Features

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

Ask someone to name a female architect and Zaha Hadid’s name usually arrives before the question has finished, but that instinct hides a more complicated story about money, legacy, and the distance between a media legend and a documented record. In 2004, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize (PBS NewsHour, US … Read more

Ask most people to name a female architect and Zaha Hadid’s name arrives before almost any other — the Baghdad-born visionary whose swooping concrete curves became a global shorthand for modern architecture. Her death didn’t end that story; it moved it from biography to business. Born: October 31, 1950, Baghdad, Iraq · Died: March 31, … Read more

Few architects get described the way Zaha Hadid does: “Queen of the Curve,” rule-breaker, the woman who made concrete look like it was moving. Between the nickname and the obituaries, though, a lot of what circulates about her — fortune, love life, rivals — is rumor dressed up as biography, while the documented record runs … Read more

Few architects become cultural shorthand, and almost none get there with a nickname as sticky as “Queen of the Curve.” Zaha Hadid did — an Iraqi-born British architect who, in 2004, became the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize and then spent her final decade turning drawings that once looked impossible into concrete … Read more

Few architects leave a mark you can recognize before you read the plaque; Zaha Hadid did, with sweeping roofs, sharp diagonals, and buildings that seem to move even while standing still. Born in Baghdad and based in London, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize in 2004, according to the Zaha Hadid … Read more

Few architects have made the transition from unbuilt paper genius to global brand quite as emphatically as Zaha Hadid. Born in Baghdad, educated in Beirut and London, she turned rigid geometry into fluid monuments and became the first woman to win architecture’s highest prize, the Pritzker, in 2004 — here’s a complete look at the … Read more