James Mitchell

Few architects ever turn a pristine sketch into a global brand, yet Zaha Hadid pulled it off with a language of curves, diagonals, and gravity-defying cantilevers. Baghdad-born and London-trained, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 (Encyclopaedia Britannica), and buildings such as the Heydar Aliyev Center and the London … Read more

Few architects reach the point where people who could not name a single one of their buildings still know the name; Zaha Hadid did. Born in Baghdad in 1950, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 (The Pritzker Architecture Prize), then spent the next decade translating a famously bold … Read more

Ask someone to name a female architect and Zaha Hadid’s name usually comes up before the buildings do. She died in 2016 at the age of 65, ending a career that made her the most widely known female architect of her era (Encyclopaedia Britanica), and yet many of the most searched questions about her are … Read more

Zaha Hadid, born in Baghdad and based in London, refused to draw a straight line — she bent geometry into gravity-defying shapes that made the world look different afterward. Her Iraqi roots and mathematics degree forged a new architectural language, and her practice continued after her sudden death in 2016. Born: 31 October 1950 · … Read more

Anyone who has ever looked at a building that seems to bend the rules of physics has probably wondered who dared to design it — and that person was often Zaha Hadid, a British-Iraqi architect who turned sweeping curves and sharp angles into some of the most recognizable structures on Earth. In this profile, we … Read more

Most people know the surname Hadid from magazine covers, but Zaha Hadid’s fame rests on something far more permanent than celebrity: a radical architectural vision that reshaped skylines on nearly every continent. She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, and her firm still operates globally today. Born: 1950 · Died: 2016 · … Read more

Most people can picture the buildings before they remember the name behind them — the flowing roof of the London Aquatics Centre, the white curves of the Heydar Aliyev Center. Zaha Hadid made those forms feel inevitable, and in 2004 she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour (Pritzker Architecture … Read more

There’s a strange trick to looking at a Zaha Hadid building: your eye keeps telling you the structure shouldn’t be standing, yet the curves hold and the building becomes the reason people travel. Hadid, who died in 2016, was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize in 2004, and the firm that carries her … Read more