Construction Kicks Off on Zaha Hadid’s Broad Art Museum

Speaking of “a Hadid” and wealthy Californians’ art collections, it’s official now in East Lansing, Michigan: they’ve broken ground on Zaha Hadid‘s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum on the campus of Michigan State University. As we’d let you know back in December when it was first announced, the groundbreaking event (meaning they broke ground; nothing happened to change the course of human history or anything) was held on Tuesday, with both Hadid and the two Broads in attendance with their ceremonial shovels in tow. And now that things have finally kicked off, the building is expected to take a full year, possibly two, to complete. It will be Hadid’s second museum in the US, but strangely, both have been commissioned in the Midwest and not on the all-important coasts, something the Detroit Free Press thought to get a comment from the starchitect about:

Asked why Michigan and Ohio have proved more hospitable to her work than trend capitals like New York and Los Angeles, Hadid said, “I think maybe people assume that New York or other places are less conservative, and I don’t think it’s an accurate reading. So maybe other cities have more ambitions, and can make it happen.

Staying with Hadid in the Midwest for a second, if you’re interested to see her before she jets back to her office in London, she’ll be doing a stopover at the University of Pittsburgh on March 22nd to give a lecture at the design school there. Details here.

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