How Zaha Hadid explored architecture through abstract painting: Late architect Zaha Hadid strove to live by the mantra “I think there should be no end to experimentation.” 1843, The Economist’s sister magazine, reviewed an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London that shows how Hadid came up with the designs “for buildings that give physical form to seemingly impossible shapes” by putting pencil and paintbrush to paper. The exhibition, “Early Paintings and Drawings,” shows that art was a central pillar of Hadid’s work and, as Joe Lloyd writes “fizzes with missed opportunity: these buildings never made it beyond the drawing board. In one room, you can see the enormous number of sketches Hadid drew for a single unbuilt project, the Hafenstrasse development in Hamburg. Another shows the many stages of her design process for an unrealised sports centre, the Peak. It is difficult to fathom how the shapes in her artwork might translate into physical structures, which helps to explain why so many of her plans never materialised – where she saw art, developers saw expense. Her greatest influences were niche: Malevich, Lissitzky, Tatlin and Rodchenko – members of the 1920s Russian avant-garde and tireless explorers of geometry.”