The architect's former London workplace is now a free public cultural space, with an inaugural exhibition tracing how stage design, dance and music shaped her ideas about movement.
The Zaha Hadid Foundation's new public home opened at 10 Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell on 3 November 2026. Its inaugural exhibition, Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance, runs until 27 March 2027 and gives visitors a focused view of work made for dance, music and opera rather than a conventional survey of Hadid's buildings.
The distinction matters. Drawings, models, digital renders, costume designs, photographs and film show how the architect used the stage to test movement, spectatorship and changing spatial effects. Entry is free and no advance booking is required, making the former workplace an unusually direct point of access to this part of her archive.
The building is part of the story rather than a neutral container. The London Society's account of the opening identifies it as a Victorian schoolhouse that served as Hadid's architectural practice for more than 30 years. The practice has since moved, but the address still carries evidence of its earlier uses.
A refurbishment by Studio KA prepared the ground floor for public use. Wallpaper's preview of the reopened building records galleries, a learning space, a lecture hall and a collection display, while noting that Zaha Hadid Design remains in the building. This is therefore neither a preserved studio tableau nor a standalone museum. It is a working foundation using a place associated with Hadid's practice for exhibitions, research and education.
According to the Foundation's exhibition guide, the show follows five projects made over 25 years. It begins with d1. from 1989, in which Rosemary Butcher's choreography moved across a floor drawing derived from one of Hadid's urban plans. A 1990 Music Video Pavilion shifted the enquiry towards the spectator, while designs for the Pet Shop Boys' Nightlife tour and Frédéric Flamand's Metapolis turned the stage into a changing multimedia environment.
The final project, a 2014 production of Così fan tutte for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, paired Hadid's curved stage architecture with transformable costumes by Hussein Chalayan. Together, the projects make a compact argument: performance was not a decorative sideline, but a place where her studio could work through ideas of bodies, images and space at full scale.
The Foundation's current visitor information lists opening hours of Tuesday to Saturday, 11.00 to 18.00, at 10 Bowling Green Lane, London EC1R 0BQ. Admission is free and visitors can walk in without booking.
