NYZ: New York Zaha.

First impression of Zaha Hadid is surprise that no telltale intervention competes for attention in the famous white void of the Guggenheim. Instead we are treated to a chronological progression of Hadid paintings, drawings and models spiralling up the Frank Lloyd Wright ramp to terminate, askew, in the orthogonal 1990s addition where computer animation reveals Z-Wave, her unrealised proposal for temporary accretions--parasites perhaps--to seep and stretch across Wright's host balustrades.

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It's a situation Hadid knows well. For the 1992 Guggenheim exhibition, The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1939, she initially proposed a 3D interpretation of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International for Wright's great void--a Constructivist ship in an Organic bottle. Indeed Wright and Hadid might both be considered organic futurists (not by chance is she designing a museum to complement his Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma). And computers only make Hadid's work more biomorphic, topological, and sexy.

Your second reaction is more than mere admiration for the projects on show. It's something more like awe at the number and extent and infrastructural implications of Hadid's recent oeuvre, an awe energised by the pizzazz, drama, and effects of light intrinsic to the work, and then rendered almost giddy by the vortex of Wright's rotunda. A remarkable collection, therefore, of proposals by the London team in America's most iconic interior, proposals that are also, with gathering momentum, being constructed.

It is a great if oddly sentimental pleasure to see paintings of the Irish Prime Minister's Residence and 59 Eaton Place starting out Hadid's career. The double-storey alcove near the base of Wright's ramp becomes a grotto dedicated to her extraordinary Hong Kong Peak project, now a quarter of a century old. In his catalogue essay, curator Germano Celant notes the role of image in the architectural culture of that period. Such Hadid paintings as The World (89 Degrees) and Grand Buildings are evidence of her 'phantasmagorical observation of a chaotic, disorienting, and magmatic city'.

The pace and density of the exhibition increase as one climbs the ramp. Halfway up, zigzag reefs protrude and recess as podiums for architectural models; a vertical ribbon of screens hold complex, X-ray-like drawings. The Vitra Fire Station appears (brava!), then the Cardiff Bay Opera House (commiserations). Soon there are high-rises--proposed for Dubai, Moscow, Milan--and then entire swathes of city in Bilbao, Singapore and Beijing.

Approaching Wright's spiral terminus, these sensuously gridded urban visions give way to furniture and objects: tea and coffee sets for Alessi, an extremely valuable Aqua Table, the brilliant Vortexx Chandelier, even a prototype Z-Car for London gallerist Kenny Schachter. If computerisation is driving Hadid's increasingly complex shell forms (the London Olympic Aquatic Centre, for instance), there's also a bravura sense of branding (Z-Wave, her Z-Scape furniture, a Z-Island kitchen) and glamour (are the new silver paintings somehow channelling Andy Warhol?).

Co-curator Monica Montagut quotes Hadid's statement 'I still believe in the impossible'. Judging from this display in New York City, there are few limits to what Hadid might do next.

Zaha Hadid, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 3 June-25 October 2006, www.guggenheim.org