A blood red River Thames hurtles across a long sheet of black paper on the wall, splicing through a fractured landscape of city blocks that twist and sway as if commanded by some irresistible force. Tangled webs of arteries fan outwards from the centre of London, breaking through the M25 and surging eastwards, meeting in a crescendo of coloured shards that look ready to accelerate off the page.
The irresistible force flexing London’s urban fabric was Zaha Hadid. The late Iraqi-born architect painted this warp-speed vision in 1991, at the request of Vogue magazine, projecting 75 years into the future to imagine what the capital might look like in 2066. Combining plans, sections and distorted aerial perspective views – long before computers aided the creation of such complex visions – it was typical of her intricate, multilayered style of image-making, using the process of painting as a way of generating new ideas. “I think that through a set of drawings,” Hadid said, “one discovers certain things which would not have otherwise been possible.”
