In Praise of Zaha Hadid

"Born in Baghdad, Zaha Hadid studied at the highly regarded Architectural Association in London, was a partner in the avant garde Office of Metropolitan Architecture with Rem Koolhaas, and has held prestigious posts at one time or another at the world’s finest universities including Harvard, Yale, and many others. Much admired by the younger generation of architects, her appearance on campuses is always a cause for excitement and overflowing audiences.

"Zaha Hadid has become more and more recognized as she continues to win competition after competition, always struggling to get her very original winning entries built. Discouraged, but undaunted, Zaha Hadid has used the competition experiences as a 'laboratory' for continuing to hone her exceptional talent in creating an architectural idiom like no other.

"It is not surprising that one of the architects whose work Zaha Hadid admires is another Pritzker Prize winner, the preeminent South American author of Brasilia, and other major works — Oscar Niemeyer. They share a certain fearlessness in their work and both are unafraid of risk that comes inevitably with their respective vocabularies of bold visionary forms.

"The full dimensions of Zaha Hadid’s prodigious artistic outpouring of work is apparent not only in architecture, but in exhibition designs, stage sets, furniture, paintings, and drawings."

^{~ From the Pritzker Prize Jury}

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