Okay. So I think I get it, but I still don’t like it. Zaha fans look away.
The skate, tongue, manta ray, whatever you prefer to call the Olympic Aquatic Center, is lost potential. Don’t get me wrong, Zaha Hadid is the queen of busting architectural boundaries, but she also loses a lot of points with her materiality choices (i.e.using granite with curves).
With this center, the interior is thought provoking in good and bad ways. First, to have the big ceiling be swooping as she does really is amazing. It feels like we’re in a giant whale. But what doesn’t work for me is the kiddie pool side with a giant cement ceiling with droplet cutouts. The two styles mix in a really weird way.
The exterior, however, is another story. Yes, the project is beautiful from the Event Entrance side. The tiled curves give a lot of room for volume. The green patch on the back though…
It was a horrifying scene of dead plants and a literal patch of turf grass. May it have looked better in the beginning? Possibly. Does it look good now? No. Going along with the whale idea, it looks like the leftover brine from the whale’s teeth fronds. It feels as if Zaha thought, “How can I make this LEED certified? Oh yeah, let’s slap on some grass right here.” 
All I’m saying is that the upkeep could have been better, and the design could have been more cohesive between areas.
Emoree, I too am not the biggest Hadid fan, but there are portions of the design that I find to be compelling. The most immediate is the application of the timber planks upon the curved surfaces. The tolerances seemed to be really tight and the material gave the impression that the whole building could be read as an object that was carved and sanded by hand. This item-like quality was strengthened by its placement on a plinth and in smaller details like the pavement swell near the entrance, as if the shell was placed in sand. Although I seem to prefer buildings that can be read as a series of integrated components in a system or machine, Hadid’s intent here is not lost.
That being said, I agree with the poor detailing of the greenery and found the ceiling of the main pool area to feel very heavy (great natatorium projects I like to reference are Williams/Tsien’s Cranbrook and the Grandview Heights aquatic center in Canada). I prefer the ceiling with the leaf-shaped apertures, as it reminds me of her design for the Phaeno center in Wolfsburg. I ultimately find this to be one of her most alluring designs as the outer form seems to derive from a kind of inner geometric system or establishment of a program/entry concept; this is opposed to the primary design focus being the exterior shell.