Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku: Defining Post-Soviet Azerbaijan

Rooted in the past, the Heydar Aliyev Center presents the independent nation of Azerbaijan as both modern and forward looking.

Completed in 2012, Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center has become a defining symbol of new, independent Azerbaijan. It appears on the 200 Manat banknote, the highest value Azerbaijani bill. Its unique form turns away from the architecture of the Soviet Union to embrace local Azerbaijani culture and geography.

The curves of Hadid’s building resemble the forms of Arabic and Persian calligraphy, one of the highest forms of art across the territories into which Islam expanded. It also represents the movement of the calligrapher’s pen and evokes the motion of Persian carpets unrolling.

Hadid’s structure appears in the landscape like rippling desert sand dunes, which move in waves with the wind. That wave-like form can also be seen as a reflection of the Caspian Sea, on which Baku was founded.

Hadid’s curvaceous design is in direct opposition to the linearity of Communist housing blocks that visually define cities of the Soviet Union developed prior to independence. There is not a straight line inside or outside of Hadid's structure. Even the windows on its exterior are skewed, in contrast with the pure gridded facades of Soviet-era buildings.

Since its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan has invested heavily in developing Baku’s infrastructure and modernizing its architecture. Post-independence designs define the new nation by returning to its Islamic legacy and identifying with local geography.

Hadid’s building was designed to become the primary building for the nation’s cultural programs and is located due west of the Caspian coast and new city center. Hadid, as an Iraqi British architect and a woman in a “man’s” field, was an appropriate choice to design a building that could symbolize the region’s complex identity in the post-Soviet era. Rooted in the past, the Heydar Aliyev Center also presents the nation as modern and forward looking.