Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1950. She moved to England permanently in 1972 to study at the Architectural Association. Having set up her own London-based firm in 1979, Hadid became an internationally-acclaimed and multi-award winning architect who designed numerous buildings known for their complex, curved, and fluid forms.
Architect Zaha Hadid was born into an upper-class family in Baghdad, Iraq, on 31 October 1950. Her father, Muhammad al-Hajj Husayn Hadid, was the co-founder of the National Democratic Party in Iraq and served as minister of finance after the 1958 Iraqi coup d’état. Her mother, Wajiha al-Sabunji, was an artist. In the 1960s, Hadid attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland (Qureshi, 2012; Telegraph, 2005). She then studied at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, receiving a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. In 1972 she travelled to London to study at the Architectural Association, where she met the architects Elia Zenghelis and Rem Koolhaas, with whom she would collaborate as a partner at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (Zukowsky, 2022). Koolhaas described her as ‘A planet in her own inimitable orbit’ (Royal Academy). Hadid’s 1976–77 graduation thesis, Malevich’s Tektonik, conceptualised a 14-level hotel on the Hungerford Bridge, London, which would link the nineteenth-century buildings on the north shore with the Brutalist South Bank Complex. Inspired by the Russian Suprematist movement, her imaginative architectural reinterpretations of an early-twentieth-century painter’s vision would inspire later designs and would appear in exhibitions about her early work. In relation to the Malevich show at Tate Modern in 2014, Hadid also addressed these formative ideas in Zaha Hadid and Suprematism, an evening discussion with curator Achim Borchardt-Hume (Tate, 2014).
In 1979, Hadid established her own London-based firm, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). She gained international recognition with her Suprematist-style, award-winning design for ‘The Peak’, a leisure and recreational centre in Hong Kong, though this was never realised. Another radical, unrealised design of this period included the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994), initially rendering Hadid a ‘paper architect’, meaning ‘her designs were too avant-garde to move beyond the sketch phase and actually be built’ (Zukowsky, 2022). This all changed after her first major built project, the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany in 1993, followed by various other built projects such as the Mind Zone exhibition space at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, London in 1999. In these and other projects, Hadid explored her interest in ‘creating interconnecting spaces and a dynamic sculptural form of architecture’ (Zukowsky, 2022). Her reputation was reinforced in 2000 when work began on the 7,900-square-metre Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, USA. In addition to making her an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture that year, in 2002 Hadid was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to architecture.
From then on, Hadid’s career soared, with major projects completed in Spain, Italy, United Arab Emirates, China, and more. In 2004, she was the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. Juror and architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable said of the choice, ‘Zaha Hadid is one of the most gifted practitioners of the art of architecture today. From the earliest drawings and models to current buildings and work in progress, there has been a consistently original and strong personal vision that has changed the way we see and experience space’ (Pritzker Architecture Prize announcement, 2004). In 2005 Hadid was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London (RA) and was a finalist in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize for her BMW Administration Building (2001–05) in Leipzig, Germany. In 2006 she founded Zaha Hadid Design (ZHD), her eponymous design studio that experimented with the latest technological advancements encompassing lighting, furniture, fashion accessories, jewellery, interiors, exhibitions, and set-design. In 2007 Hadid featured in the Global Cities exhibition at Tate Modern, and a major solo exhibition of her work, Zaha Hadid: Architecture and Design, was held at the Design Museum, London. The same year, she won the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture for Maggie’s Centre (2006) at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. She subsequently earned many other accolades, including the RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 for Ark Evelyn Grace Academy (2006–10), and in 2012 was appointed Dame of the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to architecture. Three years later, she became the first woman to receive the Royal Gold Medal, awarded by RIBA.
Following a sudden heart attack, Zaha Hadid died in Miami, USA on 31 March 2016. From Neo-Futurism to Deconstructivism, Hadid's style is difficult to define (she claimed to never have followed any specific school), but has been appropriately labelled ‘queen of the curve’ (Moore, 2013). Her designs continue to inspire, featuring in posthumous exhibitions such as Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings at Serpentine North Gallery, London (2016–17) and Everything Flows: Zaha Hadid Design at Roca London Gallery (2022).
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Zaha Hadid ]
Publications related to [Zaha Hadid ] in the Ben Uri Library