Star Architect Zaha Hadid Plans Building in Copacabana

By Lisa Flueckiger, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Rio de Janeiro is about to gain another architectural attraction as renowned Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid has revealed plans for her first building in South America to be set overlooking Copacabana beach. The spinal column-like eleven-story luxury apartment complex will start construction in early 2015.

The residential block, baptized Casa Atlântica, will be in between two existing buildings roughly between Rua Santa Clara and the Musem of Image and Sound, which is still under construction as well. It faces south-east to famed Copacabana beach.

The plans reveal a skeletal facade with each of the eleven floors looking like horizontal vertebras, showing Hadid’s signature wavy style. The building is set to be a 41.5 meters high luxury residency with thirty apartments, six-star hotel service and a rooftop swimming pool.

“Casa Atlântica’s design continues the liberating formal composition and spatial flow inherent within Brazil’s rich Modernist tradition and engages with the unique tempo and vitality of Copacabana’s urban beach culture, as well as the fluidity of its renowned Burle Marx promenade,” said the studio in a statement.

The building had been commissioned by Brazilian entrepreneur Omar Peres, who reportedly gave the architect free reign over the design, while having to keep Brazilian construction legislation.

London-based architect Zaha Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and has since then received several other prizes. She is known for her neofuturistic style and currently works as a professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

Hadid’s One Thousand Museum residential tower in Miami is currently under construction and she was chosen to design the 80,000-seat Japan National Stadium in Tokyo for the Olympics, as well as a football stadium in Qatar for the World Cup 2022.