About the Exhibition

If you could redesign the world around you to realize your vision for a better future, where would you start?

For architect and designer Zaha Hadid, this process began by looking closely at ordinary objects and environments and considering their features to design something new. Seeing in 360 Degrees highlights the work of Hadid and her design studio, Zaha Hadid Design, and explores their experimentation with different types of design.

The MSU Broad Art Museum holds the largest collection of work by Zaha Hadid Design in North America. Totaling more than 150 objects, the collection includes tables, chairs, a bookshelf, jewelry, clothing, sunglasses, vases, platters, and more. Every work exemplifies the way Hadid and her studio experimented with materials, visual features, and function to create something that would improve the user experience. Furthermore, as the architect and designer of the museum’s building, to see Hadid’s work within her own architecture like this is exceedingly rare. Seeing in 360 Degrees displays the Zaha Hadid Design collection in conversation with Hadid’s architecture to generate an innovative and exciting experience that challenges our typical ways of thinking.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, Hadid was a world-renowned architect and designer known for her dazzling forms that defy expectations and conventions. Hadid studied math, philosophy, and physics in Beirut, Lebanon before moving to London in 1972 to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture. In 1979, Hadid founded Zaha Hadid Architects and led a pivotal generation of architects in their path to develop architectural monuments around the world. In 2006, Hadid founded Zaha Hadid Design, a design firm that applied Hadid’s innovative ways of thinking to furniture, clothing, jewelry, tableware, and more. Hadid passed away unexpectedly in Miami in 2016.

Hadid’s many design experiments also help to illuminate the story of the MSU Broad Art Museum, which opened in 2012. The design principles that play a role in developing a range of products from furniture to everyday objects similarly inform the design for our dynamic, eye-catching museum. By exploring these ways of thinking through work by Zaha Hadid Design, we invite you to immerse yourself in Hadid’s mind-bending brilliance and to rethink the ways we experience the world around us.

Seeing in 360 Degrees is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Major support for the exhibition is provided by Hari Kern. The exhibition is curated by Assistant Curator Rachel Winter.