Remembering Zaha Hadid, the Queen of the Curve

Known for swooping, avant-garde structures, British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid was arguably more artist than architect. As the world mourns her sudden passing, articles about her unique and often misunderstood vision continue to make her all the more intriguing.

The first woman to receive the Priztker Prize—architecture’s highest honor—was as much a triumph for women architects, as well as a recognition that Hadid was pioneer in her field. When she received her award in 2004, much fuss was made about her accomplishments as a woman, but the architectural critic, Joseph Giovannini decided to focus elsewhere--on her work, “Air is Hadid’s element: she floats buildings that reside aloft. At a time, in the early 80s, when architects were concerned about manifesting the path of gravity through buildings, Hadid invented a new anti-gravitational visual physics. She suspended weight in the same way dramatists suspend disbelief.”

Giovannini was onto something: Hadid's uncanny ability to change the way we see and feel space foreshadowed the discipline’s direction, making her a legendary figure for architects and non-architects alike.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, Hadid came of age in an era when the Middle East was in love with modernity. She grew up in a Bauhaus-style home in an affluent Baghdad neighborhood, and later studied mathematics at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Having always been intrigued by how the structure and style of a building could affect an individual as well as whole culture, she turned her attention to architecture—which took her to swinging 1960s London.

It was during this time that she was able to view her Arab heritage and culture through the lens of an outsider and begin to reconsider how architecture was not only a manifestation of culture or a historical marker, but also a way for an individual to influence and literally shape that culture. Hadid’s early fascination with Russian revolutionary architecture grew from her interest in how design could affect individual experiences while at the same time advance a government agenda.

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