi, March 2017
