Zaha Hadid

Architect

1950-10-31 – 2016-03-31

Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-born British architect and designer known for radical deconstructivist forms. She became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize and led the globally influential firm Zaha Hadid Architects.

Books by Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid
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Zaha Hadid Architects
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Zaha M. Hadid
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Quotes by Zaha Hadid

My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame.
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I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they become something else.
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If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.
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I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.
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Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.
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I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'
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My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that.
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I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places.
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If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella.
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When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.
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When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.
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As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.
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Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.
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Women are always told, 'You're not going to make it, its too difficult, you can't do that, don't enter this competition, you'll never win it,' - they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on.
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