Zaha Hadid

Life & Legacy

Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid (Arabic: زهاء حديد, romanized: Zahā' Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi and British architect, artist, and designer. She is recognised as a key figure in the architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and later enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972. In search of an alternative to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as a method to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building".
She was described by The Guardian as the "Queen of Curves", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity". Her major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome's MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House. Some of her awards have been presented posthumously, including the statuette for the 2017 Brit Awards. She was also recognized by the 2013 Forbes List as one of the "World's Most Powerful Women". Several of her buildings were still under construction at the time of her death, including the Daxing International Airport in Beijing and the Al Wakrah Stadium (now Al Janoub) in Qatar, a venue for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. She also received the UK's most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in February 2016, the month before her death, she became the first woman to be individually awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Ray Eames and Sheila O'Donnell had previously received it jointly with Charles Eames and John Tuomey respectively).