Zaha Hadid: Car Park and Terminus Strasbourg

The blurry interface of exurbia and suburbia represents strange and alien territory for architects, because the context is usually vague and the space haphazardly organised. The intermodal transportations by Zaha Hadid in Strasbourg capazalizes on the haphazardness of its suburban setting. To reconocile the car and the dense historic fabric of Strasbourg, a city near France’s border with Germany, Zaha Hadid responded to the site with elegant but deceptive simplicity. She folded a place of concrete up from the ground to form a canopy that stretches diagonally across the bus and tram lanes toward the parking lot and Strasbourg beyond, as though pulled in that direction. The lots demonstrate Hadid’s assumption that the buses and trams are a permanently impermanent part of the station’s overall organization and cpmposition. Hadid treats the cars that park here almost as natural phenomena with their own diurnal rythms.