Test Your Knowledge of Pioneering Architect Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid: A Pioneer in Contemporary Architecture

Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect, artist, and designer known as a major figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries.
She studied mathematics as an undergraduate before enrolling at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972.
Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building."
She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, the UK's most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011, and the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in February 2016.
Hadid's major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome's MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House.
Several of her buildings were still under construction at the time of her death, including the Daxing International Airport in Beijing and the Al Wakrah Stadium (now Al Janoub) in Qatar, a venue for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Her early reputation rested largely upon her teaching and the imaginative and colourful paintings she made of her proposed buildings.
Her first major project was a small fire station for the Swiss furniture firm Vitra, and her second was a ski jump at Bergisel, in Innsbruck Austria.
She became the first woman to design an art museum in the United States, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Hadid won an international competition for the Phaeno Science Center, a museum in Wolfsburg, Germany, which was only a little larger than the Cincinnati Museum but much more ambitious.
She ventured into bridge construction and designed and built the Bridge-Pavilion of Zaragoza, which was both an exhibit hall and a bridge, created for Expo 2008.
Hadid was described as the "Queen of the curve", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity".Zaha Hadid's Major Projects Summary
Zaha Hadid is known for her characteristic designs of diagonal slopes and curves with no right angles or orthogonal forms.
Her Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi is a wave-shaped bridge with a principal arch of 235 meters long and a total span of 842 meters.
The National Museum of Arts of the 21st Century (MAXXI) in Rome is characterized by the sense of movement and features smooth curving white walls on thin pylons.
The Guangzhou Opera House in China is inspired by natural earth forms and appears like two giant smooth-edged boulders faced with polished granite and glass.
The Riverside Museum in Glasgow is a wave-shaped building with zinc plates on the facades and a series of peaks and angles on the roofline.
The London Olympics Aquatics Centre is inspired by the fluid geometry of water in movement and features a roof in the form of a parabolic arch that dips in the center.
The Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University has a sloping pleated stainless steel facade that reflects the surrounding neighborhood from different angles.
The Galaxy SOHO in Beijing is composed of four different ovoid glass-capped buildings joined by multiple curving passageways on different levels.
The Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a gigantic cultural and conference center containing three auditoriums, a library, and a museum with a fluid form that emerges from the natural topography of the landscape.
The Dongdaemun Design Plaza in South Korea is among the largest buildings in Seoul and has a giant mushroom-like structure floating atop sloping pylons made of concrete, aluminum, steel, and stone on the exterior.
The Library and Learning Center in Vienna has walls sloping at 35 degrees and a massive black volume cantilevered at an angle over the plaza in front of the building.
The Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London is a synthesis of two distinct parts, a 19th-century classical brick structure, and a 21st-century tensile structure with Hadid's distinct hallmark of curves.
The Innovation Tower in Hong Kong is part of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and has 15 floors with laboratories, classrooms, studios, and other facilities for 1,800 students and their faculty.
The Wangjing SOHO tower in Beijing is characterized by its sloping and curving towers with two levels of shops and 37 levels of offices.
The Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre is a cultural complex with a grand theater, a youth center, a hotel, and a conference center.Zaha Hadid's Posthumous Major Projects and Legacy
Zaha Hadid was a renowned architect who died in 2016 at the age of 65.
She won the Agha Khan Award in 2016 for the Issam Fares Institute, which aims to develop and initiate research of the Arab world to enhance and broaden debate on public policy and international relations.
The Port Authority Building in Antwerp, Belgium, completed in 2016, is the only government building designed by Hadid.
Hadid died of a heart attack at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami in 2016 while being treated for bronchitis.
The Salerno Maritime Terminal in Salerno, Italy, her first major transportation building, was completed posthumously in 2016.
The Central Bank of Iraq Tower in Baghdad, commissioned in 2010, began construction in 2018 and is set to be completed in 2023.
The Grand Théatre de Rabat in Morocco, a futuristic building, launched in 2014, is still under construction.
Beijing Daxing International Airport in China opened in September 2019.
The Navi Mumbai International Airport in India is yet to be constructed and set to open in 2024.
The Sky Park Residence in Bratislava, Slovakia, a complex of three 31-story residential towers, is still under construction.
Hadid was a dedicated teacher, holding various professorships at universities worldwide.
In addition to architecture, she also undertook high-profile interior work and product design.
Hadid established her own architectural firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, and won numerous awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and being appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2012.Zaha Hadid's Achievements and Architecture Projects
Zaha Hadid was ranked 69th on the Forbes list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women".
She was named by Time as an influential thinker in the 2010 TIME 100 issue.
In September 2010, the New Statesman listed Zaha Hadid at number 42 in its annual survey of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures of 2010".
She was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Hadid appeared on Debrett's list of the most influential people in the UK.
Hadid won the Stirling Prize, the UK's most prestigious award for architecture, two years running: in 2010 and 2011.
She became the first woman to receive the Royal Gold Medal awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2015.
Google celebrated her achievements with a Doodle on 31 May 2017.
Her architectural design firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, employs 400 people and its headquarters are in a Victorian former-school building in Clerkenwell, London.
Her notable completed projects include the MAXXI in Rome, Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul, and Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku.
Her incomplete projects include Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and the National Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.
She also worked on museum exhibitions and non-architectural projects.