zaha hadid biography summary

Iraqi-British Architect and Painter

Summary of Zaha Hadid

First woman to break the glass ceiling of the "Starchitect" universe, dwelling amongst greats such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier , Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid's pioneering vision challenged notions of what could be achieved in building. Coined the "Queen of the Curve," her highly inventive designs liberated architecture from its traditional treatment of concrete and steel and introduced radical new ways to envision spaces in synchronicity with their surroundings. With a foundation in painting and the utilization of progressive digital technologies, Hadid's creativity was unbound by existing typologies and her innovative approach helped shift the geometry of buildings toward a radical new aesthetic.

Accomplishments

• Before ever seeing one of her designs realized as a physical building, Hadid's architectural drawings and paintings were gaining her international acclaim. Through wildly imaginative and intricate abstractions, she was already questioning the idea that a building was merely a solid mass, paying attention to the relationships between its individual elements.
• Although not aligned with any particular school, much of Hadid's work has been linked to Deconstructivism in its sculptural treatment of architecture as a container for interconnective spaces, dramatic untraditional angles, and volumes bursting with many little pieces. In this way, her realized buildings echoed her earlier paintings.
• Her consistency with questioning the status quo led Hadid toward the development of new digital techniques that allowed her to depart from the standard horizontals and verticals and to reimagine the structural engineering of bold new forms. Her firm would coin the term Parametricism to define this signature look and feel.
• Hadid's position as a world-renowned architect dedicated to her career above all else was further emphasized by the fact that she was a woman and a Muslim. Bold, unapologetic, and progressive, she helped bash stereotypes while infiltrating a field that had largely held a longstanding reputation as a male-held profession.

The Life of Zaha Hadid

When British journalist Simon Hattenstone met Zaha Hadid at her east London home, he compared her to the Queen of Hearts, roaring “off with their heads” at her subordinates. “She is a fantastic monster, uncompromising dictator of her own wonderland, and one of the world's great architects,” he wrote.

Important Art by Zaha Hadid

The Peak Blue Slabs

This painting was made in the early years of Hadid's career as an architect, before any of her designs had been constructed. It shows her un-built yet competition-winning design for a private leisure club - The Peak - on a mountainside in Hong Kong. The painting emphasizes the sympathetic relationship between the jagged edges of the leisure center and those of the mountain, and positions the building within the topography of the site. The flat surface of the painting acts to remove any boundary between building and landscape - a distinction that Hadid remained interested in blurring throughout her career. Inspired by the Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich's abstract geometric paintings, the piece explores Hadid's three-dimensional subject matter in this two-dimensional work, demonstrating her interest in spatial relationships. The architect spoke of how Malevich's paintings helped her to use abstraction as a way of investigating different designs. According to the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, "Her buildings may be made of metal, glass and concrete, but their building blocks are her sketches, drawings and paintings." During this period, and throughout her career, Hadid used painting as a method of representing her building designs in the abstract, often showing them as a disassembled collection of parts, which was a signature of Deconstructivism. She described The Peak in this painting as dissolving into a "confetti snowstorm." Her view was radical as it departed from the conception of buildings as solid masses. Rather, the elements of the building are suspended in the landscape as if extending or exploding from it. According to Obrist, the painting has "the idea of zero gravity, a kind of floating - that is the incredible thing she achieves." The Peak Blue Slabs was on display at the exhibition Zaha Hadid: There Should Be No End to Experimentation in 2017 at the Serpentine Gallery. Here, her drawings and paintings were shown as artworks in their own right.

Acrylic on canvas - collection unknown

Vitra Fire Station

The Vitra Fire Station was Hadid's first built work, though she had already made her name as a "paper architect" on account of her creative and ambitious architectural drawings. The client was Rolf Fehlbaum of the Swiss furniture firm Vitra, who would become a member of the jury for the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 (the year it was won by Hadid). In 1989, Fehlbaum had commissioned Frank Gehry to build a design museum at the Vitra factory in Weil am Rhein, the first of several buildings by notable architects that now make up the Vitra campus. The following year, Hadid won a design competition to create a small fire station for the factory (which had experienced a major fire in 1981). Hadid's design was entitled "Movement Frozen," which could refer both to its dynamic geometry (some critics have likened its form to a bird in flight) and its being alert to respond to an emergency by bursting into action at any time. It employs glass and concrete block in angled planes that appear stretched, as if in perspective. According to the Architectural Review , these sharp angles and pointed features such as the entrance porch demand our attention and connote a sense of urgency. Cast on site, according to architectural photographer Hélène Binet, it demonstrated new possibilities for working in concrete: "[Hadid] created an incredible signature. Concrete became something else... after her." The walls and planes are arranged in layers, with the functions of the building dispersed between them. These include areas for fire engines, changing rooms for firemen, a conference room and a kitchenette, all connected by internal streets. There are few pure horizontal or vertical planes, which can disorient those who inhabit the building. This sense is also reinforced by the lack of color. Journalist Harry Mount concurs, "Its shrieking concrete angles and disruptive interiors photographed very well and were dutifully recorded in the magazines, but were not much liked by the firemen. It was decommissioned and is now an exhibition centre." The latter statement is due to the fact that a new public fire station was opened in the area of Weil am Rhein. Nevertheless, the Vitra Fire Station served its purpose for Hadid of launching her career as an architect of built works. It now functions as an exhibition and event space for the Vitra design museum, while remaining in the care of the Weil am Rhein and the Basel fire services with respect to maintaining the building. It remains a prime example of Hadid's commitment to challenging the status quo, both in presenting a work of unusual complexity to house a familiar public service, but also in her re-envisioning the angular by breaking it out from its typical 45 or 90-degree mold.

Weil am Rhein, Germany

Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art

The Center for Contemporary Art (later the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art), founded in 1939, was one of the first of its kind in the United States. Its initial premises, although central, had little visibility to the street and so a design competition was held in 1997 to create a new presence for the center. Hadid's competition entry proposed several gallery volumes, suspended from a concrete plane. This arrangement would inform both the interior and exterior of the building. The gallery spaces are variously shaped and sized and with different lighting strategies, to accommodate a range of contemporary art pieces. Hadid called the arrangement of galleries the "jigsaw puzzle" to describe how the different volumes slotted together. The given site for the new building, a busy street corner in downtown Cincinnati, also helped to inspire the design. The facade to the street is translucent, inviting passers to look inside, and breaking down the stereotype of the museum in general as remote and uninviting. One critic commented, "This is a building that does not so much sit on its street corner as continuously arrive there." In this same vein, Hadid developed the idea of an "urban carpet" to create continuity between the museum and the street, thus driving footfall into the building. By this it is meant that the ground floor of the building functions as a public square, albeit enclosed by glazing. The surface of this floor curves upwards as it meets the wall, as if to invite visitors up into the gallery spaces above. This sense of movement continues throughout the museum, as various lighting conditions in different areas create "channels of light," which draw visitors through the space. At the building's opening in 2003, it was the first American art museum designed by a woman and it was also Hadid's debut in the United States. "[It is] the most important American building to be completed since the end of the Cold War," said architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. He went on to praise the building's "cosmopolitan values" which he also believed to be embodied by Zaha herself (perhaps on account of her multi-cultural and international upbringing).

Cincinnati, Ohio

MAXXI Museum

The MAXXI Museum is Italy's first national contemporary art museum. Its building is therefore significant as it offers a contemporary identity for Rome that complements the city's classical heritage. The actual museum is only one of five structures that made up Hadid's winning competition design, which was based around the concept of a "field of buildings." As such, she has referred to the project as "incomplete." In designing the museum, Hadid responded to the gridded layout of the site's surrounding classical buildings, while also introducing her trademark Deconstructivist style. It features curved concrete walls, suspended staircases, a black and white color scheme, large glass openings, and overhanging elements. As architecture critic Rowan Moore noted, the "bending oblong tubes, overlapping, intersecting and piling over each other" are reminiscent of transport architecture. With this design, Hadid was aiming to achieve "a new fluid kind of spatiality of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry, designed to embody the chaotic fluidity of modern life." In other words, the building was to represent contemporary Rome and to be flexible to its needs. In line with this intention, Hadid designed the building as a flow of joined-up spaces that can accommodate a variety of artworks and temporary exhibitions, a move away from the "boxing off" of spaces that is more traditional of museums. As a result, some critics argued that the museum was more suited to sculpture and installation than to 2D works. (The same criticism was lobbied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York, by which Hadid was inspired.) It was important to Hadid that the building serve "not [as] an object-container, but rather a campus for art," reflecting her understanding of the museum's role in contemporary life as well as the institution's goal to preserve cultural objects. The lighting and circulation reinforce this notion of activity, as suspended, lit staircases appear to "fly across a void," guiding the visitor through the contemporary art program.

Rome, Italy

Guangzhou Opera House

The Guangzhou Opera House was Hadid's first project in China and resulted from her success in a design competition. A folded structure in glass and polished granite, it comprises a 1,800-seat theatre, 400-seat multifunctional hall, rehearsal rooms and an entrance hall. Hadid described the building as "like pebbles in a stream smoothed by erosion", emphasizing the way in which the materiality of the building responds to its riverside location. Continuing this theme, the main auditorium is lined with reinforced plaster panels in a folded surface that resembles "the soft insides of an oyster". Unfortunately, some critics have pointed out that Hadid's references to erosion are apt, given that the building has suffered on account of poor workmanship. The quality of the plaster and other interior work was found to be lacking, and around a year after opening, many of the granite panels on the exterior had to be replaced. The response of critics to the design of the building has been mixed. Architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff called it "a Chinese gem that elevates its setting", whilst architect Edwin Heathcote suggested the building both transforms the landscape in a positive way and appears "alien" and "incomprehensible". Heathcote's view is fitting inasmuch as the building sits within a newly developed area of Guangzhou and has prompted the construction of further cultural facilities, such as museums and libraries. Inspired by the riverside surroundings, it nevertheless introduces innovation and the unknown. Reflecting this spirit, the decision was taken to perform Puccini's opera Turandot - considered a controversial work of art and to that point never performed in China - at its opening.

Guangzhou, China

London Aquatics Centre

The London Aquatics Centre is part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London. It was one of the main venues of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, during which it was used for the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events. Moveable elements allow the size and depths of the different pools in the complex to be changed. The roof is one of the most striking features of the building and takes the form of a sweeping parabolic arch. Constructed from steel and aluminum and clad in wood on the inside, it rests on just three concrete supports and connects the two pools at each end of the building. Hadid described the form as "inspired by the fluid geometry of water in movement", whilst architecture critic Rowan Moore concurred that the roof "floats and undulates". He called the center "the Olympics' most majestic space". The Aquatics Centre was the first 2012 Olympic building to enter construction but the last to be completed. Cost concerns that required several revisions played a key part. At £269 million, the building cost more than three times its original estimate, largely owing to the complexity of the roof - though costs were also added to account for the transformation it underwent after the Olympic and Paralympic Games. After the Games, the spectator wings on either side of the central space were removed and sold, whilst other parts of the building were re-used (for example the seats and toilets) or re-cycled. The building re-opened in March 2014 and has been used for several other sporting events, including the 2014 FINA/NVC Diving World Series and the 2016 European Aquatics Championships.

Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center

The Heydar Aliyev cultural center - named after the controversial former president of the Azerbaijan Republic - has become a signature of the redevelopment of the city that began with the country's independence in 1991. Hadid was appointed as the design architect for the center after a competition in 2007. It is an example of her Parametricist style, which uses digital animation techniques of the late 90s to structurally engineer the building and compute its forms. The center houses a museum, 1000-seat auditorium, multi-purpose hall, temporary exhibition spaces, a conference center and workshops. Each of these functions is represented by a fold in the surface of the building, thus each has its own identity but is also part of a continuous whole. Computer systems helped with the practical and technical challenges of creating a continuous surface at this scale, while taking into consideration future temperature fluctuations, seismic activity and other potential environmental and societal effects. In 2014, the Heydar Aliyev cultural center won the Design Museum's Design of the Year Award 2014, making Hadid the first female winner. One judge described the building unconventionally as: "as pure and sexy as Marilyn [Monroe]'s blown skirt", whilst The Guardian adds that it appears: "Like sinuous whirls of whipped cream, buffeted into a mountain range of peaks and spilling out to form a zigzagging landscape". The sweeping surfaces were appropriate to this project, since a key part of the regeneration of Baku was moving away from the monumental style of Soviet architecture towards more flowing forms. According to Hadid's practice, these recall Islamic architecture with its continuous calligraphy and ornamental patterns that connect architecture, interior and landscape. With this in mind, the building appears as a continuation of the surrounding plaza, the surface of which seems to rise up into its folded form. A public interior space on the ground floor adds to this sense of continuity and invites the outside in. Hadid has spoken of the project's ambition and its capacity to reflect the romance and optimism of independent Azerbaijan. However, sitting uncomfortably alongside these values are criticisms from human rights groups, who claim that hundreds of local people were forcibly evicted from their homes on the site. This has led some to question the ethics of Hadid's practice, particularly in the wake of contemporary reports on poor working conditions on construction sites for her Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar.

Baku, Azerbaijan

Biography of Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq during a period of prosperity in which the government chose to invest in modernizing the city's architecture. Her childhood saw the completion of buildings by such iconic architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier . Hadid's father Muhammad al-Hajj Husayn Hadid, was a wealthy industrialist and politician, who contributed to this progressive government impetus. Her mother Wajiha al-Sabunji was an artist.

On account of the influence of her high-achieving family, Hadid said, "there was never a question that I would be a professional." One of her two older brothers Foulath Hadid claimed she could have become the first Iraqi astronaut had she wanted to. However, by the age of eleven, Zaha Hadid decided that her future lay in architecture. Her parents supported her ambitions and encouraged her to design some of the interiors in their home.

Hadid's family traveled frequently throughout her childhood, and she received a multi-cultural, international education. This was both formal, at boarding schools in England and Switzerland, and informal with her family. She recalled the impact of traveling with her father: " [He] made sure I went to every important building and museum in each city we visited. We'd go to new cities to learn about architecture ... I think that's what inspired my love of buildings."

Later, during her university years, Hadid developed a close relationship with her young nieces and nephews. She looked after them in the wake of their parents' divorce and taught them how to draw. Her niece Rana later recalled, "You could talk to [Zaha] about anything: architecture, the latest nail polish, your love life." However, Hadid, like her siblings, often expressed her love through outspoken criticism. She applied the same high standards to others as to herself and pushed those she loved to achieve more.

Education and Early Training

Hadid attended the American University in Beirut, Lebanon where she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics. In 1972, she moved to continue her studies at the Architectural Association in London, which was a center of progressive architectural thought at that time. There, she studied under Rem Koolhaas , Elia Zenghelis, and Bernard Tschumi, who all recognized her talent. Zengehlis praised her "spectacular vision" and her ability to see the bigger picture ahead of the smaller details in her designs.

In her fourth year at university, Hadid designed a hotel for the Hungerford Bridge on the River Thames in London, known as the Malevich Tektonik. Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist paintings of geometric forms inspired the radical project that revealed Hadid's fearless way of challenging the status quo. According to her, "It was very anti-design. It was almost a movement of anti-architecture." Even after she became an established and award-winning architect, critics continued to recall the ingenuity and influence of this early design.

Hadid graduated in 1977 with a Diploma Prize. At the ceremony, Koolhaas described the architect as "a planet in her own orbit." She soon after became a partner at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in the Netherlands, a firm founded by Koolhaas and Zenghelis. Having worked on well-known and controversial projects such as the un-built Dutch Parliament building in the Hague (1978), she left to form her own London-based firm, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), in 1980.

Throughout her professional practice, Hadid continued to paint, using abstraction as a tool to develop new designs. She explained, "I found the traditional system of architectural drawing to be limiting and was searching for a new means of representation." Through abstraction, she challenged the conception of a building as a solid mass and adventurously explored the spatial relationships between building elements. These principles informed her 1982 competition-winning proposal for The Peak, a mountainside leisure center in Hong Kong. The project marked her debut into the limelight as a formidable architect (despite it never being built), and she became known for her creative and ambitious ideas.

Mature Period

In the absence of built work, Hadid established her reputation through her drawings, paintings, and by teaching architecture internationally at schools including the Architectural Association, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge University, and Columbia University. She also dabbled in furniture, interior, and set design. Most significantly, her artwork was featured in the 1988 exhibition "Deconstructivism in Architecture," curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

While her works were significantly admired, they were deemed too radical for construction. One notable example of this was her 1994 competition-winning design for an opera house in Cardiff, Wales. In spite of her achievement, a more conservative design was taken forward for cost reasons. The rejection took its toll on Hadid, to the extent that she considered leaving the profession. She struggled to understand the client's unwillingness to take on the ambitious design, insisting her project "could easily be done."

It was through these art exhibitions that Hadid met Patrik Schumacher, who would later become her business partner. An architecture student at the time, Schumacher later said, "I was intrigued by the frankness and openness of her presentation." Although Hadid herself never identified as a Deconstructivist, she retained an interest in its sculptural architecture made up of interconnecting spaces, characterized by dramatic angles, throughout the next decades. Her former tutor Zenghelis commented, "We called her the inventor of the 89 degrees. Nothing was ever at 90 degrees. She had spectacular vision. All the buildings were exploding into tiny little pieces."

Without compromising this bold style, in the 1990s Hadid began to transform her reputation as a "paper architect" to a building architect. Her first successfully realized project was the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1989-92). This was followed by more work in Europe, including a housing project in Berlin, exhibition spaces in London's Millennium Dome (1999), and for Weil am Rhein's horticultural festival (1997-99). The architect later referred to this formative period as "... the years when I didn't sleep for four nights in a row, or weeks ... It was a very exciting time."

The construction of two further projects in the late 1990s confirmed to her colleagues and clients that Hadid's designs were feasible, notwithstanding their ambition. These were the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio and the Bergisel Ski-Jump on Bergisel Mountain in Innsbruck, Austria. The New York Times called the former the "most important American building to be completed since the Cold War." It was not only Hadid's first American project, but also the first American museum designed by a woman.

A year after the completion of the art museum, Hadid was awarded the Pritzker Prize, widely considered to be the most prestigious architectural award. The president of the foundation, Thomas Pritzker, noted, "Although her body of work is relatively small, she has achieved great acclaim and her energy and ideas show even greater promise for the future." As the first woman to receive the prize, Hadid began to attract more media attention as well as higher profile clients with greater ambition and more substantial budgets.

Late Period

Having received recognition for her work, Hadid used her high profile to push even more ambitious designs. The first of these in a new style was the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany (2005), which, by eschewing horizontals and verticals, gave rise to the development of new digital techniques to structurally engineer the building and compute its form. Hadid became a pioneer of this approach, which was termed Parametricism.

According to Schumacher, Parametricism "succeeds modernism as a new long wave of systematic innovation." It prompted a stylistic shift in Hadid's work, away from the jagged Deconstructivism for which she was previously known. The MAXXI museum of 2010, which was awarded the Stirling Prize, is one of her last works in the former style, while her design for the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2012 is characterized by the sweeping, curving forms of Parametricism.

Other critically acclaimed projects in this period include the Guangzhou Opera House of 2010 (inspired, according to The Guardian , by Hadid's unrealized designs for the Cardiff Bay Opera House of 1994), The Riverside Museum in Glasgow (2011), and the London Aquatics Centre (2011). The projects in Britain were her first to be built there, in spite of Hadid having become a British citizen and basing her practice in London. For this, she credits a new open-minded approach to architecture, noting, "Something has changed radically here [in Britain] recently. There is no resistance to the new any more."

For all those who praised Hadid's new architecture, other critics ridiculed the expense and scale of such projects. In many cases, Hadid was urged to scale back or abandon projects due to the constraints of sites or budgets. The London Aquatics Centre is a scaled-back design and a New National Stadium for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo was discarded due to cost concerns. Her firm attracted particular criticism in 2014 after Hadid responded to reports of poor working conditions on construction sites in Qatar (where her Al Wakrah Stadium for the 2022 World Cup would be built) with the claim that ensuring safe working conditions was not her responsibility as an architect.

In 2016, Hadid died suddenly from a heart attack while being treated for bronchitis. She had decided not to have a family of her own and was entirely dedicated to her career. Speaking of her single-mindedness, she said that, "If [architecture] doesn't kill you, then you're no good ... you have to go at it full time. You can't afford to dip in and out." Some, such as the journalist Harry Mount, have described her professional devotion as "narcissistic." He wrote, "Her flat was empty, except for objects she'd designed herself: a curved sofa, a swooping table, and a futuristic tea set. There was little sign of pleasurable human occupation: no books, no CDs." Others argue that in dedicating herself to her work, Hadid challenged stereotypes of Muslim women and encouraged those who wished to, to do the same.

In response to being asked by journalist Simon Hattenstone in 2010 if she was happy being single, Hadid responded, "I don't think about it in this way. Things happen in life." Perhaps the closest Hadid got to a serious relationship was with her long-term design partner Schumacher. Their relationship has been characterized as close but "tricky." For example, Hadid's friend, the architect Peter Cook said, "[Hadid] was never really [one] to criticize Patrik, but she knew some of the things he was doing were not to her taste. But she was sort of semi in love with him and allowed him to do it." Nevertheless, any claims of a romantic relationship between them (including a rumor that they married in 2005) have been refuted.

Schumacher was the only non-family beneficiary of Hadid's will, which she entrusted to him, her niece Rana, and her good friends, the artist Brian Clarke and Conservative peer (and former chairman of the Serpentine Gallery) Lord Palumbo, to carry out. However, the relationship between the four has deteriorated since Schumacher's comments in 2016 advocating abolishing social housing and building over London's Hyde Park. In 2018, Schumacher launched a bid to take sole control of Hadid's estate. He has led Zaha Hadid Architects since the architect's death, on which she left behind 36 unfinished projects in 21 countries.

At the time of her death, Hadid was also in the midst of discussions with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist about an exhibition of her paintings. Having shown him her personal sketchbooks a year earlier, the curator recalled, "They were almost like doodles, but all her buildings seemed to come from the flow of these free sketches ... was very personal. She kept them in her bedroom. I was amazed and wanted to see more." The show took place in 2017 at the Serpentine Gallery, entitled Zaha Hadid: There Should Be No End to Experimentation . "She wasn't just a great architect, she was a great artist," according to Obrist.

The Legacy of Zaha Hadid

Hadid has been described by The Guardian as the "Queen of the curve," who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity." Although she did not identify as part of a particular school, the terms Deconstructivist, Parametricist, and Abstractionist have variously been used to describe her work. Pritzker Prize jury chairman, Lord Rothschild, described her as, "unswerving in her commitment to Modernism. Always inventive, she's moved away from existing typology, from high tech, and has shifted the geometry of buildings." Likely influenced by her parents' progressive outlook, Hadid has, since her student days, "believed in progress and in creativity's role in progress" and has challenged traditionalism.

Upon her death in 2016, Hadid's studio reported, "Zaha Hadid was widely regarded to be the greatest female architect in the world today," begging the question of the relevance of her gender to her achievements. Hadid resisted typecasting as a female architect or an Iraqi architect for her own advancement, but was keen to reassure others that "they can break through the glass ceiling." Her commitment to encouraging younger professionals also came across in her teaching career. Once named among the world's highest paid architects, as well as an investor in property, restaurants, cosmetics, and fashion, many admired Hadid for her business acumen as well as her architectural ability.

Hadid's gender has undoubtedly colored the reporting of her work and personality by critics. Some, such as Mickey O'Connor, have perceived her confidence as "confrontational," and she is often dubbed a diva, a label she rejected as sexist. Others, like Mark Irving, pointed to her as a force to be reckoned with: "She cuts a dramatic, voluptuous figure in her black outfits ... above which large heavily lidded eyes and purple-painted lips that always seem to be set in a slightly unsatisfied pout, turn on you like the guns of a well-armored battleship."

Yet in Hadid's own accounts, she admitted to often feeling ostracized. This was the case particularly during the events of 1994 in which her competition-winning design for the Cardiff Bay Opera House was subsequently rejected. "People were patronizing towards me all the time. They didn't know how to behave with me. I don't know whether people responded to me in a strange way because they just thought I was one of those eccentric people, or they thought I was a foreigner or behaved funny or I'm a woman." On other occasions, Hadid has referred to herself as "flamboyant" and "eccentric...but I am not a nutcase."

Notwithstanding her feelings of exclusion from particular networking circles, the architect had high profile friends in, for example, Frank Gehry and Norman Foster . At her death, Foster noted "I became very close to her as a friend and colleague in parallel with my deep respect for her as an architect ... she was one of the very few architects as friends who was invited to my 80th birthday party ... she was my dear friend."

Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times adds that although "her soaring structures left a mark on skylines and imaginations," Hadid "embodied ... the era of so-called starchitects who roamed the planet in pursuit of their own creative genius." In line with the typical connotations of "starchitecture," or "star architecture," she has been criticized for the extravagance and celebrity of her designs. Critic Robert Booth has further suggested that favoritism and marketing value are the reason for her having won so many design competitions, rather than architectural talent.

Today, the Zaha Hadid Architects firm remains to carry out her legacy to create transformative spaces.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Zaha Hadid

• Zaha Hadid By Philip Jodidio
• The Complete Zaha Hadid: Expanded and Updated Our Pick By Aaron Betsky
• Zaha Hadid Architects: Redefining Architecture and Design Our Pick By The Images Publishing Group
• Hadid: Complete Works 1979-today Our Pick By Philip Jodidio
• Zaha Hadid Complete Works By Patrik Schumacher and Gordana Fontana-Giusti
• Fluid Totality By Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher and the Institute of Architecture
• Zaha Hadid (Inspiration and Process in Architecture) By Moleskine
• Zaha Hadid Architects Our Pick
• Spotlight: Zaha Hadid Our Pick By Patrick Lynch / Arch Daily / 31 October 2018
• Zaha Hadid Biography
• How Zaha Hadid became Zaha Hadid Arch20
• Zaha Hadid: 'I'm happy to be on the outside' By Simon Hattenstone / The Guardian / 9 October 2010
• Reflections on Zaha Our Pick
• Zaha Hadid: A look back at her work - BBC News Our Pick
• Zaha: An Architectural Legacy Our Pick
• Zaha Hadid - Who Dares Wins Our Pick
• Zaha Hadid Talking About Challenges of Architecture
• Dame Zaha Hadid | Full Q&A | Oxford Union
• Zaha Hadid and Suprematism | Tate Talks
• Panel Discussion - Zaha Hadid Beyond Boundaries, Art and Design

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Content compiled and written by Dawn Kanter

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Kimberly Nichols

Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) was born in Baghdad Iraq and commenced her college studies at the American University in Beirut in the field of mathematics. She moved to London in 1972 to study architecture at the Architectural Association and upon graduation in 1977, she joined the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). She also taught at the Architectural Association (AA) with OMA collaborators Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis.

She began her own practice in London in 1980 and won the prestigious competition for the Hong Kong Peak Club, a leisure and recreational center in 1983. Painting and drawing, especially in her early period, are important techniques of investigation for her design work. Ever since her 1983 retrospective exhibition at the AA in London, her architecture has been shown in exhibitions worldwide and many of her works are held in important museum collections.

Known as an architect who consistently pushes the boundaries of architecture and urban design, her work experiments with new spatial concepts intensifying existing urban landscapes and encompassing all fields of design, from the urban scale to interiors and furniture.

She is well-known for some of her seminal built works, such at the Vitra Fire Station (1993), Weil am Rhein, Germany, the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome (1999) Greenwich, UK, a ski jump (2002) in Innsbruck, Austria and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (2003) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Parallel with her private practice, Hadid has continued to be involved in academics, holding chairs and guest professorships at Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Visual Arts in Hamburg and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

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Zaha Hadid: Biography, Works, Awards

Zaha Hadid, born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1950, was a revolutionary architect who left an indelible mark on contemporary architecture. She began her education in Catholic boarding schools in England and Switzerland and studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut. Hadid moved to London in 1972 to look at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where architects like Rem Koolhaas influenced her. 1980, she established Zaha Hadid Architects in London and became a naturalized British citizen. Hadid’s architectural style is distinguished by its Deconstructivist, Suprematist, and Parametricist elements, characterized by fluid forms, sweeping curves, and dramatic geometry. Influenced by Suprematist art, Islamic architecture, and natural landscapes, her work transcends traditional architectural boundaries, creating sculptural, dynamic forms that evoke movement and excitement. Her most significant accomplishment was becoming the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, breaking barriers in a male-dominated field. Notable works by Hadid include the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan, the MAXXI National Museum in Rome, and the Guangzhou Opera House in China. These buildings exemplify her ability to create fluid, organic forms that integrate with their environments and challenge conventional architectural design. Hadid’s contributions to architecture were pioneering, especially in using digital tools and innovative materials to create unique, flowing spaces. Her designs expanded the possibilities of architecture, inspiring young architects to embrace creativity and technological advancement. Her designs were revolutionary, but Hadid also faced controversy, particularly regarding the practicality and budget of her large-scale projects. Despite this, she remained committed to pushing the boundaries of architecture with her bold, visionary approach.  Hadid’s portfolio includes many projects, from museums and cultural institutions to bridges, sports facilities, urban landscapes, and transport infrastructure. Her innovative approach to design reshaped how these structures can be perceived and experienced. Educated at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Hadid’s teachers included Rem Koolhaas, and she later taught at prestigious institutions like Harvard Graduate School of Design and Columbia University. Students can learn from her work the importance of innovation, embracing new technologies, and the power of a robust and unique vision in architecture.

Table of Contents

Who is Zaha Hadid?

Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1950 to a wealthy family. As a child, she attended Catholic boarding schools in England and Switzerland before studying mathematics at the American University of Beirut. In 1972, Hadid moved to London to pursue her passion for architecture by enrolling at the prestigious Architectural Association School of Architecture. There, she was taught by renowned architects, including Rem Koolhaas, who influenced her unconventional, radical thinking. After graduating, Hadid established Zaha Hadid Architects in London in 1980 and became a naturalized British citizen.

Her avant-garde designs drew inspiration from childhood trips to ancient Sumerian cities in southern Iraq, which sparked her interest in fragmented architecture. Hadid’s early life instilled in her the notion that she would have a professional career. Over the years, her visionary buildings transformed avant-garde architecture across the globe in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Some of her most iconic works include the Vitra Fire Station in Germany, the MAXXI museum in Italy, and the London Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 Olympics. Hadid died unexpectedly in 2016 in Miami, Florida, at 65, leaving behind a groundbreaking architectural legacy. Her radical ideas and designs paved the way for other avant-garde architects to push the boundaries of the built environment.

What type of architecture is Zaha Hadid representing?

Zaha Hadid’s architecture represents styles combining Deconstructivism , Suprematism, and Parametricism. Her designs are characterized by dramatic, fragmented geometry with sweeping curves and fluid forms that challenge traditional notions of architectural space. This approach mirrors the abstract geometries of Suprematist art, particularly Kazimir Malevich’s works while drawing on the intricate patterns of Islamic architecture and calligraphy. Natural landscapes and the principles of fluid dynamics further inspired her design vision. As a pioneer in using cutting-edge digital tools and innovative materials, Hadid’s architecture transcends traditional boundaries, creating structures that exude a sense of movement, lightness, and excitement. Her iconic buildings are not just structures but are perceived as sculptural forms in motion, challenging and expanding architectural design possibilities. Her daring vision and technological advancements mark Zaha Hadid’s legacy. 

What is Zaha Hadid’s great accomplishment?

Zaha Hadid’s most significant accomplishment was being the first woman to receive the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture. As the first woman to ever receive the prestigious prize in 2004, Zaha Hadid overcame significant barriers in the male-dominated field of architecture. When she started in the 1970s, the industry was skeptical that a woman could succeed as an architect, especially with Hadid’s unconventional, futuristic designs. Yet Hadid persevered through the early years of her career when she struggled to find clients and bring her radical visions to life.

After years of hard work, Hadid finally achieved international acclaim with her design for the Vitra Fire Station in Germany in 1993. This kicked off a string of high-profile commissions that cemented her status as one of the most celebrated architects in the world. Major successes include the award-winning MAXXI museum in Rome, the London Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 Olympics, and the striking Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan. With over 950 innovative projects across 55 countries, Hadid left behind a spectacular legacy as an architect who broke barriers for women with her breathtakingly original structures that stand out on skylines around the globe. 

What is Zaha Hadid’s most important work?

Zaha Hadid’s iconic buildings, such as the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku with its parametric glass and concrete forms, the MAXXI National Museum in Rome with its fragmented angular galleries of concrete, steel, and glass, and the Guangzhou Opera House in China with its smooth curving granite and metal exterior inspired by eroded stones, exemplify her groundbreaking futuristic architecture. By integrating innovative engineering with fluid, dynamic aesthetic visions, Hadid created new landmarks like these museums, cultural centers, and performance venues that stand out through their gravity-defying shapes. 

1. The Heydar Aliyev Center 

The Heydar Aliyev Center is Zaha Hadid’s iconic cultural institution along the Caspian Sea harbor in central Baku, Azerbaijan. Constructed from 2007-2012, the Center contains exhibition halls, auditoriums, conference facilities, and offices within its sweeping parametric form. However, it is the exterior design that defines the building. Over 10,000 glass fiber-reinforced concrete panels seamlessly envelop the structure in undulating curved shapes that actively mold space. The bright white futuristic skin stands in vivid contrast to Baku’s ancient walled city. The Center glows from within at night, a beacon of fluid modernity. The dynamic swooping forms appear to defy gravity, a Hadid signature. The interior also utilizes concrete, steel, and glass. By integrating innovative engineering with her fluid aesthetic, Hadid created a new civic landmark in Baku’s regenerating urban landscape using the Heydar Aliyev Center.

2. The MAXXI National Museum 

The MAXXI National Museum in Rome’s Flaminio district represents Zaha Hadid’s fragmented deconstructivist architecture. As Italy’s first state-run contemporary art institution, Hadid fittingly challenged convention in her 1998-2009 design. Concrete, steel, and glass shards collide at precarious angles, interlocking galleries and stairs in a futuristic composition. Ascending staircases zigzag through the angular fragmentation. Shadowy recesses and daring overhangs add to the feeling of an archaeological site from the future. The museum’s stacked geometry and concrete surfaces embody the vital chaos of contemporary urban life. By using everyday materials in unexpected ways, Hadid created a building whose very structure communicates the disjunction of modern existence. Her accomplishment was honored with the 2010 Stirling Prize.

3. Guangzhou Opera House

Guangzhou Opera House is situated along the Pearl River in central Guangzhou, China. Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House opened in 2010 as a graceful, fluid complex. Two giant pebble-forms house a 1,800-seat theater, a multipurpose hall, and outdoor performance spaces. Smooth asymmetric granite and curving metal clad the exterior, evoking eroded stones and rolling hills shaped by water. Inside, the main auditorium continues the aqueous theme with undulating reinforced plaster walls textured and illuminated like lapping ocean waves. At night, the building glows like luminous stones. Through natural inspiration, innovative construction techniques, and aesthetics, Hadid integrated the Opera House into its riverside landscape. Its flowing organic forms coexist in harmony with the forces that formed the surrounding terrain. The complex exemplifies the architect’s ability to mimic the fluidity found in nature.

How did Zaha Hadid contribute to architecture?

Zaha Hadid made pioneering, visionary contributions to contemporary avant-garde architecture. Her dynamic, radical designs liberated architectural form and geometry from convention. Hadid embraced new materials and digital technologies to engineer flowing, fragmented spaces and structures that redefined museums, bridges, stadiums, and more. Her novel aesthetic expanded the possibilities of architecture worldwide. Hadid’s groundbreaking work inspired many young architects to think creatively outside the box.

Did Zaha Hadid change the architecture industry?

Yes, Zaha Hadid’s revolutionary designs fundamentally changed and expanded the architecture industry. As the first woman to win prestigious honors like the Pritzker Prize, she smashed glass ceilings for female architects. Hadid’s radical vision introduced new geometries and forms aided by digital tools. She showed that architecture can uplift and excite. Her unprecedented fluid aesthetics significantly impacted and opened eyes to what global cutting-edge contemporary architecture could be.

Was Zaha Hadid ever controversial in any way?

Yes, Zaha Hadid was controversial due to the large scale and budget of her designs being criticized as impractical. One major controversy arose regarding worker deaths and treatment during the construction of the 2022 FIFA World Cup stadium projects in Qatar, for which Hadid designed the state-of-the-art Al Wakrah Stadium. When explicitly asked about the deaths on her stadium site, Hadid stated dismissively that those were not her responsibility as they were not directly related to her project. This perceived indifference to the human rights issues and dangerous working conditions faced by construction crews sparked fury and backlash against her. Another controversy stemmed from dysfunction and damage issues post-construction on one of Hadid’s most famous buildings, the breathtaking Guangzhou Opera House in China. The complex design required construction techniques and materials on an unprecedented scale. However, shortly after opening, reporters noted that damage and wear-and-tear to the building occurred much faster than expected. Criticisms emerged that Hadid’s avant-garde styles paid little attention to real-world functionality and created impractical structures unable to withstand regular usage demands.

Who are the most famous architects in modern history besides Zaha Hadid?

Aside from Zaha Hadid, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, and Bjarke Ingels are famous architects whose innovative designs have influenced architecture. First, Le Corbusier was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, was a visionary Swiss-French architect and urban planner. His work, marked by modern materials like concrete, steel, and glass, revolutionized functional architecture with Villa Savoye and the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel designs. His legacy includes over 50 published books on his architectural principles. Second, Frank Gehry, a Canadian-American architect born in 1929, is celebrated for his deconstructivist designs incorporating unconventional materials to create bold, sculptural forms. Gehry’s notable works, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, are distinguished for their flowing, unconventional shapes, pushing the boundaries of architectural form. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1989, Gehry’s work has been both acclaimed and critiqued for its radical approach. Third, Bjarke Ingels, a Danish architect born in 1974, stands out for his playful yet sustainable architectural solutions responsive to their environments. Founding BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) in 2005, his designs, such as the Amagerforbraending energy plant and LEGO House, integrate green elements with functional and engaging spaces. Ingels’ focus on sustainability and adaptability in design has earned him global recognition, including being named the Innovator of the Year in architecture by the Wall Street Journal in 2016.

What did Zaha Hadid mostly design?

Listed below are what Zaha Hadid mostly designs:

• Museums : Hadid designed several major museums that were seminal works of her career, including the MAXXI contemporary art museum in Rome and the Guangzhou Opera House in China. Museums allowed her to experiment with dynamic internal spaces.
• Bridges: Original bridges like the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion in Spain showcase Hadid’s ability to imbue infrastructure with inventive forms. Her bridges reimagine mundane transportation with futuristic styles.
• Cultural Institutions: Hadid created iconic cultural buildings like the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, which contains exhibition halls, auditoriums, and offices in a sweeping parametric design. She redefined cultural architecture with her fluid aesthetics.
• Sports Facilities : Projects, including the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics and the Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar, demonstrate Hadid’s ability to bring excitement to athletic venues using smooth white curves and dynamic shapes.
• Urban Landscapes : Hadid was renowned for larger urban designs like the Kartal-Pendik masterplan in Istanbul, which reimagined an entire waterfront district through a continuous landscape.
• Transport: Hadid redefined transport projects like the wave-like King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center metro station in Riyadh with her flowing biomorphic forms.

Where did Zaha Hadid study?

Zaha Hadid studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to study architecture at the prestigious Architectural Association School of Architecture, where renowned architects, including Rem Koolhaas, taught her. Earlier, she attended Catholic boarding schools in England and Switzerland.

After three exhausting years immersed in the conventional architectural movements of the period, Zaha felt compelled to forge a new path in her fourth year. She opted to challenge the prevailing norms by adopting a style she characterized as decidedly anti-design, bordering on anti-architecture. This approach drew inspiration from Suprematism, a Russian art movement initiated by Kazimir Malevich that utilizes basic geometric forms in a restricted color palette. This influence was evident in her 1977 graduation project, where she deconstructed and reinterpreted one of Malevich’s pieces, transforming it into an innovative architectural form. Zaha’s exceptional skills, praised by her mentors Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, were quickly recognized and utilized upon her graduation. She was named an assistant lecturer at the AA and became a partner at OMA alongside her mentors before founding her own studio in 1979.

Did Zaha Hadid have any famous teachers or students?

Hadid was taught by influential architects Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Architectural Association School and worked with them at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in the 1970s. Later, she taught architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University, and more. Her famous students include Patrik Schumacher, who became her business partner at Zaha Hadid Architects.

How can students learn from Zaha Hadid ‘s work?

Students can learn from Zaha Hadid’s pioneering vision to think creatively outside the box, embrace new technologies, draw inspiration from diverse influences, and persist through obstacles. Her career shows the importance of following one’s radical vision. Students can be inspired by her groundbreaking aesthetic and how she expanded the possibilities of architecture worldwide.

1 thought on “Zaha Hadid: Biography, Works, Awards”

she really was a women of dire substance, and an inspirational role model for those with Architectural inclination and related potential.

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Zaha Hadid summary

Zaha Hadid , in full Dame Zaha Hadid , (born Oct. 31, 1950, Baghdad, Iraq—died March 31, 2016, Miami, Fla., U.S.), Iraqi-born British architect. Hadid took a degree in mathematics at the American University of Beirut (1972) and trained at London’s Architectural Association. There she met the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas , with whom she worked until she established her own firm in 1979. Her building designs—inspired by modernist movements including Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism—were characterized by a sense of fragmentation, instability, and movement. Best known of her built works are the Vitra Fire Station (1989–93) in Weil am Rhein, Ger., and the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (1997–2003) in Cincinnati, Ohio. The latter was the first American museum designed by a woman. Her other notable buildings included the MAXXI museum (2009–10) in Rome and the Heydar Aliyev Center (2007–12) in Baku, Azer. In 2004 Hadid became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 2012 she was made a DBE.

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Zaha Hadid: Who was she and what was her design philosophy?

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Zaha Hadid is being honoured with a Google Doodle , 13 years after she became the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Prtizker Architecture Prize, and just over a year since she died following a heart attack.

Ms Hadid, who was born in Baghdad but later became a British citizen, learned about abstract art and architecture from the Architectural Association in London. She was known for her use of unconventional and circular forms in her designs, which led her to be nicknamed "The Queen of the Curve" by the British media. Her early work, before computer graphic designs simplified the process, was created using innovative photocopier methods to make complex new shapes.

She was known for several high-profile works that use their surroundings as inspiration. For example, her Vitra Fire Station in Germany drew inspiration from nearby vineyards and farmland. Her design for the London Aquatic Centre has a roof that takes the shape of a wave.

Her work was also controversial at times. A design she proposed for a stadium in Qatar was likened by several critics to a vagina. That design, too, became a lightning rod for critics upset with the treatment of foreign labourers by the government in the country. Ms Hadid would later sue a critic for defamation after it was falsely reported over a thousand workers had died working on the project before construction had begun.

Architectural works by Zaha Hadid 1950 - 2016

Ms Hadid was born in 1950 and died in March 2016. Her portfolio as an architect is known for elevating and liberating architectural geometry, and rendering surprising new spaces with fluid forms. In addition to the Pritzker Prize, the highest achievable in architecture, Ms Hadid was also awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 2015, the top architectural award in Britain.

After attending boarding schools in England and Switzerland she studied mathematics in Beirut for a time before moving to the UK in 1972, where she studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Her work can be seen all over the world from London to China to Azerbaijan, where she designed a cultural centre that has sensuous, curving lines that contrast with the blocky buildings that surround it.

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Zaha Hadid Architects

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• Budget Personal Up to £1,000 Up to £100,000 Up to £500,000 Up to £1,000,000 Up to £10m Up to £100m Up to £500m
• Location Africa Asia Australasia Europe North America South America
• Date 1980 - 1989 1990 - 1999 2000 - 2009 2010 - 2019
• Size Under 1,000m 2 1,000m 2 + 2,000m 2 + 5,000m 2 + 10,000m 2 + 50,000m 2 +
• Status Built Under Construction Design Competition / Research
• Status Built Under Construction Planning Competition / Research
• Publications

Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) Founder AA Dipl, RIBA, ARB, BDA, Hon.F.AIA

Zaha Hadid’s pioneering vision redefined architecture for the 21st century and captured imaginations across the globe. Each of her projects transformed notions of what can be achieved in concrete, steel, and glass; combining her unwavering optimism for the future and belief in the power of invention with advanced design, material and construction innovations.

Many architects are called on to create new projects that stand as symbols of social progress—but none delivered as regularly, as unexpectedly and as spectacularly as Zaha Hadid. Her successes were so consistent, she received the highest honours from civic, academic and professional institutions across the globe. Her practice remains one of the world’s most inventive architectural studios—and has been for almost 40 years.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, Zaha Hadid studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to attend the Architectural Association (AA) School where she received the Diploma Prize in 1977.

Hadid taught at the AA School until 1987 and held numerous chairs and guest professorships at universities around the world including Columbia, Harvard, Yale and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She founded Zaha Hadid Architects in 1979 and was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize (considered the Nobel Prize of architecture) in 2004.

Experiencing Hadid’s architecture yields an understanding that the quest for beauty alone was not her modus operandi. Her buildings are beautiful—and beauty may account for their seductive urban presence, for their hold on the eye—but the beauty and virtuosity within her work is married to meaning. Her architecture is inventive, original and civic, offering generous public spaces that are clearly organized and intuitive to navigate.

As they open, each of Hadid’s buildings takes its place in architectural history for its virtuosic construction, its architectural ideology, and its sheer magnetic presence. Her designs are the embodiment of an enlightened philosophical framework and principled discipline.

Her clients commissioned buildings, and Hadid met the programmes, but she also exceeded each brief and delivered the shared aspirations of a new generation.

Zaha Hadid’s work was the subject of critically-acclaimed exhibitions at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2006, London’s Design Museum in 2007, Saint Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum in 2015 and London’s Serpentine Galleries in 2016.

Hadid’s outstanding contribution to the architectural profession has been acknowledged by professional, academic and civic institutions around the world including the Forbes List of the ‘World’s Most Powerful Women’ and the Japan Art Association presenting her with the ‘Praemium Imperiale’. In 2010 and 2011, her designs were awarded the Stirling Prize, one of architecture’s highest accolades, by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Other awards include UNESCO naming Hadid as an ‘Artist for Peace’, the Republic of France honouring Hadid with the ‘Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’, and TIME magazine included her in the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’, naming her the world’s top thinker of 2010. Zaha Hadid was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012, and in February 2016, she received the Royal Gold Medal.

Zaha Hadid passed away on the 31st of March 2016.

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***TOO LONG*** Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid DBE RA (Arabic: زها حديد Zahā Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognised as a major figure in architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and then enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972. In search of an alternative system to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building."

She was described by The Guardian as the "Queen of the curve", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity". Her major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome's MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House. Some of her awards have been presented posthumously, including the statuette for the 2017 Brit Awards. Several of her buildings were still under construction at the time of her death, including the Daxing International Airport in Beijing, and the Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar, a venue for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. She received the UK's most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in February, 2016, the month preceding her death, she became the first woman to be individually awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Ray Eames and Sheila O'Donnell had previously been awarded it jointly with Charles Eames and John Tuomey respectively).

Early life, academic career and family

Zaha Hadid was born on 31 October 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq, to an upper class Iraqi family. Her father, Muhammad al-Hajj Husayn Hadid, was a wealthy industrialist from Mosul. He co-founded the left-liberal al-Ahali group in 1932, a significant political organisation in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the co-founder of the National Democratic Party in Iraq and served as minister of finance after the overthrow of the monarch after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état for the government of General Abd al-Karim Qasim. Her mother, Wajiha al-Sabunji, was an artist from Mosul while her brother Foulath Hadid was a writer, accountant and expert on Arab affairs. Hadid once mentioned in an interview how her early childhood trips to the ancient Sumerian cities in southern Iraq sparked her interest in architecture. In the 1960s Hadid attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland.

Hadid studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving, in 1972, to London to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. There she studied with Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis and Bernard Tschumi. Her former professor, Koolhaas, described her at graduation as "a planet in her own orbit." Zenghelis described her as the most outstanding pupil he ever taught. 'We called her the inventor of the 89 degrees. Nothing was ever at 90 degrees. She had spectacular vision. All the buildings were exploding into tiny little pieces." He recalled that she was less interested in details, such as staircases. "The way she drew a staircase you would smash your head against the ceiling, and the space was reducing and reducing, and you would end up in the upper corner of the ceiling. She couldn't care about tiny details. Her mind was on the broader pictures—when it came to the joinery she knew we could fix that later. She was right.' Her AA graduation thesis, Malevich's Tektonik, was a concept and design for a 14-level hotel on London's Hungerford Bridge executed as an acrylic painting, inspired by the works of the Russian suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich.

After graduation in 1977, she went to work for her former professors, Koolhaas and Zenghelis, at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Through her association with Koolhaas, she met the architectural engineer Peter Rice, who gave her support and encouragement during the early stages of her career. Hadid became a naturalised citizen of the United Kingdom. She opened her own architectural firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, in London in 1980. During the early 1980s Hadid's style introduced audiences to a new modern architecture style through her extremely detailed and professional sketches. At the time people were focused on postmodernism designs, so her designs were a different approach to architecture that set her apart from other designers.

She then began her career teaching architecture, first at the Architectural Association, then, over the years at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge University, the University of Chicago, the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Columbia University. She earned her early reputation with her lecturing and colourful and radical early designs and projects, which were widely published in architectural journals but remained largely unbuilt. Her ambitious but unbuilt projects included a plan for Peak in Hong Kong (1983), and a plan for an opera house in Cardiff, Wales, (1994). The Cardiff experience was particularly discouraging; her design was chosen as the best by the competition jury, but the Welsh government refused to pay for it, and the commission was given to a different and less ambitious architect. Her reputation in this period rested largely upon her teaching and the imaginative and colourful paintings she made of her proposed buildings. Her international reputation was greatly enhanced in 1988 when she was chosen to show her drawings and paintings as one of seven architects chosen to participate in the exhibition "Deconstructivism in Architecture" curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley at New York's Museum of Modern Art. This, a conference at the Tate in London and press coverage of her work began to not only get her name out into the architecture world, but allowed people to associate a particular style of architecture with Hadid.

Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1991–93)

Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria (1999–2002)

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio (1997–2003)

Phaeno Science Center, Wolfsburg, Germany (2005)

Phaeno Science Center interior

Administration building of BMW Factory in Leipzig, Germany (2001–2005)

Extension of Ordrupgaard Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark (2001–2005)

High speed train station, Afragola, Naples, Italy

Vitra Fire Station (1991–1993)

One of her first clients was Rolf Fehlbaum the president-director general of the Swiss furniture firm Vitra, and later, from 2004 to 2010, a member of the jury for the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1989, Fehlbaum had invited Frank Gehry, then little-known, to build a design museum at the Vitra factory in Weil-am-Rhein. In 1993, he invited Hadid to design a small fire station for the factory. Her radical design, made of raw concrete and glass, was a sculptural work composed of sharp diagonal forms colliding together in the centre. The design plans appeared in architecture magazines before construction. When completed, it only served as a fire station for a short period of time, as Weil am Rhein soon opened their own fire station. It became an exhibit space instead, and is now on display with the works of Gehry and other well-known architects. It was the launching pad of her architectural career.

Spittelau Viaducts Housing Project (1994–2005)

In 1994, Hadid was commissioned by the city of Vienna to design and construct a three-part scheme for the urban redevelopment of an area adjacent to the Danube Canal. Situated along the Spittelauer Lände, the series of buildings interact with and cross over the railway viaduct by Viennese Modernist architect Otto Wagner, a protected structure. In its initial design consisting of five buildings, the mixed-use scheme, described as a "sculpture-like overbuilding" of the historic Stadtbahn railway, was designed by Hadid's practice ZHA. Hadid, together with British architectural artist Brian Clarke, developed an unexecuted collaborative proposal for the project that incorporated integral artworks by Clarke as part of the Neo-Futurist structures, with interrelated glass mosaic and traditionally-leaded stained glass forming part of the cladding and fenestration of the complex. Clarke developed a new type of mouth-blown glass for the scheme, which he christened 'Zaha-Glas'. Later reduced to three buildings, the project, which experienced delays in construction, was completed in 2006, without the artwork.

Bergisel Ski Jump (1999–2002)

Hadid designed a public housing estate in Berlin (1986–1993) and organised an exhibition, "The Great Utopia" (1992), at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her next major project was a ski jump at Bergisel, in Innsbruck Austria. The old ski jump, built in 1926, had been used in the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. The new structure was to contain not only a ski jump, but also a cafe with 150 seats offering a 360-degree view of the mountains. Hadid had to fight against traditionalists and against time; the project had to be completed in one year, before the next international competition. Her design is 48 metres high and rests on a base seven metres by seven metres. She described it as "an organic hybrid", a cross between a bridge and a tower, which by its form gives a sense of movement and speed.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (1997–2000)

At the end of the 1990s, her career began to gather momentum, as she won commissions for two museums and a large industrial building. She competed against Rem Koolhaas and other well-known architects for the design of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio (1997–2000). She won, and became the first woman to design an art museum in the United States. At 8,500 square metres, the museum was not huge, and her design did not have the flamboyance of the Guggenheim Bilbao of Frank Gehry, built at the same time. But the project demonstrated Hadid's ability to use architectural forms to create interior drama, including its central element, a 30-metre long black stairway that passes between massive curving and angular concrete walls.

Phaeno Science Center (2000–2005)

In 2000 she won an international competition for the Phaeno Science Center, in Wolfsburg, Germany (2002–2005). The new museum was only a little larger than the Cincinnati Museum, with 9,000 square metres of space, but the plan was much more ambitious. It was similar in concept to the buildings of Le Corbusier, raised up seven metres on concrete pylons. Unlike Corbusier's buildings, she planned for the space under the building to be filled with activity, and each of the 10 massive inverted cone-shaped columns that hold up the building contains a cafe, a shop, or a museum entrance. The tilting columns reach up through the building and also support the roof. The museum structure resembles an enormous ship, with sloping walls and asymmetric scatterings of windows, and the interior, with its angular columns and exposed steel roof framework, gives the illusion of being inside a working vessel or laboratory.

Ordrupgaard Museum extension (2001–2005)

In 2001 she began another museum project, an extension of the Ordrupgaard Museum near Copenhagen, Denmark, a museum featuring a collection of 19th century French and Danish art in the 19th-century mansion of its collector. The new building is 87 metres long and 20 metres wide, and is connected by a five-metre wide passage to the old museum. There are no right angles – only diagonals – in the concrete shell of the museum. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the gallery make the garden the backdrop of the exhibits.

BMW Administration Building (2001–2005)

In 2002 she won the competition to design a new administrative building for the factory of the auto manufacturer BMW in Leipzig, Germany. The three assembly buildings adjoining it were designed by other architects; her building served as the entrance and what she called the "nerve centre" of the complex. As with the Phaeno Science Center, the building is hoisted above street level on leaning concrete pylons. The interior contains a series of levels and floors which seem to cascade, sheltered by tilting concrete beams and a roof supported by steel beams in the shape of an 'H'. The open interior inside was intended, she wrote, to avoid "the traditional segregation of working groups" and to show the "global transparence of the internal organisation" of the enterprise, and wrote that she had given particular attention to the parking lot in front of the building, with the intent, she wrote, of "transforming it into a dynamic spectacle of its own".

In 2004 she won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture, though she had only completed four buildings – the Vitra Fire Station, the Ski Lift in Innsbruck Austria, the Car Park and Terminus Hoenheim North in France, and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. In making the announcement, Thomas Pritzker, the head of the jury, announced: "Although her body of work is relatively small, she has achieved great acclaim and her energy and ideas show even greater promise for the future."

Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain (2005–2008)

MAXXI Interior, Rome, Italy (1998–2010)

Guangzhou Opera House, Guangzhou, China (2003–2010)

Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion (2005–2008)

Between 1997 and 2010 Hadid ventured into the engineers' domain of bridge construction, a field also occupied by other top architects including Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava. Between 2005 and 2008 she designed and built the Bridge-Pavilion of Zaragoza, which was both an exhibit hall and a bridge, created for Expo 2008, an event on the themes of water and durable development. The concrete bridge span on which the pavilion rests is 85 metres long measured from the Exposition site to an island in the Ebro River. The bridge carries or is attached to four tunnel-like exhibition spaces she termed "pods", which spread onto the island, for a total length of 275 metres. The pods are covered with a skin of 26,000 triangular shingles, many of which open to let in air and light. Like her other structures, the bridge-pavilion is composed entirely of diagonal slopes and curves, with no right-angles of orthogonal forms. By its curving shape and low profile, the bridge-pavilion fits smoothly into the grassy landscape along the river.

Sheikh Zayed Bridge (1997–2010)

Between 1997 and 2010, she constructed a much more ambitious bridge, the Sheikh Zayed Bridge, which honors Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, between the island of Abu Dhabi and the mainland of Abu Dhabi, as well as to the Abu Dhabi International Airport. Both the design of the bridge and the lighting, consisting of gradually changing colours, were designed to give the impression of movement. The silhouette of the bridge is a wave, with a principal arch 235 metres long, standing 60 metres above the water. The total span of four lanes is 842 metres (2,762 feet) long, and also includes pedestrian walkways.

National Museum of Arts of the 21st Century (MAXXI), Rome, Italy (1998–2010)

The National Museum of Arts of the 21st Century (MAXXI for short), in Rome, was designed and built between 1998 and 2010. The main theme of its architecture is the sense of movement; Everything in the structure seems to be moving and flowing. Hadid took inspiration from the surrounding orthogonal site grids to determine the overall form. The facade belongs to her earlier period, with smooth curving white walls and an austere black and white colour scheme. The building is perched on groups of five very thin pylons, and one gallery with a glass face precariously overhangs the plaza in front of the museum, creating shade. Rowan Moore of The Guardian of London described its form as "bending oblong tubes, overlapping, intersecting and piling over each other. The imagery is of flow and movement and it resembles a demented piece of transport architecture. Inside, black steel stairs and bridges, their undersides glowing with white light, fly across a void. They take you off to the galleries, which are themselves works of frozen motion. The design is intended to generate what Hadid called "confluence, interference and turbulence",

Guangzhou Opera House (2003–2010)

In 2002 Hadid won an international competition for her first project in China. The Guangzhou Opera House is located in a new business district of the city, with a new 103-storey glass tower behind it. It covers 70,000 square metres and was built at cost of US$300 million. The complex comprises an 1,800-seat theatre, a multipurpose theatre, entry hall, and salon. A covered pathway with restaurants and shops separates the two main structures. This building, like several of her later buildings, was inspired by natural earth forms; the architect herself referred to it as the "two pebbles". It appears akin to two giant smooth-edged boulders faced with 75,000 panels of polished granite and glass. Edwin Heathcote, writing for the Financial Times, noted Hadid's concentration on how her design could transform the urban landscape of Guangzhou, as the building rose as the centre of the new business area. He wrote in 2011 that Hadid "produced a building that seems to suck the surrounding landscape into a vortex of movement and swirling space... appears both as alien object in a landscape of incomprehensible vastness (and often overwhelming banality), and as an extrusion of the peculiar nature of this landscape." Nicolai Ourousoff, architecture critic of the New York Times, wrote that "stepping into the main hall is like entering the soft insides of an oyster...The concave ceiling is pierced by thousands of little lights—it looks like you're sitting under the dome of a clear night sky." Ourousoff noted that the finished building had construction problems: many of the granite tiles on the exterior had to be replaced, and the plaster and other interior work was poorly done by the inexperienced workers, but he praised Hadid's ability "to convey a sense of bodies in motion" and called the building "a Chinese gem that elevates its setting."

Riverside Museum, Glasgow, Scotland (2004–2011)

London Aquatics Centre, built for the 2012 Summer Olympics, London (2005–2012)

Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, Michigan, US (2007–2012)

Galaxy SOHO in Beijing, China (2008–2012)

The Riverside Museum (2004–2011), on the banks of the River Clyde Glasgow, Scotland, houses the Glasgow Museum of Transport. Hadid described the 10,000-square metre building, with 7,000 square metres of gallery space, as "a wave", "folds in movement", and "a shed in the form of a tunnel, open at the extreme ends, one end toward the city and the other toward the Clyde." Like many of her buildings, the whole form is only perceived when viewed from above. The facades are covered with zinc plates, and the roofline has a series of peaks and angles. The interior galleries caused some controversy; visitors who came to see the collection of historic automobiles found that they are mounted on the walls, high overhead, so it is impossible to look into them. Rowan Moore of The Guardian of London wrote: "Obviously the space is about movement...Outside it is, typologically, a supermarket, being a big thing in a parking lot that is seeking to attract you in...It has enigma and majesty, but not friendliness."

London Olympics Aquatics Centre (2005–2011)

Hadid described her Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as "inspired by the fluid geometry of water in movement". The building covers three swimming pools, and seats 17,500 spectators at the two main pools. The roof, made of steel and aluminium and covered with wood on the inside, rests on just three supports; it is in the form of a parabolic arch that dips in the centre, with the two pools at either end. The seats are placed in bays beside the curving and outward-leaning walls of glass. At £269 million, the complex cost three times the original estimate, owing principally to the complexity of the roof. This was the subject of much comment when it was constructed, and it was the first 2012 Olympic building begun but the last to be finished. It was praised by architecture critics. Rowan Moore of The Guardian said that the roof "floats and undulates" and called the centre "the Olympics' most majestic space".

Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, US (2007–2012)

The Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, Hadid's second project in the United States, has a space of 4,274 square metres, dedicated to contemporary art and modern art and an historical collection. The parallelogram-shaped building leans sharply and seems about to tip over. Hadid wrote that she designed the building so that its sloping pleated stainless steel facades would reflect the surrounding neighbourhood from different angles; the building continually changes colour depending upon the weather, the time of day and the angle of the sun. As Hadid commented, the building "awakens curiosity without ever truly revealing its contents". Elaine Glusac of The New York Times wrote that the architecture of the new museum "radicalizes the streetscape". The Museum was used in a scene of the 2016 Batman vs. Superman movie.

Galaxy SOHO, Beijing, China (2008–2012)

Many of Hadid's later major works are found in Asia. The Galaxy SOHO in Beijing, China (2008–2012) is a combination of offices and a commercial centre in the heart of Beijing with a total of 332,857 square metres, composed of four different ovoid glass-capped buildings joined together by multiple curving passageways on different levels. Hadid explained, "the interior spaces follow the same coherent formal logic of continual curvilinearity." The complex, like most of her buildings, gives the impression that every part of them is in motion.

Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan (2007–2013)

Auditorium of the Heydar Aliyev Center

Vienna University of Economics and Business Library and Learning Center, Vienna, Austria (2013)

Interior of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Library and Learning Center (2013)

The Wangjing SOHO office complex in Beijing, China (2009–2014)

Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Seoul, Korea (2007–2013)

Jockey Club Innovation Tower at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2007–2014)

Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre, 2015

Port Authority Building (Havenhuis) in Antwerp, Belgium (2016)

Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku Azerbaijan (2007–2013)

The Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan (2007–2013) is a gigantic cultural and conference centre containing three auditoriums, a library and museum, with a total space of 10,801 square metres on a surface of 15,514 square metres, and a height of 74 metres. Hadid wrote that "its fluid form emerges from the folds of the natural topography of the landscape and envelops the different functions of the centre", though the building when completed was largely surrounded by Soviet-era apartment blocks. Peter Cook in Architectural Review called it "a white vision, outrageously total, arrogantly complete ... a unique object that confounds and contradicts the reasonable ... a wave form sweeping up, almost lunging, into the sky ... here is architecture as the ultimate statement of theatre ... It is the most complete realisation yet of the Iraqi-born architect's vision of sweeping curves and flowing space."

Consisting of eight storeys, the centre includes an auditorium with 1000 seats, exhibition space, conference hall, workshop and a museum. No straight line was used in the project of the complex. The shape of the building is wave-like and the overall view is unique and harmonic. Such an architectural structure stands for post-modernist architecture and forms oceanic feeling. The lines of the building symbolise the merging of past and future.

While the building itself was widely praised, Dame Zaha was criticized in many circles when she was awarded Britain's most prestigious prize in architecture, the Design Museum "Design of the Year," the first woman to do so. The building was named for the former ruler of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, and commissioned by his son, Illham, who became president after his father's death in 2003. Hugh Williamson, director of Human Rights Watch for Europe and the Central Asian division, called Aliyev "an authoritarian leader and so is his son." The former Soviet secret police general ruled for 30 years, first as its Communist leader and then as its president. Amnesty International accused him of human rights abuses, balloting irregularities and intimidating the opposition while in power. Several architecture critics who admired the work itself felt that Dame Zaha should have raised questions about this repressive leader even as she accepted the commission, and other critics questioned the UK granting its most prestigious architecture award to a building which memorialized a vicious Soviet dictator.

The Dongdaemun Design Plaza (2007–2013) is among the largest buildings in Seoul, South Korea. Its name means "Great Gate of the East", in reference to the old walls of the city. The complex of 86,574 square metres contains exhibition space, a museum of design, conference rooms and other common facilities, as well as the bureaux and a marketplace for designers which is open 24 hours a day. The main building is 280 metres long with seven levels, including three levels underground. The smooth-skinned, giant mushroom-like structure floating atop sloping pylons is made of concrete, aluminium, steel and stone on the exterior, and finished inside with plaster reinforced with synthetic fibre, acoustic tiles, acrylic resin, and stainless steel and polished stone on the interior. Hadid wrote that the principal characteristics of her design were "transparency, porousness, and durability." It also features many ecological features, including a double skin, solar panels, and a system for recycling water.

Library and Learning Center, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria (2008–2013)

The Library and Learning Center was designed as the centrepiece of the new University of Economics in Vienna. Containing 28,000 square metres of space, its distinctive Hadid features include walls sloping at 35 degrees and massive black volume cantilevered at an angle over the plaza in front of the building. She described the interior as follows: "The straight lines of the building's exterior separate as they move inward, becoming curvilinear and fluid to generate a free-formed interior canyon that serves as the principal public plaza of the Center, as well as generating corridors and bridges ensuring smooth transitions between different levels."

Serpentine Sackler North Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London UK (2009–2013)

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery is a synthesis of two distinct parts – the 19th century classical brick structure named The Magazine (a former gunpowder store), and a 21st century tensile structure. This is the second art space (after the MAXII Museum in Rome) where Zaha Hadid Architects worked on the melding of both old and new elements. Zaha Hadid's Magazine extension on the original Grade II building was aided by the reinstatement of the building to an historic arrangement as a free-standing pavilion within an enclosure, with the former courtyards covered. The North Gallery extension features Hadid's distinct hallmark of curves, and houses a series of skylights which welcome natural light into the space as well as retractable blinds when less light is needed. Hadid also worked in collaboration with architect and heritage specialist Liam O'Connor, whose reconstructions and conversions of the original space were designed in consultation with English Heritage and Westminster City Council. The extension houses internal exhibition spaces as well as the museum shop and offices for the curatorial team.

Innovation Tower, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2007–2014)

The Innovation Tower in Hong Kong (2007–2014) is part of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The building of 15 floors has 15,000 square metres of space, with laboratories, classrooms, studios and other facilities for 1,800 students and their faculty. It was built on the site of the university's former football pitch. The extremely complex forms of the building required computer modelling. Early designs experimented with a facade made of reinforced plastic, textiles or aluminium, but Hadid finally settled upon metal panels with multiple layers. The building seems to lean towards the city. The floors inside are visible from the exterior like geological strata.

Wangjing SOHO Tower, Beijing (2009–2014)

Wangjing SOHO tower in Beijing is the second building Hadid designed for the major Chinese property developer, located half-way between the centre of Beijing and the airport. The towers slope and curve; Hadid compared them to Chinese fans, "whose volumes turn one around the other in a complex ballet." The tallest building is 200 metres high, with two levels of shops and 37 levels of offices. A single atrium level three storeys high joins the three buildings at the base.

Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre (2012–2015)

The Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre are two skyscrapers in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. Tower 1 is 314.5 metres (1,032 ft) tall and Tower 2 is 255 metres (837 ft). Construction began in 2012 and ended in 2015.

Issam Fares Institute, AUB, Beirut (2014)

The Issam Fares Institute is located in the campus of the American University of Beirut (AUB). It won the Agha Khan Award in 2016, the same year Hadid passed away. It has a 21 meters cantilever in order to preserve the existing landscape. The institute aims to harness, develop and initiate research of the Arab world to enhance and broaden debate on public policy and international relations.

Port Authority, Antwerp, Belgium (2016)

Of all her works, Hadid designed only one government building, the Port Authority Building, or Havenhuis, in Antwerp, Belgium, completed in 2016. Most new government buildings attempt to express solidity and seriousness, but Port Authority, a ship-like structure of glass and steel on a white concrete perch, seems to have landed atop the old port building constructed in 1922. The faceted glass structure also resembles a diamond, a symbol of Antwerp's role as the major market of diamonds in Europe. It was one of the last works of Hadid, who died in 2016, the year it opened. The square in front of the building was renamed to Zaha Hadidplein (Zaha Hadidsquare) to honor her death.

On 31 March 2016, Hadid died of a heart attack at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, where she was being treated for bronchitis. She was 65 years old.

The statement issued by her London-based design studio announcing her death read: "Zaha Hadid was widely regarded to be the greatest female architect in the world today". She is buried between her father Mohammed Hadid and brother Foulath Hadid in Brookwood Cemetery in Brookwood, Surrey, England. In her will she left £67m, and bequeathed various amounts to her business partner and family members. Her international design businesses, which accounted for the bulk of her wealth, were left in trust.

Beijing Daxing Airport in Beijing (2019)

Beijing Daxing Airport's interior

Salerno Maritime Terminal in Salerno, Italy (2000–2016)

The first major project to be completed shortly after her death was the Salerno Maritime Terminal in Salerno, Italy, her first major transportation building. She won the competition for the building in 2000, but then the project was delayed due to funding and technical issues. Hadid scouted the site from a police boat in the harbour to visualise how it would appear from the water. The final building covers 50,000 square feet and cost 15 million Euros. Paola Cattarin, the project architect who completed the building after Hadid's death, said, "We thought of the building as an oyster, with a hard shell top and bottom, and a softer, liquid, more organic interior." At the opening of the new building, posters of Hadid were placed around the city, saying, "Goodbye Zaha Hadid; Genius and Modernity, Inspiration and Transformation, Light That Takes Shape."

Scorpion Tower of Miami

The Scorpion Tower of Miami, now known as One Thousand Museum, was started while Hadid was still alive though currently undergoing completion posthumously. It is noted by its curved external columns standing the full length of the building. Its twin Scorpion Tower has also been built in Dubai.

Skyscraper re-purposing of 666 Fifth Avenue (2015–incomplete)

On 25 March 2017, Kam Dhillon reported a yet-to-be completed skyscraper design designed by Hadid prior to her death in 2016 in an article titled "Zaha Hadid Architects Unveils Monumental Skyscraper Project for NYC".

A futuristic building, faithful to the imprint of the architect, which should host the biggest cultural events of the Moroccan capital. The works, launched in October 2014, are still in progress. This project consists of a large multipurpose room, which has 1822 seats and can accommodate different types of shows. For each artistic presentation with specific acoustics needs, the theater will be equipped with adjustable systems. The theater also has a small modular room with 127 seats, a restaurant with panoramic views, shops, cafes and a bookstore.

Beijing Daxing International Airport, China

The Beijing Daxing International Airport opened in September 2019.

Sky Park Residence, Bratislava, Slovakia

The complex of three 31-storey residential towers neighbouring Bratislava city centre is still under construction. Part of the construction area includes a preserved historical waterworks building designed by one of the most influential Slovak architects of early 20th century – Dušan Jurkovič.

In the 1990s, she held the Sullivan Chair professorship at the University of Illinois at Chicago's School of Architecture. At various times, she served as guest professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg), the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, and was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture. From 2000, Hadid was a guest professor at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, in the Zaha Hadid Master Class Vertical-Studio.

Hadid also undertook some high-profile interior work, including the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome in London as well as creating fluid furniture installations within the Georgian surroundings of Home House private members club in Marylebone, and the Z.CAR hydrogen-powered, three-wheeled automobile. In 2009 she worked with the clothing brand Lacoste to create a new, high fashion, and advanced boot. In the same year, she also collaborated with the brassware manufacturer Triflow Concepts to produce two new designs in her signature parametric architectural style.

In 2007, Hadid designed Dune Formations for David Gill Gallery and the Moon System Sofa for leading Italian furniture manufacturer B&B Italia.

In 2013, Hadid designed Liquid Glacial for David Gill Gallery which comprises a series of tables resembling ice-formations made from clear and coloured acrylic. Their design embeds surface complexity and refraction within a powerful fluid dynamic. The collection was further extended in 2015–2016. In 2016 the gallery launched Zaha's final collection of furniture entitled UltraStellar

Architectural firm

Hadid established an architectural firm named Zaha Hadid Architects in New York. One of the notable buildings designed by this agency is the boutique pavilion of Il Makiage.

Following her death in March 2016, Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times wrote: "her soaring structures left a mark on skylines and imaginations and in the process re-shaped architecture for the modern age...Her buildings elevated uncertainty to an art, conveyed in the odd way of one entered and moved through these buildings and in the questions that her structures raised about how they were supported ... Hadid embodied, in its profligacy and promise, the era of so-called starchitects who roamed the planet in pursuit of their own creative genius, offering miracles, occasionally delivering." She is quoted as saying "I don't make nice little buildings".

Deyan Sudjic of The Guardian described Hadid as "an architect who first imagined, then proved, that space could work in radical new ways ... Throughout her career, she was a dedicated teacher, enthused by the energy of the young. She was not keen to be characterised as a woman architect, or an Arab architect. She was simply an architect."

In an interview published in Icon magazine, she said: "I never use the issue about being a woman architect ... but if it helps younger people to know they can break through the glass ceiling, I don't mind that." However, she admitted that she never really felt a part of the male-dominant architecture "establishment". She once said "As a woman in architect you're always an outsider. It's OK, I like being on the edge.'

Sometimes called the "Queen of the curve", Hadid was frequently described in the press as the world's top female architect. although her work also attracted criticism. The Metropolitan Museum in New York cited her "unconventional buildings that seem to defy the logic of construction". Her architectural language was described as "famously extravagant" and she was accused of building "dictator states". Architect Sean Griffiths characterised Hadid's work as "an empty vessel that sucks in whatever ideology might be in proximity to it".

Qatar controversy

As the architect of a stadium to be used for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Hadid was accused in The New York Review of Books of giving an interview in which she allegedly showed no concern for the deaths of migrant workers in Qatar involved in the project. In August 2014, Hadid sued The New York Review of Books for defamation and won. Immediately thereafter, the reviewer and author of the piece in which she was accused of showing no concern issued a retraction in which he said "work did not begin on the site for the Al Wakrah stadium, until two months after Ms Hadid made those comments; and construction is not scheduled to begin until 2015 ... There have been no worker deaths on the Al Wakrah project and Ms Hadid's comments about Qatar that I quoted in the review had nothing to do with the Al Wakrah site or any of her projects. I regret the error."

The architectural style of Hadid is not easily categorised, and she did not describe herself as a follower of any one style or school. Nonetheless, before she had built a single major building, she was categorised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a major figure in architectural Deconstructivism. Her work was also described as an example of neo-futurism and parametricism. An article profiling Hadid in the New Yorker magazine was titled "The Abstractionist".

At the time when technology was integrating into design, Zaha accepted the use of technology but still continued to hand draw her buildings and make models of the designs. This was because she did not want to limit herself and her designs to only to what the computer could do.

Through her design style, she paints the conceptual designs of her many projects in fluid and geometrical forms where "Zaha Hadid's work took shape." These would be large paintings that would aspire towards her design process and "rational nature of her construction, the drawings pulled the parts and pieces apart, exploding its site and programme."

When she was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the jury chairman, Lord Rothschild, commented: "At the same time as her theoretical and academic work, as a practising architect, Zaha Hadid has been unswerving in her commitment to modernism. Always inventive, she's moved away from existing typology, from high tech, and has shifted the geometry of buildings."

The Design Museum described her work in 2016 as having "the highly expressive, sweeping fluid forms of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry that evoke the chaos and flux of modern life".

Hadid herself, who often used dense architectural jargon, could also describe the essence of her style very simply: "The idea is not to have any 90-degree angles. In the beginning, there was the diagonal. The diagonal comes from the idea of the explosion which "re-forms" the space. This was an important discovery."

Awards and honours

Hadid was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2002 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to architecture.

Hadid was named an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She was on the board of trustees of The Architecture Foundation.

In 2002, Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore's one-north master plan. In 2004, Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland and she was elected as a Royal Academician. In 2006, she was honoured with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

In 2008, she was ranked 69th on the Forbes list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women". In 2010, she was named by Time as an influential thinker in the 2010 TIME 100 issue. In September 2010 the New Statesman listed Zaha Hadid at number 42 in its annual survey of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures of 2010".

In 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Hadid appeared on Debrett's list of the most influential people in the UK. In January 2015, she was nominated for the Services to Science and Engineering award at the British Muslim Awards.

She won the Stirling Prize, the UK's most prestigious award for architecture, two years running: in 2010, for one of her most celebrated works, the MAXXI in Rome, and in 2011 for the Evelyn Grace Academy, a Z‑shaped school in Brixton, London. She also designed the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul, South Korea, which was the centrepiece of the festivities for the city's designation as World Design Capital 2010. 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 receive the Royal Gold Medal awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In 2016 in Antwerp, Belgium a square was named after her, Zaha Hadidplein, in front of the extension of the Antwerp Harbour House designed by Zaha Hadid.

Google celebrated her achievements with a Doodle on 31 May 2017, to commemorate the date (in 2004) on which Hadid became the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Her architectural design firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, employs 400 people and its headquarters are in a Victorian former-school building in Clerkenwell, London.

Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in 2008. In 2010, commissioned by the Iraqi government to design the new building for the Central Bank of Iraq. An agreement to complete the design stages of the new CBI building was finalised on 2 February 2012, at a ceremony in London. This was her first project in her native Iraq. In 2012, Hadid won an international competition to design a new National Olympic Stadium as part of the successful bid by Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. As the estimated cost of the construction mounted, however, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced in July 2015 that Hadid's design would be scrapped in favour of a new bidding process to seek a less expensive alternative. Hadid had planned to enter the new competition, but her firm was unable to meet the new requirement of finding a construction company with which to partner.

• Zaha Hadid en.wikipedia.org

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• remembrance

How Zaha Hadid First Rose to Fame

Z aha Hadid, the world-renowned architect who has died at 65 , made a name for herself with her bold designs and bold opinions. As Donna Karan wrote of her in 2010, when Hadid was included in TIME’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, “she personified [her] work.” Hadid, Karan noted, “commands the space around her — not in an imposing way but in a way that seduces you with excitement,” and her work was “like a gust of wind — organic, forceful and utterly natural.”

But her place as one of the most recognizable names in architecture did not come easily. When she started breaking into that world, especially as a woman born in Baghdad, her projects didn’t always pan out. As Hadid herself acknowledged in a 2012 interview , the world was different when her career began: “The view from the Establishment about architecture has changed since then,” she said. “The view about women has also changed. People now see the value in difference, not normative space.”

In 1999, TIME’s Belinda Luscombe looked back at the beginning of that career and explained how Hadid’s emergence on the scene set her apart from her colleagues:

If there is an antithesis to an overnight success, then Hadid is it. She arrived on the architecture scene in 1983 when, at 33 (which is like seven in architecture years), she won a prestigious international competition to design a sports club on the Peak, the mountain in Hong Kong. The financing for that ambitious building fell through, but her drawings and the design—a dramatic cantilever jutting out of the mountain like a futuristic rock ledge—were wildly praised by the architectural fraternity. It was a situation that would become familiar to her. She taught at the school at which she studied, London’s Architectural Association, and kept winning big competitions but building only small projects, like restaurant interiors and a fire station, until 1994. That year she was engulfed in another tsunami of publicity when she won the international competition for the opera house in Cardiff, Wales. Almost as soon as her victory was announced, the controversy began. An outspoken Arabic woman proposing an intellectually demanding, uncompromising design in a Britain in which the future king publicly bemoaned the lack of pretty, traditional buildings was destined for a tough time. Slowly the promised funds for that project evanesced. But the seductive stylized drawings and paintings of her work, plus the fact that she was a female architect of consistent vision, backbone and—as a made-for-media bonus—booming voice, frank views and flamboyant wardrobe, put her in the awkward position of having fame and headlines aplenty but buildings few.

Read the full story, here in the TIME Vault: She’s Gotta Build It

Read a 2012 interview with Hadid, here on TIME.com: 10 Questions with Zaha Hadid

Read Donna Karan’s appreciation of Hadid, here on TIME.com: Zaha Hadid

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Zaha Hadid ( British , 1950 – 2016 )

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Zaha hadid: a life in buildings.

Zaha Hadid 1950-2016: Dezeen remembers Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid , who has died suddenly aged 65 , with a selection of projects that demonstrate her importance to contemporary architecture (+ slideshow).

Hadid suffered a heart attack earlier today, following treatment for bronchitis at a Miami hospital. One of the most prominent and successful female architects in the world, she has won countless awards and accolades for her contribution to architecture.

The Iraqi-born British architect was the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Prize – architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize – in 2004, and the first woman to be win the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal  in her own right.

A graduate of London's Architectural Association in 1977, she worked with former professors Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at OMA, before establishing London-based Zaha Hadid Architects in 1979, which she ran with Patrik Schumacher.

Her use of unusual shapes became apparent in early competition proposals for The Peak terminus in Hong Kong (1983), the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (1986), and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994).

But it was the 1993 Vitra Fire Station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany – her first major built project – that thrust Hadid into the spotlight. Although the building was deemed unsuitable by users, its angled concrete walls and sharply pointed portico gained attention from critics and launched her career.

In 2000, she kicked off what was to become the annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission with a temporary structure made up of large white triangular panels .

Hadid's work with concrete continued with projects such as Innsbruck's Bergisel Ski Jump (2002) and Cincinnati's Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (2003), which both demonstrated how she used the material to create irregular angular forms. In larger projects such as the BMW Central Building in Leipzig and Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, both completed in 2005, Hadid was able to further experiment with concrete's sculptural capabilities – introducing dramatic curves to the angled structural elements, ceilings and window shapes.

As Hadid's career advanced, projects continued to grow in size and budget, and her use of curves and sinuous shapes became even more ambitious.

The MAXXI museum in Rome, one of her most critically acclaimed projects, features black staircases and light fixtures that snake through the strips of structure. The building won Hadid the Stirling Prize in 2010, and she accepted Britain's most important architecture award again the following year for the Evelyn Grace Academy in London.

The Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games features a wave-like roof that soars over the swimming and diving facilities.

Hadid, along with Schumacher, was a champion of Parametricism, which relies on algorithms to dictate the shapes of digital models that become architectural forms. Their firm used this technique to design buildings including the 2014 Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul.

The architect won the competition to design the Tokyo 2020 Olympics stadium , although her plans were  controversially dropped by the Japanese government after protests from prominent local architects.

She has also designed a venue for the 2022 Qatar FIFA World Cup , which is currently under construction.

Among Hadid's most important recent works is the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. Doubts surround the ethics of the project, but the impact of the building's sculptural skin rising from the ground into giant waves is unquestionable.

Other buildings completed in the past year include the Messner Mountain Museum buried into an Alpine peak, a new facility for studying Middle Eastern culture at the University of Oxford, and a trio of curved towers designed to look like giant pebbles in Beijing.

Zaha Hadid Architects has a vast number of projects in progress. Eagerly anticipated buildings such as the soon-to-complete parasitic Port Authority building in Antwerp and a major new airport terminal in Beijing will cement Hadid's legacy as one of the most tenacious, divisive and celebrated architects of her generation.

• Zaha Hadid Architects
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• Zaha Hadid 1950-2016
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Oct 31, 1950 - Mar 31, 2016

Zaha hadid virtual reality experiences: the peak 1982-83, serpentine galleries, zaha hadid virtual reality experiences: the great utopia 1992-93, zaha hadid: early paintings and drawings, zaha hadid virtual reality experiences: leicester square, 1990, a virtual tour of zaha hadid's most iconic buildings, discover this artist, related works from the web, burnham pavilions, en.wikipedia.org burnham pavilions - wikipedia, horizontal tektonik, malevich's tektonik, london, www.zaha-hadid.com malevich's tektonik – zaha hadid architects, silver tea and coffee service, www.incollect.com garrard & co. - six-piece english silver tea and coffee service, “you really have to have a goal. the goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. know what it is you want to find out.”, more artists, frank gehry, daniel libeskind, santiago calatrava, renzo piano, rem koolhaas, jean nouvel, more mediums, acrylic paint, 9,162 items, cartridge paper, 174,269 items, watercolor painting, 50,310 items, 39,328 items, 16,915 items.

The Evolution of Zaha Hadid, Architect

An unconventional architect who started her career as an outsider, Hadid became a leading figure in architecture and design in the twenty-first century.

This month marks seven years since the unexpected passing of the British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, at what was undoubtedly the height of her historic career. Her influence on international architecture can’t be overstated. She was part of a generation of architects who both redefined and invented the forms that would characterize contemporary design. And as an Arab woman garnering international fame, she challenged “who” an architect could be.

Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1950. She grew up in a cosmopolitan household that was engaged in both politics and the arts. She realized her interest in architecture at an early age and, later in life, connected it to childhood visits to Sumerian cities in the south of Iraq. In the 1970s, Hadid studied mathematics at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, before moving to London to study architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. There, her work was shaped by her interest in Russian avant-garde movements . After graduation, she spent a few years working at Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), an architectural firm founded by Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, both of whom were former professors of hers. In 1980, Hadid founded Zaha Hadid Architects and began clearing her own path in the field.

Hadid created architecture that didn’t look like what architecture was expected to look like. Her designs embraced angular forms and swooping lines straight out of Modernist paintings . These were quite different from the rectangular forms so central to architectural design. She argued for these new forms—and a rejection of how architecture had been designed in the recent past— through a short discussion of randomness and arbitrariness published in 1982 . She saw her own work as containing randomness, which holds both logic and forethought. Those are characteristics not found in arbitrariness. She argued that

[a]rbitrariness has to do with a generation which has been brought up on shopping for ideas. A catalogue exists from which they freely copy anything and apply it with little relevance to any situation.

She drove home the point with a declaration that architects of her time had “responsibilities far greater: we must create a new dynamic of architecture in which the land is partially occupied. We must understand the basic principles of liberation.”

Hadid’s first built project, the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, exemplifies how she used unconventional forms in her work. Constructed in the early 1990s, the small, two-story structure stretches tightly and narrowly across the land it occupies. Sharp, angular forms jut out into space. It feels like a moment of action frozen in time.

Over the years, Hadid’s forms softened, with edges losing their sharpness and evolving into curves and rolls. In correspondence with Mohammad ‘Aref, she described the curving forms of the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, as allowing the structure to blur the boundaries between the architecture and the topography . Today the forms of her architectural designs are iconic. We can experience them across the globe, from Europe to the Middle East to Asia.

Hadid would say on multiple occasions, “ I never thought of myself as a role model .” But she became a role model to many by simply pursuing the career she wanted. She was a prominent woman globally recognized and in demand for her designs. She was an Iraqi known for her abilities as an architect and not for being from a country regularly portrayed negatively in Western media. But, as noted by ‘Aref, Western portrayals of Hadid’s Iraqi heritage are often limited to three simple words: “born in Baghdad.”

This metonym was never far from Hadid’s understanding of her place in architecture, as she reflected that “being an Iraqi after the Gulf War didn’t help” her career take off. Yet, her heritage is central to her work and her designs. As ‘Aref explains, Hadid “[did] not consider belonging to the Arab region some sort of stereotypical label, but rather a part of the influence of the East and Islam on her and on world architecture as a whole.”

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Hadid knew the rich history of architecture from the Arab world that had long influenced Western architects, and she placed herself and her work within that context.

In 2004, Hadid became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She’s part of the small club of only six women who have been awarded the prize to this day. The work she designed toward the end of her career—Wangjing SOHO, Innovation Tower, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the Nanjing International Youth Cultural Center—was grander and more celebrated than ever before and yet, it was also mainstream. The architect who had found herself as an outsider in her field came to be a leading figure in twenty-first-century architecture.

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Life of an Artist: Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, also known as Dame Zaha Hadid, was the first woman to have been awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. Having studied for a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in Beirut, Lebanon, she moved to London to study at the Architectural Association, school of architecture, in the 1970s. 

With 950 buildings in 44 countries, we know her now as a highly successful global architect with multiple ongoing projects posthumously, however, that wasn’t the case for the first 20 years of her career. 

Till the late 90s, Zaha Hadid was often referred to as a ‘paper architect.’ Despite having won many international competitions, her designs never came to fruition. However, that perception changed after her first major built project; Vitra Fire Station (1989-93), Germany. 

Philosophy | Zaha Hadid

“It was very anti-design. It was almost a movement of anti-architecture,” said Zaha Hadid of her graduate project. It was then that she resonated with artists like Kazimir Malevich, a Russian avant-garde painter, who was the founder of the Suprematist school of abstract painting . Suprematism could be described in part as a blend of Cubism and Futurism. 

Zaha Hadid deconstructs one of Malevich’s works, reshaping it into a new form. The award-winning design for an International Competition in 1982, set her apart globally as a ‘Deconstructivist’. 

The design titled, ‘Movement Frozen’ for the Vitra Fire Station changed people’s perspectives about her design style. She showcased concrete—a material otherwise used rigidly, in fluidity, the form resembled a bird in flight. 

The design not only broke architectural stereotypes but also achieved practical requirements. Zaha Hadid’s 1982 competition entry, ‘The Peak’, a design for a recreational center in Hong Kong, responded to the hillside site by moving at a dynamic diagonal. She always represented her buildings in abstract renderings.

Her designs were often tagged as unrealistic and impractical. She lost many projects after ‘The Peak’ citing similar reasons. Her designs were looked at as too avant-garde to move beyond paper to construction . However, Zaha Hadid continued to express herself and not change her style to be accepted by society. 

In the early 2000s, with better construction technologies, we witnessed Zaha Hadid’s golden era. But that did not stop the criticism she faced that her male counterparts did not. Her dramatic forms and the scale of her commissions were often ridiculed. 

Due to continued protests by preeminent Japanese architects, she had to altogether scrap her plan for The New National Stadium for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Her 1994 competition winner for the Cardiff Bay Opera House project was criticized for being inapplicable. She believed that the plaza sections despite not being conventional were easily achievable.

Practice; Queen of The Curve | Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, after graduating from the Architectural Association worked along with Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghalis at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. She then went on to establish her London-based firm, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) in 1979. 

A few of her initial projects included a Centre for Contemporary Arts, Cincinnati, Ohio, an 85,000 square-feet center, which became the first American museum designed by a woman. Zaha envisioned the upward curve at the entrance of the building as an ‘urban carpet’ welcoming the visitors. 

In 2010, she won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize for her design for the MAXXI Museum of contemporary art and architecture in Rome. She won a second Stirling Prize in 2011 for Evelyn Grace Academy, a secondary school in London. Her design for the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre won the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year in 2014. 

Along with being a practicing architect, Zaha Hadid was passionate about teaching. She believed she discovered many things, like the mass interpretations of designs, that she wouldn’t otherwise. She has taught at the Architectural Association, Harvard GSD, Yale University, and the University of Chicago. 

Lastly, she also designed furniture, jewelry, footwear, bags, interior spaces such as restaurants, and stage sets, notably for the 2014 Los Angeles Philharmonic production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan Tutte. 

Zaha Hadid also received RIBA’s highest honor, the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 2016 along with many other awards. In 2012, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

In the Words of Zaha Hadid

We lost a consequential artist in the architecture community in 2016, due to a heart attack. She is survived by her friend and longtime colleague Patrick Schumacher, who has now taken over the responsibilities of the studio. 

At present, there are 36 unfinished projects worldwide. Zaha Hadid practiced Islam and denounced the recent religious branchings, the situation in her birthplace, Iraq , pained her constantly. 

When asked if there was anything she was afraid of regarding the future, she responded by saying, “Yes, the conservative values that are emerging. It may not affect architecture immediately but it will affect society and that’s what worries me. The world is looking more and more segmented, the difference between people is becoming greater. one has to strive for a very open liberal society.” The words could not be truer at this point.

An architect that is in pursuit of achieving a responsive architecture user-interface by studying interdependent disciplines. A liberal, an academician, and a rarely funny person who believes that engaging in regular discourse can benefit today's architecture.

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Zaha Hadid, fearless pioneer for architecture, dies at 65

Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-British architect known for the uncompromisingly bold designs that pushed the boundaries of architecture, died Thursday in Miami at 65.

Hadid, who became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize in 2004, composed some of her greatest works with strong geometric forms and long curving lines, sometimes on a dizzying scale. She acknowledged her projects were always ambitious in a documentary by PBS member station WKAR on her work in 2014.

“My journey was in a way very difficult because I was relentlessly uncompromising,” she said.

Hadid began studying architecture in 1972 at London’s Architectural Association, setting up her own design firm by 1979. She would go on to design a number of groundbreaking projects across several continents, including the the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan (2013), the Galaxy Soho building in Beijing (2012), the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (2012), the Guangzhou Opera House in China (2010) and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio (2003).

A visitor walks at the Galaxy Soho building, designed by Zaha Hadid, in Beijing on Oct. 27, 2012. Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters

“Even the exterior itself really changes and responds to the natural light. The museum looks completely different at sunset than it does on a snowy, crystal gray morning,” she said. “Walls tilt and windows tilt and you find yourself at times almost having to re-calibrate your position in space by virtue of the visual world you’re seeing around you.”

Hadid’s designs drew on the sociopolitical context of the environment in which she worked, often resulting in visionary work that looked to the future. “This extraordinary building was built at a time when there was great economic duress in the state of Michigan and for a large part of the country, it’s a triumphant statement that culture prevails over hard economic times,” Min Jung Kim, deputy director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, told PBS .

But sometimes, the large scale of her proposals became a barrier for their completion. Hadid was working on a design for the 2020 Olympic Games, which will take place in Tokyo, when it was scrapped last year over its $2.5 billion price tag. The New York Times noted that some of her early work was never built, lacking the wealth of resources needed to drive it to completion.

Hadid won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s top honor, in 2004. Her path there was “not been traditional or easy,” the jury citation for the prize noted. “Each new project is more audacious than the last and the sources of her originality seem endless.”

See more of her designs below.

Visitors walk on Bridge Pavilion on Ebro river during a preview of Expo Zaragoza June 11, 2008. The world’s fair, bearing the theme of “water and sustainable development”, opens on June 14. Photo by Luis Correas/Reuters

A general view is seen of the Aquatics Centre at the Olympic Park in Stratford, the location of the London 2012 Olympic Games, in east London July 19, 2012. Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters

People visit the Galaxy Soho building in Beijing on Oct. 27, 2012. Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters

A man and a boy walk outside the Heydar Aliyev Center, ahead of the European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, on June 11, 2015. Photo by Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

Guests stand outside the Dongdaemun Design Plaza after the Chanel Cruise Collection 2015/16 fashion show in Seoul on May 4, 2015. Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters

An exterior view is seen of the futuristic pavilion created by British-Iraqi deconstructivist architect Zaha Hadid for Chanel’s “Mobile Art” exhibition, placed in the Hong Kong’s Central district February 26, 2008. Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, London, Moscow and Paris are the stops of the international tour, exhibiting the works of 20 international contemporary artists. Photo by Victor Fraile/Reuters

Corinne is the Senior Multimedia Web Editor for NewsHour Weekend. She serves on the advisory board for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.

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Why Zaha Hadid, Architecture’s ‘Queen of the Curve,’ Is Poised to Speak to a Whole New Generation of Design Lovers

The architect would have been 68 years old this week, but her unique style continues to impact the international design community.

Sixty-eight years ago last week, Zaha Hadid,  architecture’s “Queen of the Curve,” was born in Baghdad, Iraq. Celebrated as the world’s “greatest female architect” when she won the Pritzker Prize in 2004, Hadid’s work transcended gender qualifiers—her serpentine designs literally altered the contours of modern design. Today, just two years removed from untimely death in 2016, Hadid’s legacy looms larger than ever.

In the years since her passing, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), the office she founded in 1979, has continued to rise in prominence. Now under the leadership of creative partner Patrik Schumacher, ZHA is focused on building out Hadid’s legacy, including a collection of skyscrapers headed to London, Mexico City, Milan (already completed), and Beijing, among other global locales.

Those soaring structures will punctuate a career that left an indelible mark on the contemporary landscape. Indeed, Hadid’s progressive architectural vision laid the groundwork for a new avant-garde style in design, allowing for more variable and interconnected forms of architecture. Instead of the boxy homogeneity of modern architecture or the collage style of postmodern architecture, she proffered forms that seemed to evolve, continuously varying.

Zaha Hadid #zahahadid #heydaraliyevcenter #baku Photo: Instagram/@simondepury

In works like the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Hadid melded spaces and forms into continuous, dynamic constructions. In the Heydar project, for example, Hadid sought to capture Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet hopefulness by creating a dramatic, billowing roof that rises and falls to meet a plaza adjacent to the performing arts center, dissolving the boundary between public space and architecture. At MAXXI, Hadid furthered the approach but in a more horizontal manner by weaving curved walkways and linear galleries together so that the architecture itself guides visitors through her concrete and glass “campus for art.”

MAXXI Museum, (2014). Courtesy of Antonella Profeta and Flickr.

In a nod to her heritage, Hadid took partial inspiration from the forms of Arabic calligraphy to create her flowing forms. In addition, she sought to create contemporary works that reinterpreted traditional, non-hierarchical spaces vernacular to Islamic architecture for modern times. These efforts proved unbuildable early on, however. Hadid had to wait for digital technologies and advanced building delivery systems to catch up before she could really build.

In 1983, for example, Hadid was selected to design the Hong Kong Peak Club, a leisure and recreational center she described as a “man-made, polished granite mountain.” The isolated building’s stacked horizontal layers connect to the city via a dissociative, curved ramp that brings together landscape and building into one distinctive, high-flying “geology.” The project was initially met with bewildered critical acclaim, but it ultimately fell through due to its sheer infeasibility.

Leeza Soho Tower Atrium Rendering. Courtesy ZHA.

Another potential commission for a 1,900-seat opera house in Cardiff, Wales, suffered the same fate. But Hadid did not let the work go to waste. By creating a continuous building mass that simultaneously divided and unified “served” and “service” spaces, Hadid premiered a conceptual approach that would go on to define her later built work. The recently completed Leeza Soho Tower in Beijing, for instance, flips the idea 90 degrees, rendering a torqued, 46-story tower that houses the world’s tallest continuous atrium. Here, the building curves gradually in multiple directions as it rises to 620-feet in order to align the uppermost floors with Beijing’s predominant north-south axis.

Aside from using curves to push the boundaries of spatial configuration, Zaha’s interiors and material explorations also involve ruled surfaces that challenge convention. In the recently completed Port House in Antwerp, Belgium, for example, Hadid creates syrupy interior spaces that counterbalance the building’s faceted, triangulated glass exteriors. With signature fearlessness, she places the decidedly modern tower atop a historic firehouse, creating one of the world’s most compelling historic preservation projects.

Port House Antwerp. Photo: © Hufton+Crow.

A more luxurious touch can be found in the architect’s first building in New York City, 520 W. 28th Street . The High Line-adjacent residential tower combines dark patinated stainless steel paneling with rounded corners and curved glass to create a complex that is part-Gothic Cathedral, part-Capsule Tower.

Inside, smooth, curvilinear spaces spill into and over one another and connect to the street in a cascading series of visually interlocking vistas. On the ground floor, a skylight caps a lower level private lap pool carved out from the building’s mass. The floors above gently curl around the opening, bumping out on either side in alternating stacks of chevron-shaped ribbing. Showcasing Zaha’s mastery of composition and formal integration, these ribs are reflected inside and out, including at the corners, where filleted ribs loop back on one another in circular frames expressed with puckered, hand-tooled profiles.

520 W 28th Street. Photo: © Hufton+Crow.

The building’s artisanal quality might be unexpected for a firm so well-known for its technological vision, but because of Hadid’s uncharted approach, bespoke attention to detail has always played a major role in the firm’s work.

The result, like so many of Hadid’s designs, will be likely seen as timeless by future generations, leaving little doubt that in works both new and old, that Zaha Hadid continues to live on.

Zaha Hadid, 530 West 28th Street, rendering. Photo: Zaha Hadid.

In Partnership With 520 W 28

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