An Iraqi-British architect was born on 31 October 1950. She grew up in Baghdad’s first Bauhaus-inspired buildings during an era in which “modernism connoted glamor and progressive thinking” in the Middle East. She received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 the first woman to do so—and the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011. Her buildings are distinctively futuristic, characterized by the “powerful, curving forms of her elongated structures with “multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life. Association School of Architecture in London, where she met Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, and Bernard Tschumi.
She worked for her former professors, Koolhaas and Zenghelis, at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; she became a partner in 1977. Through her association with Koolhaas, she met Peter Rice, the engineer who gave her support and encouragement early on at a time when her work seemed difficult. In 1980, she established her London-based practice. During the 1980s, she also taught at the Architectural Association.
Zaha Hadid has taught at prestigious universities around the world, including at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was the Kenzo Tange Professorship and the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture.
She also served as guest professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg), the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, the Masters’ Studio at Columbia University, and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture. From the year 2000 on Dame Zaha Hadid is a guest professor at The University of Applied Arts – Vienna, in the Zaha Hadid Master Class Vertical-Studio.
She was named an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. She was a Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.
She has also undertaken some high-profile interior work, including the Mind Zone and Feet zone at the Millennium Dome in London as well as creating fluid furniture installations within the Georgian surroundings of Home House private members club in Marylebone, and the Z.CAR hydrogen-powered, three-wheeled automobile. In 2009 she worked with the clothing brand Lacoste, to create a new, high fashion, and advanced boo. In the same year, she also collaborated with the brassware manufacturer Triflow Concepts to produce two new designs in her signature parametric architectural style.
In 2007 Zaha Hadid designed the Moon System Sofa for leading Italian furniture manufacturers.
She was working in all sectors 950+ projects, 44+ countries, 400+ staff!
