Until the end of time, people will disagree on the architectural merits of Zaha Hadid‘s work. Honestly, nobody gets AN‘s comment section going quite like the Queen of Swoop. But there is one thing that everyone can agree on when it comes to Hadid: pieces of her buildings should not just fall off. But, well, that’s exactly what happened this week in Vienna.
Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported that a 176-pound piece of concrete cladding came crashing down from Hadid’s Library and Learning Centre at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. You would want to write this off as a freak accident, but it’s actually the second time a piece of the building has detached since it opened in October 2013.
As Die Presse noted, back in July, a roughly 80-pound piece of fiberglass-reinforced concrete took a dive as well. That accident was blamed on “selective assembly error.” Contractors are reportedly looking into what caused the latest event and are expected to issue a report on Thursday. In the meantime, the building remains open, but parts of it have been cordoned off. Luckily, nobody was injured in either accident.
