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.
Works by Zaha Hadid
The following PDF files contain photos and detailed descriptions- The Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio
- The Price Tower Arts Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
- A fire station for the Vitra Furniture Company in Weil am Rhein, Germany
- LFone/Landesgartenschau , an exhibition building to mark the 1999 garden festival in that same city
- A "park and ride" and tramway on the outskirts of Strasbourg, France
- A ski jump situated on the Bergisel Mountain overlooking Innsbruck, Austria.
In addition, Zaha Hadid has numerous other projects in various stages of development. They include:
- A building for BMW in Leipzig, Germany
- A Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany
- A National Center of Contemporary Arts in Rome
- A Master Plan for Bilbao, Spain
- A Guggenheim Museum for Taichung, Taiwan
- A high speed train station outside Naples
- A new public archive, library and sport center in Montpellier, France
