Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid
Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid, DBEwas an Iraqi-born British architect. She was the first Arab woman who received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, winning it in 2004. She received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 2015 she became the first woman to be awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in her own right...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionArchitect
Date of Birth31 October 1950
CityBaghdad, Iraq
fashion space architecture
Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.
eccentric
I am eccentric, I admit it, but I am not a nutcase.
crazy mean sleep
When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project.
today architecture building
It is insufficient for architecture today to directly implement an existing building typology; it instead requires architects to carefully examine the whole area with new interventions and programmatic typologies
fashion thinking artist
People often ask me if I consider myself to be an architect, fashion designer, or artist. I'm an architect. The paintings I've done are very important to me, but they were part of a process of thinking and developing.
husband nice kids
I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't.
guy call-me ifs
Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
museums furniture pedestal
I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.
block believe museums
Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.
regret two done
I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.
years students plant
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
depression depressing decision
It was such a depressing time. I didn't look very depressed, maybe, but it was really dire. I made a conscious decision not to stop, but it could have gone the other way.
architecture tough difficult
Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough.
teaching people frightening
No. I don't have the patience, and I'm not very tactful. People say I can be frightening.