Acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid dies

By MiNDFOOD

A man and a boy walk outside the Heydar Aliyev Center, ahead of the European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, June 11, 2015. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov  - RTX1G463
A man and a boy walk outside the Heydar Aliyev Center, ahead of the European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, June 11, 2015. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov - RTX1G463
Architect Zaha Hadid, whose designs include the London Olympic Aquatic Centre and the Italian National Museum, has died aged 65.

Iraqi-born Hadid was widely regarded as one of the greatest architects in the world.

Hadid died following a heart attack on Thursday in a Miami hospital, where she was being treated for bronchitis.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, she studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before starting her architectural journey in 1972 at the Architectural Association in London.

Her designs have been commissioned around the world, including Hong Kong, Germany and Azerbaijan.

A man and a boy walk outside the Heydar Aliyev Center, ahead of the European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, June 11, 2015. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov  - RTX1G463
The Heydar Aliyev Center, in Baku, Azerbaijan. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov.

 

By 1979 she had established her own practice in London – Zaha Hadid Architects – garnering a reputation across the world for her ground-breaking works including The Peak in Hong Kong, the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales.

Her interest was in the interface between architecture, landscape, and geology; which her practice integrates with the use of innovative technologies often resulting in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms.

Her first major built commission was the Vitra Fire Station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany. She went on to be involved in other big projects including the MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games and the Guangzhou Opera House in China. have also been hailed as architecture that transforms our ideas of the future with visionary spatial concepts defined by advanced design, material and construction processes.

In 2004, Zaha Hadid became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling Prize: in 2010 for the MAXXI Museum in Rome, a building for the staging of 21st century art; and the Evelyn Grace Academy, a unique design, expertly inserted into an extremely tight site.

Zaha Hadid’s other awards included the Republic of France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale and in 2012, Zaha Hadid was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

 

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