Who else, really, could the Central Bank of Iraq have commissioned for its headquarters but Zaha Hadid? In her birthplace of Baghdad, on the banks of the Tigris – the same river whose shifting lines seem to echo through so much of her work – the choice feels not just appropriate, but inevitable. The result is a 170-metre tower rising from a vast podium, delivering some 90,000 square metres of interior space: a building of scale, certainly, but also of intent.
Designed by Hadid in 2011 and now nearing completion, the structure carries that distinctive sense of fluidity and lightness for which she is known with forms that move, stretch and taper with a kind of quiet confidence. And yet, for all its elegance, it also communicates something more grounded: stability, solidity, permanence. Which, for a central bank, is rather the point. You might admire a building that appears to defy gravity, but you would also like your financial system to feel reassuringly anchored.
Working in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects, our role was to extend this dialogue between past and present, drawing on both Hadid’s legacy and Iraq’s deeper cultural heritage. The approach is not about decoration, but about resonance; finding ways for material and technique to carry meaning as well as function.
Within the light-filled public interiors, we developed a glass and enamel system that is at once contemporary and rooted in history. The process involves etching the reverse of the glass cladding and filling the void with enamel, creating a surface with a remarkable sense of depth and clarity – colour that feels embedded rather than applied. It is a technique that quietly references the origins of both materials in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, long before the term “modern Iraq” existed. There is something rather satisfying in that continuity: ancient craft, reinterpreted through contemporary fabrication, and placed within a building that looks firmly to the future.
Externally, the approach shifts to something more restrained and monumental. Building identification is realised through a debossed treatment – letters pressed into the surface rather than applied to it – giving a sense of permanence and authority without resorting to overt statement. It is signage that understands its context: confident, but not in need of embellishment.
As a project, it operates on multiple levels at once – architectural, cultural, symbolic – and our contribution sits within that larger composition. It is, in every sense, a remarkable building, and one we are enormously proud to have been part of. Not least because it manages that rare balance: looking forward with absolute conviction, while remaining deeply connected to where it comes from.
Photos and renders with courtesy @ Zaha Hadid Architects zaha-hadid.com
