HAYDER ALIYEV CENTER

THEORY OF STRUCTURES REPORT

ARBAZ ZUBAIR SHAIKH

SEMESTER-8 MU-1762
 INTODUCTION
LOCATION : BAKU, AZERBAIJAN ARCHITECT : ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS
AREA : 101801 SQ.M STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS : AKT, TUNCEL ENGINEERS, MERO
CONSTRUCTION : 2007-2012 CONSTRUCTION COMPANY : DIA

The Heydar Aliyev Centre, is a complex of buildings designed by the Iraqi-British architect,
Zaha Hadid, which stands out for its architecture and fluid, curved style which avoids sharp
angles. The centre bears the name of Heydar Aliyev, leader of Azerbaijan during the Soviet
era of 1969-1982 and president of the country between October 1993 and October 2003.
The Heydar Aliyev Centre, an internationally recognised architectural work, has become a
point of reference for modern Bakú, due to its innovative and avant-garde design. The building
was nominated for the World Architecture Festival prize and the bi-annual Inside Festival in
2013.

CONCEPT AND SPACES

The Heydar Aliyev Center represents a fluid form which emerges by the folding of the
landscape’s natural topography and by the wrapping of individual functions of the Center.
All functions of the Center, together with entrances, are represented by folds in a single
continuous surface. As explained by Zaha Hadid in a conference, the Bakú complex actually
consists of three buildings: a conference centre, a museum and a library, connected by an
interior space and by the curved and “fluid” exterior skin which snakes across the whole
structure.
 STRUCTURE & CONSTRUCTION
Zaha Hadid Architects’ vision of sublimity
presented some very material challenges for
the engineers and builders. It was necessary
to construct a building that could seal out the
elements and bear high wind and seismic loads
without relying on interior support columns.
Ultimately, a system was devised that utilized
a space frame as its main structural element;
the cladding is a curtain wall system with
various types of specially fabricated panels. Early in the design process, engineers performed
a mathematically based computer analysis. “It’s good practice to do structural calculations
for projects of that kind with a 3D nonlinear finite element analysis, including special loads
like earthquake and high wind loads as present in Baku,” says Thomas Winterstetter project
engineer for the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre.

SPACE FRAME SYSTEM R.C.C STRUCTURE

The main structure of the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre is a mix of reinforced concrete, steel
frame structures, and composite beams and decks. The space frame is composed of a spe-
cial steel tube-and-nodes system. For aesthetic purposes, the cladding needed to give the
building a monolithic appearance, not only to make it read as a continuous volume but also to
accomplish the transition to the plaza surface. All visible seams needed to run parallel to one
another, reinforcing the building’s wavelike design. The cladding material had to meet vari-
ous practical considerations, such as UV resistance and light reflectivity. Maintenance was a
big consideration, as well, notes Winterstetter. “We focused, for example, on easy-to-clean
external cladding materials because of the heavy air pollution… There are oil refineries and
such nearby, and the cladding is white. That’s how glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) came
up, which is dirt-repellent itself. In general, all building systems are chosen to have high du-
rability and a long lifetime and low maintenance efforts.”