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‘Dreamlike space’: ’s Heydar Alijev center in Baku, Azerbaijan, completed in 2012.—Alamy

Zaha Hadid photographed by David Levene for the Guardian in 2013.

ou may not always like her aesthetic, her candor or the seemed to turn up his nose at her rough-and-ready energy. Of her time at the Architectural Association School, former politics of her clients, but Zaha Hadid, the star archi- “She is not someone you would talk to about books,” classmate and architect Deborah Berke says: “She was a Ytect who died suddenly in Miami on March 31, has left Muschamp wrote. “Earthier appetites seem to drive her. I genius even then. Her talent was unmistakable.” Hadid never a dark hole in the world of architecture. An inimitable mind, myself do not care greatly for lamb testicles. Should a sud- forgot or dismissed her roots. In a revelatory 2014 interview Hadid often proposed dazzling “swoopy” avant-garde struc- den craving for this delicacy come over me, however, I would with Lebanese journalist Ricardo Karam, Hadid said she dis- tures, earning the nickname the “Queen of the Curve.” Her know whom to call.” liked that journalists often confused her nationality and her singular stardom broke through the male-dominated profes- The Financial Times’s reporter Edwin Heathcote dared to citizenship. “It’s always bothered me...I’m an Arab and an sion’s stereotypes of architectural career paths for women, ask Hadid if she even really deserved to win the Pritzker, Iraqi,” Hadid said. “I’m not Brit-English, I’m not half English, I Arabs, emigres or anyone who has ever felt like a square peg architecture’s highest honor. “I don’t know how to answer just live here [].” in a round hole. When she passed away at 65, Hadid was a that...some people must think I deserve it,” she replied. Years An outsider in so many ways, Hadid burst into the great- rarity, a celebrity, and an anointed Dame. later, with even more accolades and built projects under her est heights of architecture and stayed there, a vital proof to Hadid established herself by winning high-profile cultur- belt, Hadid still refused to justify or qualify her achievements. others that a woman-and an Arab woman-could do it. When, al commissions and was bolstered by architecture honors At Oxford University just last month, a student similarly puz- at the end of her lecture at Oxford, a young man asked for like her induction into the Order of the British Empire by zled the architect by asking how she thought future architec- career advice, Hadid offered the only advice she could. Queen Elizabeth in 2012. She went by “Zaha,” enjoying first- ture historians would appraise her work. “I really don’t know,” “There is no real magic,” she said. “It’s really hard work.— name-only celebrity brand name status, even beyond she said, after patiently listening to the long-winded ques- qz.com design circles. Brands and celebrities lined up to collabo- tion. She was just doing her thing, she would often say. rate with Hadid: Chanel, Adidas (with Pharrell Williams), jewelers Swarovski and Georg Jensen, Moleskine, the A role model, but never a mold ‘Complex, curving forms’: The Roca London Gallery, Zaha German yacht makers Blohm+Voss, and of course the While there are many talented, recognized and respected Hadid, 2011.—Rex $2,000 sculptural “haute couture” shoe designed with her female architects practicing around the world, Hadid was the friend and the Dutch theorist . Long before only one to have so clearly punched a hole in that proverbial today’s “Lean In” movement, Hadid was a single, stylish, glass ceiling. For many rising female architects, losing Hadid workaholic woman who ran a 400-person firm, and refused is like seeing a beacon in the field extinguished. “Her loss is to shrink from controversy. devastating,” says Stratigakos, who also heads the architec- Hadid’s reputation was built on drawing ideas ahead of ture department at the University at Buffalo. “You lose heart their time. Her early architectural renderings, drawn in a dis- when you can’t find role models. I worry about how few tinctive style influenced by the Russian abstract art move- women architects there are-not just in Pritzker prizes, but in ment Suprematism, were usually technologically impossible novels, in films... I worry about my students.” to realize. “Hadid’s work in the 1980s and early 1990s was According to a 2014 study by the San Francisco chapter of startling,” explains architecture critic Alexandra Lange to the American Institute of Architects, one-third of women Quartz. “She hadn’t built any of it yet-and it would be some drop out of the profession citing the lack of role models as a time before she could-but her drawings were like a portal reason. Over 70% of women experience sexual discrimina- into another world.” “She had the tenacity to stick to it until tion, harassment or bullying on the job. But Hadid was a technology and public taste caught up to the idea that a complicated figure, and not exactly the easiest role model. building could look like it was always in motion,” says Lange. She was notorious for refusing to back down from criticism over her selection of clients or the working conditions of the The Pritzker Prize, and a disdainful press people who built her designs. And her professional success Hadid received her career-defining prize, the 2004 was tightly intertwined with her force of personality and Pritzker, at the relatively young age of 53 despite only having uniquely groundbreaking ideas-a formula few could hope to a small body of built work. The accompanying headline of replicate. Like everything designed by Zaha Hadid, her Olympic the official announcement-”Zaha Hadid Becomes the First As Hadid explained to the students in Oxford, she put Buildings by Zaha Hadid.-www.azureazure.com Stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Games is a statement of Woman to Receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize”-signaled ideas first-and often before practicality or the wishes of her the possibilities of architecture as much as a reaction the tenor of the media coverage to follow. clients. “I believe in progress, I think if we do enough to the requirement of the brief—AP Never mind the groundbreaking museum she designed research, we can push the envelope and get better results... in Cincinnati or the wonderfully weird fire station in Weil am That’s what I like about architecture. It’s exhilarating, but also Rhein, Germany or confounding design concepts, many pro- heart-breaking.” Two heartaches were the Cardiff Bay Opera files of the star architect fixated on her womanliness. A 2004 House in Wales in 1994 and the ongoing saga of the Tokyo New Yorker profile introduced Hadid’s work by way of her Olympics stadium in Japan. Both were politicized, high-pro- “remarkably emotive face, which veers from sweetly girlish to file commissions that seemed entranced by Hadid’s ideas, volcanically enraged.” In a new book Where Are the Women then abruptly spurned her for another architect. Architects?, historian and architecture professor Despina Stratigakos argues this gendered portrayal of Hadid’s person, Proudly Arab and Iraqi and the kinds of questions she was often asked to answer, Hadid was also widely-revered in the Arab world, as one would have been unthinkable treatments for any of the pre- of few Arab women to have gained international celebrity vious 25 Pritzker laureates. status. “I first read about Zaha in the seventh grade,” says Cliches like “ball-breaking harridan” and “vertiginous Loubna Mrie, a Syrian colleague at Quartz. “We always used heels,” dot this 2004 article by The Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries: her as an example. Yes, smart, successful women exist. Look Zaha Hadid offers a moist, limp hand to shake. She’s coming at Zaha, we would say.” Born to an affluent family of Sunni down with flu. This is a disappointment. Where is the vibrant Muslim Arabs in Baghdad, Hadid was educated in Catholic monster I’d been promised from previous interviews? school, and studied mathematics at the American University Where’s the ball-breaking harridan barking abuse in Arabic in Beirut, Lebanon. She later studied at London’s A file photo taken on September 25, 2013, shows Iraqi- into her mobile as she wafts into her north-London studio in Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), This February 3, 2016 file photo shows the London British architect Zaha Hadid posing for pictures outside vertiginous heels, before snarling unpleasant things to her became a teacher, and established her practice there in 1980. Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 Olympic Games, as her design for an extension of the Serpentine Sackler staff in terrifyingly idiomatic Anglo-Saxon? She died a naturalized citizen of the UK. its architect Dame Zaha Hadid has died from a heart Gallery in London.—AFP ’s influential critic Herbert Muschamp From the very beginning of her career, Hadid stood out. attack aged 65.—AP