ZAHA HADID

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 solid optimism for the future and belief in the power of invention with advanced design, material and construction innovations.

Zaha Hadid was the one who achieved projects that stand as symbols of social progress. She received the highest honours from civic, academic and professional institutions across the world.

Full name Dame Zaha Hadid, was 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. There she met the architects Elia Zenguelis  and Rem Koolhaas, with whom she would collaborate as a partner at the Office of Metropolitan ArchitectureHadid 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 and was the first women to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004.

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.

Hadid gained international recognition with her competition-winning entry for The Peak, ubicated in Hong Kong. This design, a “horizontal skyscraper” that moved at a dynamic diagonal down the hillside site, established her aesthetic. Hadid’s design for The Peak was never realized.

STARDOM AND CONTROVERSIES

  • In 2010 Hadid’s with courage imaginative design for the “MAXXI museum of Contemporary art and Architecture” in Rome earned her the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
  • Hadid’s fluid undulating design for the “Heydar Aliyev Center”, a cultural centre that opened in 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan, won the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year in 2014.
  • “The London Aquatics Centre” built for the 2012 Olympics.
  • “The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum”, which opened in 2012 at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Echoing and extending the many circulatory and visual connections that define its surrounding topography, the museum forms itself by extending and folding these connections through a series of pleats, producing a structure that changes as visitors move past and through it – creating great curiosity yet never fully revealing its content.
  • “The Jockey Club Innovation Tower” (2014) for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.The Jockey Club Innovation Tower (JCIT) is home to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) School of Design, and the Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation.
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“I think that the no’s you receive make you more persevering. I could have thrown in the towel, but I didn’t because I knew there was a lot to unearth, to discover. I interpreted each no as a move on, a challenge.” Zaha Hadid

I think this quote from the famous architect Hadid, reflects the constance she gave her projects to be accepted by the society, taking into account she was the one of the first women who introduces her ideas and programs to the architecture world. She teach us how to have perseverance and prove the world aven the people don’t belief in you, you must keep working with all your desire.