Ali C. Höcek served as an architectural consultant with the Guggenheim over the course of several exhibitions at its two Manhattan museums. Most notably, Höcek served as executive architect for Zaha Hadid’s exhibition The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932, collaborating with Hadid, his friend and former professor at the Architectural Association School in London.
The Great Utopia exhibition was the first time that the Frank Lloyd Wright spaces and Gwathmey Siegel Tower galleries were used as a single entity, so this background also made Höcek a natural fit for his position as the Guggenheim’s lead architect (as well as his close relationship with Hadid). This exhibition is discussed deftly and thoughtfully in an article on the SRGM website written by Ashley Mendelsohn. [1]
Guggenheim / The Great Utopia
Hadid was the first architect to design an exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum, and this was a perfect fit for her as well. As Mendelsohn notes, “Constructivist and Suprematist artists had greatly impacted her practice . . . abstraction liberated Hadid from conventions and dogmas within architecture, “instead of architectural drawing she used painting as an alternative design tool. ACHA’s office has an original bound set of ink design drawings prepared by Hadid by hand and manipulated on a specific copy machine from her office. In referring to them, Mendelsohn aptly notes that they show her process of thinking through painting.
The design of the installation unfolds from the artwork on display. Mendelsohn sees these connections “in the vitrines and partition walls, the bright red zigzag wall and overlapping planks positioned over the monitor’s double-height overlook.” In addition, Hadid’s process paintings for The Great Utopia reveal that she initially reimagined Malevich’s abstract architectural forms as a curved vitrine system, embracing the arc of Wright’s ramps. In the exhibition’s final realization, however, Hadid took a more fragmented approach, installing a series of vitrines that pierced through the rotunda’s structural web walls.
A hand-written fax from Schumacher to Höcek demonstrating how Hadid’s design process was communicated through faxes to the exhibition team – a time and world ago – but reassuring that the principle of connecting through words and drawings remains the same despite the evolution of the medium.
Viewing the process drawings and paintings juxtaposed with the photographs of the exhibition installed in the museum, it’s incredible to see how the collaboration between Hadid, Schumacher, and the Guggenheim’s exhibition team actualized Hadid’s ambitious vision for the space. Hadid’s paintings and their materialization in the Guggenheim encapsulate values that she took from the Russian and Soviet avant-garde: weightlessness, fragmentation, and fluidity.
Project Credits
ACHA Team: Ali C. Höcek
Lighting Designer: SRGM
Art Handlers: SRGM
Structural Engineer: Guy Nordenson
Plexiglass Contractor: Just Plastics
Pedestals, Platforms: Museum Quality Pedestals
Photography: SRGM
[1] Attribution to Ashley Mendelsohn’s article on the SRGM website, “Painting for the Guggenheim: Zaha Hadid’s Exhibition Design Process,” October 20, 2016.