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Awards Business News
Zaha Hadid announced as designer of 2017 BRIT Awards trophies
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 1 November 2016
Architect Zaha Hadid, who died in March this year, has been announced as the designer of the 2017 BRIT Awards trophies.
Hadid took on the project at the beginning of the year, meeting with BRITs Chair (and Sony Music UK boss) Jason Iley in February to discuss rough ideas. “A couple of weeks later, as a guest of Sony at The BRIT Awards, she enthused, ‘I know exactly how I want to do it! I have a vision for it'”, recalls Iley. “Which was amazing as she was one of the most brilliant, forward thinking architects in the world. Zaha’s work is innovative, original and recognises diversity in culture. It has much in common with music. She was the perfect choice for progressing the award into the future”.
Following her sudden death a month later, the design of five different trophies has been completed under the guidance of Maha Kutay, a director at Zaha Hadid Design. She explains: “Zaha was truly excited to be doing this. Her vision was, being an architect, to focus our efforts more on the 3D element, as the statue had previously been used as a canvas for artists to paint on for the last few years. Our design expresses Zaha’s unwavering belief in progress and optimism for the future and a break from the norm. The biggest challenge was to create something different within certain guidelines, yet achieving a result recognisable to the public. You have to respect the existing to create something new”.
The final designs will be unveiled later this year, though Kutay says of the five statues: “The concept represents diversity, the family is connected by a wave of transition, they are different yet connected”.
The BRIT Awards will take place at the O2 Arena in London on 22 Feb next year. For more Zaha Hadid music-related stuff, you can listen to her episode of ‘Desert Island Discs’, broadcast earlier this year, here. It’s a good one.
