Zaha Hadid

Zaha Mohammad Hadid (31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-British architect, among the most prominent architects of her era, known for buildings of flowing, curving lines that earned her the name "Queen of Curves". In 2004 she became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. ^{1 2}

She founded her practice, Zaha Hadid Architects, in London, and her work ranged from a small fire station in Germany to the Guangzhou Opera House, the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, the Antwerp Port Authority building and the Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar; her buildings continued to be completed and opened for years after her death. ¹

She was born in Baghdad to a well-off Iraqi family: her father, Muhammad al-Hajj Husayn Hadid, an industrialist from Mosul, co-founded the socialist al-Ahali group in 1932 and the National Democratic Party and served as minister of finance after the 1958 coup; her mother, Wajiha al-Sabunji, was an artist from Mosul, and her brother Foulath Hadid a writer and accountant. Hadid recalled that childhood trips to the ancient Sumerian cities of southern Iraq sparked her interest in architecture. In the 1960s she attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland. The English article itself flags parts of this family material as needing citation or as failed verification, so it is reported here as the article gives it. ^{1 3}

She read mathematics at the American University of Beirut, then joined the Architectural Association School in London in 1972, where her teachers included Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis and Bernard Tschumi and she was nicknamed "the inventor of the 89 degrees". Her graduation project, Malevich's Tektonik, was an acrylic painting proposing a hotel on Hungerford Bridge, inspired by Suprematism. She took her diploma in 1977, worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, was encouraged there by the engineer Peter Rice, became a naturalised British citizen, and opened her own firm in London — in 1980 according to the English article's main text, while a secondary source gives 1979; both years are recorded as they stand. ¹

She taught at the Architectural Association and held posts at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Chicago, Hamburg and Columbia, among others. Her early international fame came from the Museum of Modern Art's 1988 "Deconstructivism in Architecture" exhibition in New York and from her drawings and paintings, years before clients would build her designs. ¹

In the 1990s the designs began to be built: the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein (1991–93), commissioned by Rolf Fehlbaum and now an exhibit space, housing in Berlin (1986–93), then the Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck (1999–2002) and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (1997–2003), the first art museum in the United States designed by a woman. ¹

Among her best-known buildings completed in her lifetime:

• The Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg (2000–05), the BMW Central Building in Leipzig (2001–05) and the Ordrupgaard extension in Copenhagen (2001–05). ¹
• The Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi (1997–2010, inaugurated on 25 November 2010), the MAXXI museum in Rome (1998–2010) and the Guangzhou Opera House (2003–10), likened to "two pebbles" and costing some US$300 million. ¹
• The Riverside Museum in Glasgow (2004–11), the CMA CGM Tower in Marseille (2006–11), the London Aquatics Centre (2005–11), the Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (2007–12) and Galaxy SOHO in Beijing (2008–12). ¹
• The Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku (2007–13), which won the Design Museum's "Design of the Year" award in 2014 — she was the first woman to win it — the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul (2007–13), the Vienna University of Economics Library and Learning Center (2008–13), the Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2007–14) and the Antwerp Port Authority Building (2016), her only government building. ¹

Works completed after her death include the Salerno Maritime Terminal (2016), the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) in Riyadh (2017), the Al Janoub (Al Wakrah) Stadium in Qatar (2014–19), Beijing Daxing International Airport (2014–19), The Opus in Dubai (2019), the Grand Theatre of Rabat (2021) and the Central Bank of Iraq Tower in Baghdad (2018–25). Among her unbuilt designs is The Peak in Hong Kong (1983). ¹

In 2004 she became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's leading international award; the prize's own laureate page announces her selection, with statements from the jury chairman Lord Rothschild and Thomas J. Pritzker. She won the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011, was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012, and in February 2016 became the first woman to receive the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in her own right. ^{2 1}

Her design won the competition for an opera house in Cardiff, Wales, but the Millennium Commission refused to fund the project. Her reported comment on the rejection — "Do they want nothing but mediocrity?" — became a standing example of the years in which her work was refused in Britain. ¹

This section reports positions carried by the sources; they are not the museum's verdict.

As architect of the Al Wakrah stadium for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Hadid was accused in The New York Review of Books of showing no concern for migrant workers' deaths. In August 2014 she sued for defamation and won; the author retracted and apologised, noting that construction had not begun on the Al Wakrah site when she spoke and that there had been no worker deaths on her project. ¹

Other attributed criticism: her language was called "famously extravagant"; she was accused of building for "dictator states"; the architect Sean Griffiths described her work as "an empty vessel that sucks in whatever ideology might be in proximity to it". Against this, the New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman praised her in his obituary assessment. The Heydar Aliyev Center draws criticism because it is named for, and was commissioned by, the Aliyev regime — a criticism the sources attribute to its critics. ¹

The London Aquatics Centre cost £269 million, three times its original estimate, and was the subject of much comment in the British press. ¹

Hadid never married and had no children. She died of a heart attack at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami on 31 March 2016, while being treated for bronchitis, and was buried at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, between her father and her brother. ¹

Her firm continued after her death with some 500 staff, completing her major projects. The English article reports that in June 2026 a licensing agreement for the use of her name ended after a court ruling and the firm rebranded as "ZHA", and that the Zaha Hadid Foundation reopened her former headquarters at 10 Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell, in 2026, the tenth anniversary of her death. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article need periodic review with clear update dates.