Heydar Aliyev

Heydar Alirza oghlu Aliyev or Geidar Aliev (Azerbaijani: Heydər Əlirza oğlu Əliyev, Russian: Гейда́р Али́евич Али́ев, Geidar Aliyevich Aliyev; 10 May 1923 – 12 December 2003), also spelled Haydar Aliev or Geidar Aliev was the third President of Azerbaijan for the New Azerbaijan Party from October 1993 to October 2003, when his son Ilham Aliyev succeeded him. From 1969 to 1982, Aliyev was also the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, effectively dominating the political life of Azerbaijan for many years. His personality cult has developed in Azerbaijan following his death.

Career in the Soviet era

Early life

Many of the details of Aliyev's early life are obscure. According to his website, he was born in Nakhchivan City. After graduating from Nakhchivan Pedagogical School, from 1939 to 1941 Aliyev attended the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy), where he studied architecture. In 1949 and 1950, he studied at the USSR MGB Officer Corps Qualifications-Raising School. Aliyev's official biography also stated that he studied at Baku State University, graduating with a degree in history in 1957. According to American journalist Pete Earley, Aliyev first attended the Ministry of State Security Academy in Leningrad, graduating in 1944.

Cultural center

A cultural center or cultural centre is an organization, building or complex that promotes culture and arts. Cultural centers can be neighborhood community arts organizations, private facilities, government-sponsored, or activist-run.

Asia

Europe

Heydar Aliyev Center

The Heydar Aliyev Center is a 619,000-square-foot building complex in Baku, Azerbaijan designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid and noted for its distinctive architecture and flowing, curved style that eschews sharp angles. The center is named for Heydar Aliyev, the leader of Soviet-era Azerbaijan from 1969 to 1982, and president of Azerbaijan from October 1993 to October 2003.

Design

The Center houses a conference hall (auditorium), a gallery hall and a museum. The project is intended to play an integral role in the intellectual life of the city. Located close to the city center, the site plays a pivotal role in the redevelopment of Baku.

The Heydar Aliyev Center represents a fluid form which emerges by the folding of the landscape’s natural topography and by the wrapping of individual functions of the Center. All functions of the Center, together with entrances, are represented by folds in a single continuous surface. This fluid form gives an opportunity to connect the various cultural spaces whilst at the same time, providing each element of the Center with its own identity and privacy. As it folds inside, the skin erodes away to become an element of the interior landscape of the Center.

Baku

Baku (Azerbaijani: Bakı, IPA: [bɑˈcɯ]) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located 28 metres (92 ft) below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world and also the largest city in the world located below sea level. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal parts: the downtown area and the old Inner City (21.5 ha). At the beginning of 2009, Baku's urban population was estimated at just over two million people. Officially, about 25 percent of all inhabitants of the country live in Baku's metropolitan area.

Baku is divided into eleven administrative districts (raions) and 48 townships. Among these are the townships on islands in the Baku Bay and the town of Oil Rocks built on stilts in the Caspian Sea, 60 km (37 mi) away from Baku. The Inner City of Baku along with the Shirvanshah's Palace and Maiden Tower were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. According to the Lonely Planet's ranking, Baku is also among the world's top ten destinations for urban nightlife.

Zaha Hadid

Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid, DBE (Arabic: زها حديد‎ Zahā Ḥadīd; born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect. In 2004 she became the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011. In 2012 she was made a dame. In 2014 the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, designed by her, won the Design Museum Design of the Year Award, making her the first woman to win the top prize in that competition. In 2015 she became the first woman to be awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in her own right.

Her buildings are distinctively neofuturistic, characterised by the "powerful, curving forms of her elongated structures" with "multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life". She is currently professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

Early life and education

Hadid was born on 31 October 1950 in Baghdad. She grew up in one of Baghdad's first Bauhaus-inspired buildings during an era in which "modernism connoted glamour and progressive thinking" in the Middle East.