Design
Zaha Hadid's New Library in Vienna Looks Like a Looming Deathship
A Star Destroyer from George Lucas's fevered imagination, perhaps?
When Zaha Hadid envisions a building, she likes to go big on concept and design. Bow down before her "Watergate on steroids" in Beijing, for instance, or imagine the clouds parting under the nuclear thrusters of this Japanese stadium/mothership.
With a bossy bibliotheque opening in Austria, the architect once again shows an interest in structures that seem to have second purposes of ferrying probe-happy ETs across distant galaxies. It is called the Library and Learning Center and it squats on the campus of the Vienna University of Economics and Business; here's the first thing that pedestrians will see of it when drawing near: