Art: Form above function

Is this any way to treat a star?

Iraqi native Zaha Hadid, now a British subject, is an international luminary of architecture. The first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (in 2004), she has designed important buildings around the world. She also has her own product line that runs the gamut from furniture and tableware to shoes and jewelry.

The first American exhibition of her product designs was supposed to open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last weekend.

But unexpected problems with the installation in the museum's Perelman building - a large cantilevered object called Dune Formations required emergency stabilization - kept the show shuttered until Tuesday morning. The delay was unfortunate because the Hadid installation was widely anticipated; the various luxury objects are being displayed in a Hadid-designed environment into which they fit as comfortably as a slender female foot in one of her sinuous Melissa shoes.

This beautifully integrated environment is fully consistent with Hadid's philosophy of architecture and design, a work of art in itself. It's organic in being rooted in nature but also sleekly stylish and as technologically modern as a Boeing Dreamliner.

Many top-rank architects diversify, but Hadid has not only designed a broad range of consumer projects, including the prototype of a three-wheeled car, she has done so by following an aesthetic program that correlates with her buildings.

Generally, she eschews rectilinear geometry in favor of the suggestion of fluid dynamics. For instance, her design for the recently completed MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome features curvilinear pathways instead of corridors.

She also draws inspiration from the Earth's geology. Curves and geological references impress themselves immediately on visitors to her Perelman installation, called, appositely, "Form in Motion."

Set up in the Perelman's largest gallery, it's a dazzling combination of installation and product display, of individual designs and synergistic environment, and, ultimately, of art and commerce.

"Form in Motion" envelops visitors in a sensual atmosphere of shiny materials and surfaces, exotic forms and swirling motion.

This happens because Hadid has transformed an ordinary many-windowed, boxlike room into Ali Baba's cave, a cavern with undulating white polystyrene walls corrugated and stratified like a cross-section through geologic deposits.