zaha hadid short biography

Zaha Hadid Biography

Birthday: October 31 , 1950 ( Scorpio )

Born In: Baghdad

Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect who became the first Arab woman to receive the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Known for her highly expressive designs marked by sweeping fluid forms of multiple perspective points, she was considered a pioneer in contemporary avant-garde architecture styles. Internationally renowned for her experimental styles and innovative designs, she was the mastermind behind the designs of the aquatic center for the London 2012 Olympics and the Broad Art Museum in the U.S., among others. Born in Baghdad into a wealthy family, she received a luxurious upbringing and attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland. Even as a young girl there was no doubt in her mind that she would one day pursue a professional career. Intelligent and ambitious, she studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture. She eventually became a British citizen and started her own architecture practice which proved to be very successful. Her innovative designs and experimental styles gained much international notice and within years she established herself as a world renowned architect. She also pursued a teaching career and undertook some high-profile interior work in addition to her architectural career.

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Died At Age: 65

father: Mohammed Hadid

siblings: Fulath Hadid, Haithem Hadid

Born Country: England

Millionaires British Women

Died on: March 31 , 2016

place of death: Miami, Florida, United States

City: Baghdad, Iraq

education: American University of Beirut, 1977 - Architectural Association School of Architecture

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Zaha was known for her innovative and futuristic designs, pushing the boundaries of architecture with her unique style.

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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.

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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 (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.

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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Zaha Hadid (1950-2016)

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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

The first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, Zaha Hadid defined a radical new approach to architecture with multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life.

Transcendent architecture

The first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, Zaha Hadid (1950–2016) defined a radically new approach to architecture by creating buildings such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, with multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life.

The opening words of the citation when Zaha Hadid was named as the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2004 were: ‘Her architectural career has not been traditional or easy’. An understatement. All architects have to struggle, but Hadid seemed to have struggled rather more than most. Her single-mindedness, her singular lack of compromise is the stuff of legend, although, as one writer commented, like a hurricane, ‘the storms are all on the outside’. In part, it was simple artistic temperament, necessary, perhaps, to create forceful architecture like Hadid’s. And in part it was the survival mechanism required to create such architecture in what remains a distinctly macho profession. Diva, the critics called her, although as the T-shirts worn by Hadid staff replied at the opening of her first major public building, the Cincinnati Art Center, in 2003: ‘Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?’

Hadid’s forcefulness was both her curse and her blessing. A curse because strong character can make clients run for the hills. For a while, Hadid was more famous not for the buildings she had built, but for the ones she had not built — preserved only in her famously vigorous, dramatic images. Often, as in the case of the Cardiff Bay Opera House, these opportunities to build were lost quite spectacularly. In the end, though, her forcefulness was a blessing. Like architectural natural selection, it helped to weed out weak projects and weak clients, so that when architecture was finally built, it was as strong-willed as its creator.

Zaha Hadid was single-minded from an early age. Born in 1950 in Baghdad, she grew up in a very different Iraq from the one we know today. The Iraq of her childhood was a liberal, secular, western-focused country with a fast-growing economy that flourished until the Ba’ath party took power in 1963, and where her bourgeois intellectual family played a leading role. Hadid’s father was a politician, economist and industrialist, a co-founder of the Iraqi National Democratic and a leader of the Iraqi Progressive Democratic Parties. Hadid saw no reason why she should not be equally ambitious. Female role models were plentiful in liberal Iraq, but in architecture, female role models anywhere, let alone in the Middle East, were thin on the ground in the 1950s and 1960s. No matter. After convent school in Baghdad and Switzerland, and a degree in mathematics at the American University in Beirut, Hadid enrolled at the Architectural Association in London in 1972. The AA of the 1970s was the perfect place for ambitious, independently minded would-be architects to flourish. Under Alvin Boyarski as director, it became the most fertile place for the architectural imagination, home to a precocious generation of students and teachers who are now household names, such as Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Will Alsop and Bernard Tschumi. It was a period when pre-1968 optimistic modernism was being abandoned amid economic uncertainty and cultural conservatism. In architecture too, democratic modernism was perceived to have failed and there was a swing towards historicist post-modernism and conservation. The AA’s theorists did the opposite. They rejected kitsch post-modernism to become still more modernist. Like snakes shedding their skins, they discarded the failed utopian projects of ‘first’ modernism to think up a new modernism with a more sophisticated idea of history and human identity, an architecture embodying modernity’s chaos and disjuncture in its very shape.

If Hadid was drawn to any of her tutors it was Koolhaas, himself working out his ideas of neo-modernity in books such as 1977’s Delirious New York. When Hadid graduated in 1977, Koolhaas offered her a job as a partner in his and Elia Zenghelis’s new firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. But she didn’t last long there. Koolhaas described her at the time as ‘a planet in her own orbit’. Hadid had her own ideas on architecture to nurture. And it was a long incubation. She started teaching at the AA while developing her own brand of neo-modernist architecture, one which went back to modernism’s roots in the constructivism and suprematism of the early 20th century. Her graduation project, a hotel on London’s Hungerford Bridge, was called Malevich’s Tectonik, after the suprematist Kasimir Malevich who wrote in 1928: ‘we can only perceive space when we break free from the earth, when the point of support disappears’. Hadid’s architecture followed suit, creating a landscape which metaphorically — and, perhaps, one day literally — seems to take off.

You could call her work baroque modernism. Baroque classicists like Borromini shattered Renaissance ideas of a single viewpoint perspective in favour of dizzying spaces designed to lift the eyes and the heart to God. Likewise, Hadid shattered both the classically formal, rule-bound modernism of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier and the old rules of space — walls, ceilings, front and back, right angles. She then reassembled them as what she called ‘a new fluid kind of spatiality’ of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry, designed to embody the chaotic fluidity of modern life.

Hadid’s architecture denied its own solidity. Short of creating actual forms that morph and change shape — still the stuff of science fiction — Hadid created the solid apparatus to make us perceive space as if it morphs and changes as we pass through. Perhaps wisely, she talked little about theory. Unlike, say, Daniel Libeskind, she did not say that a shape symbolised this or that. And she wore her cultural identity lightly. Noticeably, and uncharacteristically diplomatically, she declined to comment on the situation in Iraq. Instead Hadid let her spaces speak for themselves. This does not mean that they are merely exercises in architectural form. Her obsession with shadow and ambiguity was deeply rooted in Islamic architectural tradition, while its fluid, open nature is a politically charged riposte to increasingly fortified and undemocratic modern urban landscapes.

All of which would have been impossible without the advent of computer-aided design to allow architects almost infinite freedom to create any shape they wanted. Actually building these new kinds of spaces was another matter. Such melodramatic shapes required significant investment, both financially and in terms of engineering. In the 1980s, the first tentative steps were taken when architects such as Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry began the long process of convincing the public to love them and clients to invest in them. Hadid was picked as part of the seminal Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the first definitive survey of the new generation. Critics loved it, but most MoMA visitors found the new shapes, particularly Hadid’s, baffling. She presented her ideas in impressionistic, abstract paintings, designed to get across the feel of her spaces. Hadid explained that conventional architectural drawings could never convey the ‘feel’ of her radical, fluid spaces, but paintings could. It took time, though, for people to understand them.

Slowly, curious clients emerged who were willing to spend money to realise Hadid’s peculiar new architecture. It was a stuttering start. Her first big success, The Peak, a spa planned for Hong Kong, was never built. Nor were buildings on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, or an art and media centre in Dusseldorf. Hadid’s first built project, The Fire Station at the production complex of the Vitra office furniture group at Weil-am-Rhein on the German-Swiss border was a formal success but not a functional one. The fire service moved out and the building was converted into a chair museum. The most notorious project, though, was Hadid’s 1994 competition-winning design for the Cardiff Bay Opera House, which was abandoned by the Millennium Commission after noisy opposition from local lobbyists, particularly Cardiff politicians wary of highbrow architecture being ‘imposed’ on a Welsh city by London. Britain was still knee-deep in the conservative political and architectural culture that had emerged in the 1970s. Popular taste was gradually becoming more daring, but Hadid’s ideas were as yet a step too far. It was a sobering experience, which set back her office for several years, but one she learnt from. Hadid later became philosophical about Cardiff, seeing it as a turning point in her career. Without dumbing down, she slowly learnt the politics of how to get her work built.

Slowly it worked. A ski jump in Innsbruck, then a tram station in Strasbourg. Somewhat ironically, it was traditionally conservative Midwestern America that gave Hadid her real break. The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio was a chance to try out her ideas on a large scale and to conceive a stunning new take on curating and museum experience, imagined as ‘a kit of parts’, she said, which curators can customise for each show. The galleries are housed in horizontal oblong tubes floating above ground level, between which ribbon-like ramps zig and zag skywards. ‘It’s like an extension of the city, the urban landscape.’ Literally so. It was designed like ‘an urban carpet’, one end of which lies across the sidewalk at the busiest intersection in Cincinnati to yank in unsuspecting passers-by. Inside, the carpet rolls through the entrance, up the back wall, marked with light bands directing you like airport landing strips to the walkways, up which you can clamber like a child on a climbing frame, bouncing from artwork to artwork, shoved about by an architect who piled space high into a tower of tightly controlled vignettes, throwing your eye from the most intimate of spaces, to trompes l’oeils and out of the building through carefully positioned windows. ‘It’s about promenading,’ said Hadid, ‘being able to pause, to look out, look above, look sideways’. Her impressionistic new space was realised. The New York Times described it, without overstatement, as ‘the most important new building in America since the Cold War.’

Cincinnati silenced all those who said Zaha Hadid’s architecture was impossible to build. And the ideas developed for Cincinnati were already being refined in other large-scale projects, such as the MAXXI Contemporary Arts Centre in Rome (winner of 2010’s Stirling Prize for architecture), the BMW Central Building in Leipzig and Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg (both projects in Germany and opened in 2005). Crucially, Cincinnati gave Hadid the confidence to win a stream of commissions: a ferry terminal in Salerno, Italy; a high-speed train station in Naples; a public archive, library and sport centre in Montpellier; Opera Houses in Dubai and Guangzhou, a performing arts centre in Abu Dhabi, private residences in Moscow and the USA as well as major master-planning projects in Bilbao, Istanbul and the Middle East. Even in conservative Britain, her adopted home, Hadid completed Maggies Centre, a cancer care centre in Kirkaldy in Scotland. This modest project marked the beginning of a plethora of UK based work including a transport museum in Glasgow, a gallery for the Architecture Foundation in London, a mixed-use development in Hoxton Square and the London 2012 Olympic Aquatics Centre. Undoubtedly, Hadid cemented her reputation as one of the world’s most exciting and significant contemporary architects. By transcending the realm of paper architecture to the built form, Hadid completed many memorable projects before she passed away on 31 March 2016 in Miami, Florida.

Image Credits

Aquatics Centre, London. Hutton and Crow

Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan. Photograph by Iwan Baan

Galaxy SOHO, Beijing. Hutton and Crow

Women Fashion Power exhibition, Design Museum. Photograph by Mirren Rosie

Lillas for Serpentine. Photograph by Luke Hayes

Zaha Hadid born in Baghdad, Iraq

Graduated from the Architectural Association, London

Established Zaha Hadid Architects

Competition winner for ‘The Peak’, Hong Kong

Vitra Fire Station completed, Weil am Rhein, Germany

Competition Winner, Cardiff Bay Opera House, Cardiff, Wales

Competition Winner, MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome

Honourable Member of the Bund Deutsches Architekten

LF One/Landesgartenschau completed, Weil am Rhein, Germany

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London

Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture

Hoenheim-Nord Terminus completed, Strasbourg, France

Bergisel Ski-Jump completed, Innsbruck, Austria

Commander of the British Empire (CBE)

Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Arts completed, Cincinnati, USA

Mies van der Rohe Award for Honheim-Nord Terminus

Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize

Phaeno Science Center completed, Wolfsburg, Germany

The BMW Central Building completed, Leipzig, Germany

The Hotel Puerta America interior completed, Madrid, Spain

The Ordrupgaard Museum Extension completed, Copenhagen

Spittelau Viaducts Housing completed, Vienna, Austria

Member of the Royal Academy of Arts

Designer of the Year, Design Miami

RIBA Stirling Prize Finalist, BMW Central Building

Maggie’s Centre completed, Fife, Scotland. Lopez de Heredia Winery completed, Haro, Spain

Zaha Hadid exhibition, Guggenheim, New York

RIBA Medal, European Cultural Building of the Year

RIBA Jencks Award

American Institute of Architects (UK) Award

Finalist for the RIBA Stirling Prize, Phaeno Science Center

American Institute of Architects (UK) Award, Maggie’s Centre

Finalist for the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture

Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture Scottish Design Award, Maggie’s Centre

Installation for Serpentine Gallery, London

Zaha Hadid: Architecture and Design exhibition, Design Museum, London

Exhibited in Design Museum and Beefeater 24 present Super Contemporary

Stirling Prize winner for MAXXI, Rome

Stirling Prize winner for the Evelyn Grace Academy, London

Appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to architecture

Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park opens in Seoul, South Korea

Awarded Design of the Year 2014 by the Design Museum for Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre

Awarded 2016 Royal Gold Medal, the first woman to be awarded the prestigious honour in her own right.

Zaha Hadid dies in Miami aged 65, following a sudden heart attack

Design Museum exhibition, 2007

Zaha Hadid, Architecture and Design

Image credit: Luke Hayes

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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.

A guide to Zaha Hadid: from architecture to making 'a big hole' in Wallpaper*

Dame Zaha Hadid was a global, Pritzker Prize-winning architect and a force of nature; in this ultimate guide to her work, we celebrate her life, career and legacy

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• Zaha Hadid's key buildings
• Wallpaper* meets Zaha Hadid

Dame  Zaha Hadid  was known globally for her dynamic public buildings. She was the first female architect to receive the Pritzker Prize, in 2004, and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, in 2016 . Her singular career was abruptly cut short when she passed away suddenly on 31 March 2016 in Miami, aged just 65. 

Yet her legacy lives on. So powerful was her impact on the world that she is still, nearly a decade after her death, hugely influential, often cited in discussions, publications and events across the field, affectionately often by her first name only, 'Zaha'; and always alongside the greatest of the 20th and early 21st century, such as Frank Gehry , Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Her radical design work includes furniture, products and art (indeed, her famous deconstructivist paintings and drawings helped propel her career to stardom, way before her first built project was ever realised). 

In 2008, Hadid guest-edited Wallpaper* (W*115). We hailed her as the greatest architect of the age, and no one called to argue. She brought her futuristic touch into the magazine, testing the ‘powers and patience of the print production department’ with grey-scale cut-outs across 16 pages.

Zaha Hadid and Karl Lagerfeld shot outside the Mercer Hotel in New York in 2006 in celebration of Wallpaper's 10th anniversary

Just a couple of years before that, in 2006, Hadid was shot as a creative pair together with Karl Lagerfeld outside the Mercer Hotel in New York as part of a celebratory edition of Wallpaper's 10th anniversary. In that issue, Lagerfeld said on Hadid: 'Zaha is the first architect who found a way to part with the all-dominating post-Bauhaus aesthetic. The value of her designs is similar to that of great poetry. We are collaborating. For Chanel. Too early to talk about it. I would love her to build a house or a library for me, but where?'

Here, to highlight her lasting legacy, we look back at Zaha Hadid's profile from the Guest Editors 2008 issue, when art critic David Collings visited her in her London HQ; we track some of her greatest hits; and take an expansive look into her inimitable career and her studio, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA).

10 of Zaha Hadid's most notable buildings

Vitra fire station, weil am rhein, germany (1993).

Zaha Hadid’s first built project was the fairly modest (in size, at least) Vitra Fire Station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany as part of the Vitra Campus there. At the time of opening, the architect spoke about its unusual, angular forms saying: ‘The whole building is frozen motion ready to explode into action at any moment.’

Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany (2005)

One of the earliest completed Hadid buildings, the Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg is decidedly futuristic - perhaps more akin to a spaceship than a building design. In 2005, when it opened, it was also the very first science museum of its kind in Germany. A cultural centre and exhibition space, it's defined by its flowing concrete shape and series of irregularly shaped windows. 

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BMW Central Building, Leipzig, Germany (2005)

Another early Hadid building, the BMW Central Building in Leipzig was a competition win for a central building in the car manufacturer's German campus. 'BMW's bold objective was to translate functional industrial architecture into a new aesthetic,' Hadid's website describes the building, and true enough, this is a structure that defies categorization.  

MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Art, Rome, Italy (2009)

The MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Art in Rome is Italy's first public museum entirely dedicated to contemporary creativity, spanning arts and architecture. Going beyond showcasing the displays inside it, it becomes an object to show off in its own right, defined by its flowing forms and signature cantilever concrete viewing platform that juts out its top. 

Guangzhou Opera House, Guangzhou, China (2010)

Set at the foot of Zhujiang Boulevard in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, this is an opera house like no other. Creating a contoured landscape around it that connects it with its site, it's also a true spectacle inside too, offering an interior that rivals the ambitious performances taking place within. 

London Aquatics Centre, UK (2012)

Fittingly inspired by 'waves, the water, sea life and sea life creatures,' according to its architect British-based Zaha Hadid , the Aquatics Centre was completed in time for the official start of the London 2012 Olympic Games . Situated within the East London Olympic site, near the Park's south entrance, the Aquatics Centre is 'positioned as a gateway and the lifting entrance canopy will invite the visitors in,' explains lead architect Jim Heverin. Its aerodynamic, aquatic-creature-inspired form is distinct, boasting a curvaceous roof and slowing volume. 

Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan (2012)

Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Centre in the Azerbijani capital is a vast and curvaceous building - which, while under construction, won 'Best Building Site' in our 2011 Design Awards. It contains 101,000 m2 of floor area, and sits on a 111,292 m2 graphically landscaped site beneath which there is parking for 1,500 cars. Under its 39,000 sq m of fluid roof, it houses a 1,000-seater auditorium, a conference centre, a library, a museum, cafes, restaurants and expansive meeting points between all these where Bakuvians can hang out and mingle. It is, in reality, a massive new chunk of civic realm.  

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, UK (2013)

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery  opened in 2013 within a Grade II*-listed building located a stone's throw from the original gallery in Hyde Park. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid has transformed the interior of the Magazine building - a 200-year-old former gunpowder store - and added a curvaceous new extension as a contemporary counterpoint. 'We wanted to use a new materiality,' says the architect, who opted for a PTFE coated, glass-fibre woven fabric membrane for the exterior skin. 'It looks temporary but is actually attached to the [existing] building in a really light way.'

Dongdaemun Design Park & Plaza, Seoul, South Korea (2013)

A major urban development landmark in Seoul, South Korea, Dongdaemun Design Plaza is the work of Zaha Hadid Architects together with Samoo. Conceived as a cultural hub for its neighbourhood, it features its architect's signature sweeping lines and intriguing forms. It includes gallery space, exhibition areas, a media centre and a conference hall, among others.

One Thousand Museum, Miami, USA (2020)

This is Zaha Hadid Architects' debut residential tower in the USA. One Thousand Museum is a glamorous and organic high-rise in downtown Miami. Completed posthumously by ZHA in 2020, it features a range of amenities, as well as bespoke landscaping by specialist Enzo Enea. The property's 84 units have been designed as half-floor, full-floor and duplex residences. Each boasts oversized terraces and East-West views of Biscayne Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and the Miami skyline, and comes fitted with a bounty of custom-designed features ranging from walk-in closets by Poliform and kitchens and cabinetry by Gatto Cucine.

Wallpaper* meets Zaha Hadid: a profile from 2008

Zaha Hadid – greatest architect of the age. What has she done, what does her stuff look like, why is it good? Post-modern deconstruction, forms always surprising but never silly, responding differently to different sites, cities and societies, never allowing a mere style or brand to stand for her, but always being incredibly stylish, making you feel amazed and uplifted by the sight of, say, tower blocks. The two blocks she’s done in Dubai, for example, where curving organic speed lines merge with minimal rectangles, so the towers look like they’re flickering or bending. It’s no mirage: they really are built like that. Or at least they will be, when they’re completed in 2011. And so is architecture the greatest art form of the present? It can often seem more uplifting than art, which seems to want to ditch the one thing that made it great in the past: beauty. Contemporary architecture says a big yes to amazing visual impact, while contemporary art just kind of grunts a weary ‘Uh?’.

With such buzzing thoughts in my head, I step into an old school building in London’s Clerkenwell, which has been turned into the great architect’s practice. The spaces haven’t been done up outrageously – just white paint. It still looks like a school. Only, instead of children at desks, it’s 20-somethings and 30-somethings at computer screens, nearly 200 of them in all, the architect’s employees. They’re churning out the supplementary magic stuff that is needed to finalise the architect’s designs. The primary stuff comes out of the architect’s head. I wonder if they’ve all got degrees in architecture, or what it is you actually need to work here: if, like the boss, you need originality, vision, energy, difference, attitude, but also wisdom and a sense of history and an ability to communicate and to impress and to please people. Even though you have the reputation of being incoherent and a bit frightening.

Opus Dubai is another project in the UAE by the ZHA studio, set in the city's Burj Khalifa district and completed in 2020.

Having arrived at the appointed time I’ve been asked to wait, maybe for a long time, and maybe – Roger the press officer says – even to expect to have to come back on a different day. On the other hand, it might be OK: ‘She might like you.’ After glasses of water and a longish browse through magnificent publications featuring Zaha Hadid’s work, with the sound of muted keyboard tapping all around – as well as the worker-geniuses at their computers, there’s a bank of beautiful male and female receptionists with bright friendly faces – and occasionally an interesting musical growling coming from somewhere on the opposite side of the large light-filled space, I’m taken to a big room and ushered a couple of feet inside the door.

Far away the Big Z sits in black at a white table. A plate of biscuits and a Diet Coke before her, some men in suits standing nearby. Roger consults, Zaha speaks, and, as I suspected, this is the source of the growling sounds I’ve been aware of. Roger returns across the room: ‘She says not today.’ When I say ‘OK’, I’m genuinely not offended – I really think she is magnificent.

Zaha Hadid photographed for Wallpaper* in July 2017

In the art world, all you ever meet are preposterous poseurs whose achievements are dubious, but here’s someone who really has done something. On the other hand, I can’t say relief wasn’t entirely absent. Now I can swot up more on the kinds of things her work is about, its super-modern terminology and weird and wonderful aims – not just to provide protection for fire engines or industry people or works of art or trains whizzing in and out of cities, but to express the moment, define what we are, leave an imprint for the future of what bugs us and fires us up today.

I look at a picture of her first built building, the Vitra fire station in Germany (built on the Vitra premises and manned by Vitra volunteers; it was considered necessary following a fire at the factory). I laugh at her great comment on it from the time: ‘The whole building is frozen motion ready to explode into action at any moment.’ It really does look like it is ready to take off, all dynamic swerves, slants and angles; as if expressing the mind of someone whose very being is synonymous with action and willpower. Reassuring for a place that is in charge of putting fires out.

From Zaha Hadid's Guest Editorship in Wallpaper* magazine's October 2017 edition

Roger says, as he guides me back to the reception area with a fresh armload of Hadid-glorifying glossy publications, ‘You probably know more about her than I do.’ I say no, I wish, ha ha, and nervously get down to studying the articles, just in case I am called back today.

What does ‘deconstruction’ in architecture mean? Like fashion at the end of the 20th century: a sense of something ordered and classical, but an elegant unravelling of the same thing, so you feel you’re getting both, neither stuffy nor silly. She has a sense of an ordered building, she undermines it by inserting a whole new set of contemporary values, and the result is convincing.

Her design for the compressed spaces of Cincinnati’s Rosenthal Contemporary Art Center, built for nearly $30m in 2003, causes city life to flow in and out and even through the building. A glass-walled public area on the ground level, with a lot of electric light strips, seems to stand for a kind of staged everyday city space: a delightful architectural metaphor for the cliché of blurred boundaries between art and life.

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

Inside, on different stages, are the galleries – eight of them – a series of changing spaces, appropriate to an art centre that has no permanent collection of its own, and is devoted to a constant stream of changing exhibitions. Some are taller than others, some have daylight, some have none, but most have a sloping or zigzag shape, few are ‘ordinary’ spaces. They’re all connected by a kind of trick staircase that appears to be tilting. As a visitor, you’re not allowed to forget the space; you’re under attack in a way. But it’s a pleasurable way. In Abu Dhabi, she’s got a museum of performing arts being constructed on a pleasure island full of museums created by architectural hot shots: hers is easily the most striking, like a low-lying reptile the size of a small town.

It’s only an hour or so later. Roger appears: ‘She’s been talking about cement all day; she wants something different.’ (As if it might be something different to eat.) I gulp and we return together to the big room, where she is telling off a lot of assistants who dart in and out of the door. They vaporise and telling-off merges into interview.

A group portrait of studios featured in the 2016 Architects’ Directory was photographed outside the just-completed Investcorp Building at the Middle East Centre in Oxford, honouring Hadid's passing the same year

Born in Baghdad in 1950 (to a liberal democratic Muslim family who left Iraq in the 1960s), she has lived and worked in London for more than 40 years. But it turns out that, as well as the low growling speaking voice that often makes her hard to understand, she has a peculiar way of talking in solid concepts, just serving up meaning-clusters and not bothering with grammar. I know what an axonometric drawing is and what topology is and, of course, what complexity and voids are, but when they are just stuck together in a clump, I don’t know where I am. But I sincerely believe that she does. She is not at all pretentious; she knows about something difficult, her area, and she appreciates someone wanting to hear about it, even if they are a bit bewildered by what comes out.

It reminds me a little of interviewing Andy Warhol a few months before he died. I only realised much later how out of my depth I was and that he was actually being quite kind in tolerating me. He was doing something new that had a lot of complicated levels, and if he needed his verbal mode to be ‘wow’ and ‘gee’ that didn’t mean he wasn’t a formidable thinker. He had the right. And, likewise, if Hadid doesn’t go in for verbs and tenses, it’s petty to complain.

I ask her about the original artwork she’s making for Wallpaper*. She wants a shape cut out of the magazine, literally a cavity in the middle. I don’t know if this is exactly what’s going to happen in the end – I thought of my friend in the publications department at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who told me that when Hadid had her 30-year retrospective there in 2006, she wanted a similarly logic-defying circular catalogue. She also said that Hadid used to shout at her staff in front of the publications team, and now here she was doing exactly that in front of me – I’m not sure they really minded that much, though.

She is the real thing, my friend had thought, and I do too: this amazing-looking figure, like a female Wizard of Oz, a wizard of the night, in striking black and gold Prada, with her big eyes and deep, growling voice. The artwork for Wallpaper* relates to a set of ideas about space and fluidity that she’s been developing for the last ten years. She says these ideas include all sorts of notions, but, while I understand their literal meanings, I don’t exactly know how they all add up: carving, layering, the void, space, archaeology and landscape (which certainly sounds how her buildings look). ‘But it needs a big hole in the magazine,’ she rumbles.

Metropolis, by Zaha Hadid, 1988, is one of many early works by the late architect, which has been on view in the past at Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London

We get on to her paintings. She’s famous for doing them – geometric abstracts. I like them because of their balance of forms, not so much for the handling of paint, which is rather anonymous. But I’m impressed by the sense of pattern, the play of shapes, the balanced asymmetric distribution of intensities and more muted bits: what it says to me is sensitivity, experience, knowledge, feeling and a genuine mental-jumping-about energy (all rare in the Turner Prize world).

The paintings are not really abstract art, but plans for architecture; they’re her personal way of working through ideas. She started doing them in the 1970s at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture when she was studying there under the architects Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi. Hadid is thought of as a postmodernist, but at the same time as someone for whom modernism is a burning issue, not something to be merely ironic about or jokey towards. Modernism was progressive and optimistic, but we’re all a bit more jaded now, is the postmodernist received idea: nothing is more true than anything else, and everything is relative. Hadid’s architectural spirit was formed at a time when anyone creative was on fire with postmodernist cleverness. But while she mines modernism for forms, she doesn’t use them to laugh at the days of sincerity and belief. She is a great believer in progress herself.

Featured in the April 2015 issue of Wallpaper*, Vladislav Doronin’s $160m Hadid-designed space rocket/private home

Painting, the influence of Russian constructivist Kasimir Malevich and her first sense that she really might have something the world might want, all happened at once for her, with Koolhaas presiding. He gave her a project, solving some problem of space, and her solution was to re-employ spatial ideas that Malevich had come up with in the run-up to the Russian revolution. Malevich was a visionary. He wanted Russia and the whole world to move into the future, with him in the lead. He called himself The President of Space. But his ideas were too hot for the new regime, and under Stalin – after Malevich died in 1935 – they were simply banned. Now Hadid, the hot student, was going to revive them. The first blast of Malevich-return, or neo-modernism, was going to be a project on Hungerford Bridge: a hotel spanning the Thames, made of pure white, geometric, modern-art forms (similar to the ones in white relief on the wall in the room I’m sitting in with Hadid now, which turn out to be her original plans for Cincinnati).

David Gill Gallery and ZHA paid tribute to Zaha Hadid at Masterpiece London in 2016 showing a series of 'Liquid Glacial' tables

It was just a student project, and although it earned Hadid a prize, and eventual employment by Koolhaas when she left the AA, there was never any expectation of it actually being built. However, the 1970s was a funny time at the AA, because no one actually expected anything to be built. The big architectural stars designed buildings and towns that challenged all existing buildings and towns, and were really a kind of heroic conceptual-art version of architecture. Then, in the following decade, the same iconoclasts gradually became real builders. For Hadid it was very gradual. She won a stream of prizes, but none of the designs were realised: she was considered too radical and difficult by the powers that be. The most prestigious prize was in 1983 for a design for a leisure centre in Hong Kong, called The Peak, but then another architect was given the gig instead (perhaps because she proudly called her design for The Peak ‘a suprematist geology’). Even as late as 1994, she had a major prize-winning design (the Cardiff Bay Opera House) turned down for actual building by a board of conservative bores.

In a 2021 show in Zürich’s Galerie Gmurzynska: On the walls are three drawings from Hadid’s ‘The Peak’ project proposal, while the floor is covered in the Cellular Hand-Tufted Rug by Zaha Hadid Design, shown with the Liquid Glacial Stool

She was used to being put down by such types, but convinced she would get somewhere in the end. She kept going on about ‘complexity’, she was big and bold, she really went for it, and eventually she won. Her first built building, the fire station, went up ten years after The Peak rejection. Ten years later, she had buildings under construction all over the world, and now she’s a byword for Now.

She laughs when I ask her if Malevich is too simple for her these days, and says, ‘Yes!’ She has the greatest respect for him, but her mind is more her own now. If the typical Hadid look is elegant, slinky, organic and flowing, there is still a great range to how those characteristics are manifested: one building does something, while another one does something else. (Her predecessor, both as great guru of the art of building and great beneficiary of information technology, Frank Gehry, does a sort of computer-generated knitting, which is fun, but it’s the same knitting each time.)

Zaha Hadid’s experimental volumes and sweeping curves also inspired a contemporary jewellery collection that the architect created with Danish jeweller Georg Jensen prior to her untimely passing

What is greatness? All the past art and architecture styles that go into the Zaha Hadid product – constructivism, futurism, expressionism – have had their original ideologies taken away as they (kind of) merge with what we might call computerism. Is it that they just fit, as everything must, into the new global ideology: consumerism? The information age’s big belief is: no belief, just buy. But this is a social change that Hadid – whose overriding preoccupation right now, she tells me as we end the interview, is social housing – cannot be attacked for.

'Her ambition was to push forward her ideas about space, to make fluid forms even more stately and surprising and moving, in order to offer society models of change' Matthew Collings

You could ask where she stands on the emptiness of our age, its emotional flatness and lack of ambition to do anything about social injustice, but does art really work like that? Her architecture is the greatest art of the moment. It expresses the age, but that means it has contradictions, too. Just as Malevich didn’t paint the revolution, but expressed a vision of change in abstract forms, or by abstract allegory and abstract metaphors, so Hadid’s buildings are metaphors for new rising optimistic ideals that fight apathy: especially a new fascination with nature, not just lovely trees, but nature’s intricacy and deep structures, its internal complexity, its processes. Her ambition is to push forward her ideas about space, to make fluid forms even more stately and surprising and moving, in order to offer society models of change. And the power and joy of the way she goes about all that is what makes her great. 

zaha-hadid.com

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).

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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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Write to Lily Rothman at [email protected]

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, silver tea and coffee service, www.johnmoran.com lot - a german sterling silver tea and coffee service, horizontal tektonik, malevich's tektonik, london, www.zaha-hadid.com malevich's tektonik – zaha hadid architects, the peak--night, hong kong, www.artsy.net zaha hadid | the peak--night, hong kong (1990) | artsy, “i don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. it should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.”, more mediums, acrylic paint, 9,184 items, cartridge paper, 174,756 items, watercolor painting, 50,340 items, 39,471 items, 31,801 items.

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Zaha Hadid ( British , 1950 – 2016 )

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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 Biography

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The designs of Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid (born 1950) are daring and visionary experiments with space and with the relationships of buildings to their urban surroundings.

Often named as the most prominent contemporary female architect, or singled out for notice because of her Iraqi Arab background, Hadid is significant beyond these accidents of birth for her intellectual toughness, her refusal to compromise on her ideas even when very few of them were being realized in concrete and steel. For many years, her designs filled the pages of architecture periodicals but were dismissed as impractical or as too radical, and Hadid even thought about giving up architecture after she suffered a major rejection in her adopted homeland of Britain in 1995. Her star began to rise internationally when her design for Cincinnati, Ohio's new Center for Contemporary Art was selected and built, earning worldwide acclaim. By the mid-2000s Hadid employed nearly 150 people in her London office and was working hard to keep up with new commissions that were coming in, offering her a chance to help reshape the world architectural landscape.

Toured Sumerian Ruins

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, on October 31, 1950, Zaha M. Hadid grew up in a well-educated Islamic family oriented toward Western multiculturalism. Her father was an executive and, for a time, the leader of a liberal Iraqi political party. The drawing ability that would later attract attention in art museums was first absorbed from her mother. Hadid's interest in architecture had roots in a trip her family took to the ancient Sumer region in southern Iraq, the site of one of the world's oldest civilizations, when she was a teenager. "My father took us to see the Sumerian cities," she told Jonathan Glancey of London's Guardian newspaper. "Then we went by boat, and then on a smaller one made of reeds, to visit villages in the marshes. The beauty of the landscape—where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together—has never left me. I'm trying to discover—invent, I suppose—an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way."

Hadid attended a Catholic school where French was spoken and nuns served as instructors, but which was religiously diverse. As Hadid told Newsweek 's Cathleen McGuigan, "the Muslim and Jewish girls could go out to play when the other girls went to chapel." Hadid's family expected her to pursue a professional career, and she studied math at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Her family left Iraq after the rise of dictator Saddam Hussein and the outbreak of war with neighboring Iran, but she has retained ties to both Iraq and Lebanon and has at times had difficulty talking to interviewers about the ongoing violence in her home region.

In 1972 Hadid moved to London (later becoming a British citizen) and enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. She has never married nor had children. "If [architecture] doesn't kill you, then you're no good," she explained to Glancey. "I mean, really—you have to go at it full time. You can't afford to dip in and out." By 1977 Hadid had received her degree, along with a special Diploma Prize, and she began working for a London firm, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, founded by one of her key teachers, the similarly daring Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. One of her student projects was a design for a hotel built atop the span of London's Hungerford Bridge.

Hadid opened an office of her own in 1980, but at first her ideas were more in demand than her actual designs. Hadid taught courses at the Architectural Association and filled notebooks with one-of-a-kind ideas, some of which were published in architecture magazines or exhibited in galleries. Hadid began to enter design competitions, some of them research-oriented and others for buildings intended for construction. Her design for The Peak, a sports club jutting out horizontally from one of the mountain slopes that surround the city of Hong Kong, won the top prize in the institution's competition, but the building was never constructed. Hadid's competition entries in the 1980s and early 1990s were little known to the public at large but stirred up interest among her fellow architects, and even after she became famous, her website continued to list her competition prizes before focusing on her actual building projects.

Designed Fire Station

After several small projects, including one for the interior of the Moonsoon Restaurant in Sapporo, Japan, Hadid's first major building was constructed in 1993 and 1994: it was a small fire station, with numerous irregular angles (Hadid has been widely quoted as saying that since there are 360 degrees, she sees no reason to restrict herself to just one), on the grounds of the Vitra Furniture Company in Weil am Rhein, Germany. In 1994 Hadid seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough: her design for the new Cardiff Bay Opera House in Britain's Wales region was selected for construction. It was to be an unorthodox building, with sharp angles and interior spaces that ran into and through one another rather than falling neatly into separate areas, but it was also planned to be inviting to the user, with an auditorium surrounded by glassed-in spaces that gave views of nearby Cardiff Bay.

With Hadid an unknown quantity and Britain's Prince Charles in the midst of a widely publicized campaign in favor of neo-traditional architecture in Britain, the design ran into trouble almost immediately. The design competition was reopened, and Hadid's design was once again named the winner, but the project's funder, Britain's National Lottery, eventually withdrew its commitment. Hadid was devastated. "It was such a depressing time," she recalled to Rowan Moore of the London Evening Standard . "I didn't look very depressed maybe but it was really dire. I made a conscious decision not to stop, but it could have gone the other way."

At the same time, Hadid began to amass a solid core of admirers among her staff, among architecture experts, and among ordinary observers. At the same time the Cardiff project was going down in flames, Hadid designed a temporary pavilion to house an exhibit for the architecture magazine Blueprint at a builders' convention. She had to present the structure, described by Moore as "a thing of flying steel," to a gathering of the magazine's advertisers, most of whom greeted it initially with silence. But an executive from a firm that made portable toilets stood up and said "I think it's bloody marvelous" (according to Moore), and began applauding. The other advertisers joined in, and Hadid gained a moment in the building-trade spotlight.

As clients became more and more fascinated with Hadid's plans, some of the plans advanced from theory to reality. She designed the unique Bergisel Ski Jump on a mountain near Innsbruck, Austria, and a parking garage and transit station in suburban Strasbourg, France, that later won the Mies van der Rohe Award from the European Union. In 1998 came the biggest commission yet: the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, popularly known as the Contemporary Arts Center.

Sidewalk Incorporated into Structure

The new building had to fit the confines of a narrow street corner lot in downtown Cincinnati, but Hadid made a virtue of necessity by linking the museum's internal and external environments: the outdoor sidewalk continued into the building, where it propelled visitors toward a sleek black central staircase that melded dramatically into the structure's back wall. As viewers ascended the staircase they looked into galleries that completely overturned the usual neutral conception of museum display spaces—the galleries had different shapes and sizes, and each one seemed to present something new to those approaching. "Not many people voluntarily walk up six stories anywhere," noted Joseph Giovannini of Art in America , "but Hadid's space so intrigues visitors that few think of bypassing the experience by hitching a ride on the elevator: they sense they would miss chapters." A bonus in Hadid's design was its economy: the building used only common materials, and construction costs came in at a reasonable $230 per square foot.

Hadid's creative fulfillment of a plum commission raised her international profile considerably. Where Hadid had sometimes been considered abrasive and difficult to work with, now she was hailed as a pioneer who had stuck to her vision even while facing difficult obstacles. At times, Hadid ascribed the resistance her ideas encountered to her gender and ethnicity. She also conceded that her work and personality were challenging. "I am eccentric, I admit it," she told Moore, "but I am not a nutcase."

Hadid's next major American commission came from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, site of the Price Tower designed by legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Hadid was hired to design a museum adjoining the Wright building—a choice that made sense, for Hadid was sometimes compared to Wright for her futuristic designs and her visionary rethinking of the relationships between humans and buildings. In 2006 it was one of Wright's most famous structures, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, that played host to a major retrospective of Hadid's work.

Indeed, the links between building and environment, and between building and user, loomed larger in Hadid's thinking as her fame grew and commissions poured into her office. "I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples," she told Glancey. A new factory she designed for German automa- ker BMW was laid out in such a way that workers and management personnel crossed paths more frequently.

In 2004 Hadid was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the profession's highest honor. She was the first woman to receive the award. In the mid-2000s she finally received a full-scale commission in the British Isles, for a cancer-care building called Maggie's Centre in Fife, Scotland. Highly visible Hadid buildings planned or underway included a bridge in the Persian Gulf state of Abu Dhabi, a movie theater complex in Barcelona, Spain, and several new museums. Greater international exposure seemed assured in a project waiting further down the line: the aquatics building for the 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London. And she seemed to be outdoing herself with each successive design. "Co-curator Monica Montagut quotes Hadid's statement that 'I still believe in the impossible,'" noted Raymund Ryan in his Architectural Review commentary of Hadid's Guggenheim exhibition. "Judging from this display in New York City, there are few limits to what Hadid might do next."

Newsmakers , Issue 3, Thomson Gale, 2005.

Periodicals

Architectural Review , April 2005; July 2006.

Art in America , November 2003.

Evening Standard (London, England), August 25, 2006.

Financial Times , October 17, 2006.

Guardian (London, England), October 9, 2006.

Newsweek , May 19, 2003.

Time , April 5, 1999.

On-line Media Kit, Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2004, http://www.pritzkerprize.com/2004/mediakit.htm (October 20, 2006).

"Profile," Zaha Hadid Architects Official Website, http://www.zaha-hadid.com (October 20, 2006).

"Zaha M. Hadid," archINFORM, http://www.archinform.net (October 20, 2006).

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Zaha Hadid Facts: "The Queen of Curves"

Zaha hadid biography in short.

Born in  Baghdad , Iraq in 1950, she first started her studies at the AUB (American University of Beirut), she then came to London to study architecture in the year 1972. She suddenly died in 2016, due to a heart attack. She is known for her pioneering use of avant-garde design and form in the world of architecture.

So then,  Zaha Hadid , the late Iraqi-British architect , left an indelible mark on the world of architecture with her unconventional and innovative designs. Known for her distinctively futuristic visions, Hadid challenged traditional notions of space and form. Her awe-inspiring structures can be found in cities around the globe, from the Guangzhou Opera House in China to the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan.

In this blog post, we'll explore some fascinating facts about Zaha Hadid's life, career, and the groundbreaking contributions she made to architecture. Furthermore, we will be discussing some of the late Zaha Hadid's facts, still unrevealed to many others that are about her beginnings and starting in her career that will conquer the world later.

So, if you're an architecture enthusiast or simply curious about this visionary architect , keep reading for a Zaha Hadid bio like no other! Let's get started!

Zaha Hadid Facts: Starting Designing Small Projects in the early years

Her father, Mohammed, was a leading Iraqi politician while her mother, Wajiha al-Sabunji, was a painter-artist from Basra. She was so talented and magnificent in a way that her unbuilt projects that remained on paper, generated attention and relativeness but nevertheless transformed expectations of what architecture could be.

🛈 Well-surnamed "The Queen of Curves”, one of the most popular  Zaha Hadid   facts was to transform the skylines of cities around the world with her bold, fluid, and free-line designs. (See Fig. 1 below)

The extraordinarily dynamic paintings that she used to convey the essence of the design commanded worldwide attention and continue to shape Hadid’s thinking today.

Some Other Zaha Hadid Facts

She began designing small projects in 1973 after graduating from Baghdad University. She moved to London in 1975 and started working as a freelance designer.

She then went on to work for the well-known Architect Richard Rogers from 1979-1983. In 1983 she founded her own firm, "Zaha Hadid Architects - ZHA", where she designed numerous architectural buildings around the world including the Guangzhou Opera House, the MAXXI Museum for Contemporary Art in Rome, and the National Stadium in Abu Dhabi.

Her work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. She received the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the highest honor given out annually to architects worldwide.

Follow the latest developments and news on our Google News website.

One of the Most Architecture Influencers in the World

As an Architect and a Lebanese as well, I permit myself to say that I’m proud of this person and admire her various projects at the same time. Before, when I was a student at the College of Architecture, I always heard her name repeated by our instructors as a role model and top influencer in the architecture industry to follow. I meant by following, not to copy but to be inspired by her strategy and philosophy which was her road to success.

So we are all invited to be creative and to be influenced by our leaders like Hadid. That’s why I found it necessary as concerned about what is happening in the architecture profession, to take at least a glance at the bio of Zaha Hadid, for those who don’t already know much or want to learn more about her biography.

Having that said, I did write a post about  Hadid and Schumacher’s Philosophy  ( Patrick Schumacher : Hadid’s partner) but because of the high originality and quantity of her works, even hundreds and hundreds of articles will be insufficient.

🛈  Want to know more? You can read the article at the following link: Zaha Hadid and Patrick Schumacher’s Philosophy . I would like to do a lot of research concerning her projects and reviews about it; not to comment or criticize but to highlight her magnificent concepts and make it public to all the world to see and benefit from her theories in Arts in general.  The most distinguished creative talent is one of Zaha Hadid's facts of her generation.

Recently completed designs, including the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, demonstrate Hadid’s devotion to construction.

She was working on a series of projects that will serve as defining landmarks in such disparate settings as Dubai, Rome, and Guangzhou, China. She did realize some small-scale projects such as a pavilion for the Maggie’s Centre cancer care movement on a hospital campus in Kirkcaldy, Scotland.

Zaha Hadid Facts: Early (ZHA) Projects

When Hadid arrived in London as a student in the 1970s, the recession was at its highest levels; all the professions were experiencing a lack of work and loss of confidence, especially the architects due to a hidden conflict that then came to light.

The modernism of the 30s, led by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, the famous Architects, was inhaling his last breath: The idealism of the 60s was taking its place. So, in consequence, The Architectural Association, where Hadid studied from 1972 to 1977, leads a sort of discussion to find an alternative to the modernism of the ’30s, i.e. providing new directions in design.

Alvin Boyarsky, a Russian Architect, came to the head of the Architectural Association and was leading the campaign which attracted mostly radical thinkers and practitioners of every ideological persuasion.

Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Leon Krier, and Brian Anson were all on the same teaching team. Classicists, community activists, conservationists, and radical Modernists all had a platform. The experience clearly had a deep and essential effect on Hadid.

The school provided an environment in which Hadid could explore one of the twentieth century’s great art movements,  Russian Constructivism .

This revolutionary period was the point of departure for her breakthrough project – the winning design for The Peak – an apartment complex and club overlooking the city of Hong Kong. The design rejected the current architectural style of Post-Modernism that applied decorative classical columns and cosmetic stone claddings to every new project.

Although never built, the extraordinarily dynamic paintings that she used to convey the essence of the design commanded worldwide attention and continue to shape Hadid’s thinking today. But even though her early projects or conceptions were never been executed in reality, this didn’t stop her flow of design energy to merge on top of the new vision to modernize Architecture if we can say.

Meanwhile, her battle didn’t go in vain; her first realized projects went to Vitra, a furniture manufacturer owned by Rolf Felhbaum, who delegated Hadid to design a fire station on the company’s factory complex at Weil am Rhein in Germany. It was followed by a series of  Zaha Hadid Architects' projects with unexecuted designs, including the Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994-96), one of the great might-have-been of architecture in Britain.

One of the further  Zaha Hadid facts : It was clear that she believed in the idea of architecture as a speculative, theoretical activity in which design drawings were as important as construction, even more maybe. The delay between conceiving the designs that made her reputation, and building them, made it inevitable that Hadid would be represented as being more concerned with theory than practice.

These schemes, however, allowed her to develop ideas and working methods that would form the basis of new work. After the Vitra Fire Station was completed in 1993, Hadid built very little until the major projects of the last three years.

Another of the Zaha Hadid facts : The Phaeno Science Center (Fig.2 above), the BMW Central Building (Fig.3 below), and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (fig.4 below) were taken together, a thing that came to prove the theory that Hadid is primarily a theorist rather than a builder.

Each of those projects has a strong material quality and demonstrates her ability to translate the dynamic warping and disruption of space evident and very strong in her drawings into physical reality. In these projects, the jagged edges of the linear spaces of her earlier work have melted into more voluptuous forms and shapes.

Zaha Hadid facts  also include many remarkable projects that follow in characteristics and locations; mostly related to arts (mainly museums) and others to a variation of facilities (study faculties, research centers…) Most of those projects are still under construction all around the planet even after her sudden death in 2016;

She is one of the very few architects operating on a global scale, building outside the usual European and North American circuits, such as the Middle East, Russia, India, and China. Hadid has the visibility that attracted projects and clients from all over the world, which is proof of her internationality and her humanity's belongings.

She continues to explore fresh shapes and new thinking, making the transition from the world of theory and research to large-scale practice.

In the last decade, most Architects began to work on small-scale projects like furniture. The design on a 1: 1 or larger scale can offer the opportunity to explore an idea or an architectural shape that needs practical evaluation and cannot be fixed only by mind imagination. Here comes the big help of designing a chair or other furniture for example.

So, Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-born British architect who was one of the most prominent and prolific architects of her generation, with a remarkable "twist". Hadid’s theory consists also of creating this link between functionality and art design which is one of the  Zaha Hadid facts.  The practice of making a functional space but at the same time keeping it a piece of art as in most  ZHA projects.

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Zaha Hadid: The Most Important Female Architect of our Time

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Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect. She is the first woman receiver of Pritzker Architecture Prize. Her design of the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre won the Design Museum Design of the Year Award. She has also won the RIBA Gold Medal in 2015, thus becoming the first woman to be awarded with such a prestigious award. Her designs are skeptical attitude of post-modernization. They depict the chaos in the modern life. She lately worked on as a professor at University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria.

Childhood and Family

Hadid was born on 31 October, 1950 in Baghdad. Her father was a business owner as well as an active political figue, and her mother was an artist. 

Most of her schooling was done in the boarding schools in England and Switzerland.

She studied at Architectural Association School of Architecture in London prior to studying mathematics at American University of Beirut. She worked at Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam with her former professors and became a partner in 1977. 

Teaching Career

Hadid was the Kenzo Tange Professorship and the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture. Her first project was Vitra Fire Station. She has also taught in Harvard Graduate School of Design and served as a guest lecturer at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg),.

From 2010, she was a guest Professor at the University Of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria. Hadid has accepted high profile interior work for Mind Zone in London. She has also created fluid furniture installations within the surroundings of Georgian Home House private members club. She designed Moon System for B&B Italia in 2007 and designed Liquid Glacial in 2013. Hadid owns a design firm, Zaha Hadid Architects that is headquartered in London.

Zaha’s work include Vitra Fire Station, Bridge Pavilion, Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, Riverside Museum, London Aquatics Centre, Evelyn Grace Academy, Guangzhou Opera House, Galaxy SOHO, Phaeno Science Center, Sheikh Zayed Bridge, Jockey Club Innovation Tower  and Salerno Maritime Terminal.

The latest to add to her completed designs include Investcorp Building, Citylife office tower and Dongdaemun Design Plaza in 2014. Currently Zaha is working on 11 projects that also include Esfera City Center in Monterrey, Iraqi Parliament Building in Baghdad, 520 West 28 th Street in the United States and Dominion Tower in Russia.

Heights and Notable Works

Hadid was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and also an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Hadid was given the Honor of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012. She is the highest paid architect in the world.

Projects that were Built

• IBA housing in Berlin, Stresemannstraße. 1986–93.  Built.  It is a 3-floor housing development with a wedge-shaped, metal-clad 8-floor tower for the Internationale Bauausstellung. This, together with the Vitra Fire Station, was Zaha's first realised project. Hadid was one of three women commissioned to design social housing complexes, following the efforts of the Feministische Organisation von Planerinnen und Architektinnen to increase female contributions.

• Moonsoon in Sapporo. 1989–90.   Built. Interior design of a restaurant with tables like "sharp fragments of ice" and a "plasma of biomorphic sofas".

• Folly 3 in Osaka, 1990. Built. Folly in the grounds of the Expo '90 fair, a "series of compressed and fused elements to expand in the landscape and refract pedestrian movement." Hadid describes the sculpture as a "half scale experiment for the Vitra Fire Station".

• Vitra fire station, in Weil am Rhein,1994. Built.

• Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, UK. 2000. Built.

• Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, UK. 2013. Built.

• Hoenheim-North Terminus & Car Park in Hoenheim, France. 2001 Built.

• One-North Masterplan Singapore, 2001.

• Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, Austria. 2002 Built.

• Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. 2003. Built.

• Ordrupgaard Museum extension in Copenhagen, Denmark 2001-05. Built.

• BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany. 2005. Built.

• Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany. 2005. Built.

• Maggie's Centres at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. 2006. Built.

• Tondonia Winery Pavilion in Haro, Spain. 2001-06. Built.

• Eleftheria Square redesign in Nicosia, Cyprus. 2007. On hold.

• Hungerburgbahn stations in Innsbruck, Austria. 2007. Built.

• Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain. 2008. Built.

• J. S. Bach Pavilion in Manchester, UK. 2009. Built. For the Manchester International Festival.

• CMA CGM Tower in Marseille, France. 2005-10. Built.

• MAXXI - National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome, Italy. 1998-2010. Built. Winner of the 2010 Stirling Prize

• Guangzhou Opera House in Guangzhou, China. 2005-10. Built.

• Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton, London, UK. 2006-10 Built. Winner of the 2011 Stirling Prize

• Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 2007-10. Built.

• London Aquatics Centre in London, UK. 2008-11. Built.

• Riverside Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, UK  2007-11. Built.

• Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. 2007-12. Built.

• Pierres Vives Building in Montpelier, France. 2002-12. Built.

• Napoli Afragola railway station in Napoli, Italy. 2003-12. Ongoing.

• Salerno Maritime Terminal in Salerno, Italy. 1999-12. Ongoing. 

• Innovation Tower in Hong Kong SAR, China. 2009-13. Built.

• Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Dongdaemun, Seoul, South Korea. 2007-14. Built.

• Wangjing SOHO in Beijing, China. 2009-14. Built.

• Investcorp Building, St Antony's College in Oxford, England. 2013-15. Built.

• Mesner Mountain Museum Coroness in Kronplatz mountain, Italy. 2015. Built.

Proposed and Conceptualised Projects

• Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. 2008. Not realised.   
• Szervita Square Tower in  Budapest, Hungary. 2006. Not realised.     
• Kartal-Pendik Waterfront Regeneration Masterplan in Istanbul, Turkey. 2006. Not realised.  
• Cardiff Bay Opera House in Cardiff, Wales, UK. 1995  Not realised.
•  Grace on Coronation in Brisbane, Australia. 2014. Proposed. 3 residential skyscrapers with civic space within a new riverside park.
• Azabu-Jyuban in Tokyo, Azabu Juban. 1986. Not realised. Commercial development on a "narrow site in a canyon of random buildings near the Roppongi district."
• Tomigaya in Tokyo, Azabu Juban 1986. Not realised. Small mixed-use project related to the Azabu-Jyuban project, featuring an elevated angular glass pavilion as its centerpiece.
• West Hollywood Civic Centre in Los Angeles, Azabu Juban. 1987. Not realised. Design for a civic centre in a "relatively context-free environment", allowing "objects [to] float and interact in a way that is only possible in wide-open spaces".
• Al Wahda Sports Centre in Abu Dhabi. 1988. Not realised.            
• Berlin 2000 in Berlin. 1988. Not realised. Urban masterplan for a Berlin without the Berlin Wall, commissioned a year before the Wall's actual fall.
• Victoria City Areal in Berlin. 1988. Not realised.   Design for a re-development of a cruciform site on Kurfürstendamm, envisioning a "bent slab" of a hotel hovering above the street.
• A New Barcelona in Barcelona. 1989. Not realised. This was a project of a "new urban geometry" for Barcelona.
• Tokyo Forum in Tokyo. 1989. Not realised. Design for a municipal Cultural Centre, based on a "void - a glass container - out of which smaller voids are dramatically hollowed and which house the building's cultural and conference areas.
• Hafenstrasse development in Hamburg, Hafenstraße. 1990. Not realised. Project of a mixed-use development in two gaps in a row of houses on the Elbe embankment, featuring angular, semi-transparent slabs on pillars. 

Personal Life

Zaha has never been married. She wants to situate all her focus on her career as an architect. Zaha’s net worth includes stock investments, property holdings, a football team, a brand of Vodka, perfume and fashion line.

For her British Architecture, Zaha received her first award, Gold Medal Architectural Design in 1982. She won the Pritzker Price in 2004 and became the youngest and the first woman to achieve the award. Zaha’s design for Heydar Aliyev Center has won the Designs of the Year in 2014.

On 31 March 2016, Hadid suddenly died of a heart attack in a Miami hospital, where she was being treated for bronchitis. 

Veuve Clicquot UK Business Woman Award

Dame commander of the order of the british empire (dbe) honours for services to architecture.

Jane Drew Prize

Riba european award for maxxi, riba european award for phaeno science centre, riba european award for bmw central building, designer of the year award for design miami, german architecture prize for the central building of the bmw plant in leipzig, pritzker architecture prize, commander of the order of the british empire (cbe).

• Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid Photos
• Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid Family
• Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid Quotes
• Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid Videos

Zaha Hadid and Suprematism

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