sad news this morning from zaha hadid architects… / portrait bridgette lacombe

it is with great sadness that zaha hadid architects have confirmed that dame zaha hadid, dbe died suddenly in miami in the early hours of this morning. she had contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital.

zaha hadid was widely regarded to be the greatest female architect in the world today. 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.

by 1979 she had established her own practice in london – zaha hadid architects – garnering a reputation across the world for her ground-breaking theoretical works including the peak in hong kong (1983), the kurfürstendamm in berlin (1986) and the cardiff bay opera house in wales (1994).

working with office partner patrik schumacher, 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.

zaha hadid’s first major built commission, one that affirmed her international recognition, was the vitra fire station in weil am rhein, germany (1993); subsequent notable projects including the maxxi: italian national museum of 21st century arts in rome (2009), the london aquatics centre for the 2012 olympic games (2011) and the heydar aliyev centre in baku (2013) illustrate her quest for complex, fluid space. buildings such as the rosenthal center for contemporary art in cincinnati (2003) and the guangzhou opera house in china (2010) 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, the distillation of years of experimentation, a mature piece of architecture conveying a calmness that belies the complexities of its form and organisation; and the evelyn grace academy, a unique design, expertly inserted into an extremely tight site, that shows the students, staff and local residents they are valued and celebrates the school’s specialism throughout its fabric, with views of student participation at every turn.

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. she was made honorary member of the american academy of arts and letters and fellow of the american institute of architecture.

she held various academic roles including the kenzo tange chair at the graduate school of design, harvard university; the sullivan chair at the university of illinois, school of architecture. hadid also taught studios at columbia university, yale university and the university of applied arts in vienna.

zaha hadid was recently awarded the riba’s 2016 royal gold medal, the first woman to be awarded the prestigious honour in her own right. sir peter cook wrote the following citation:

“in our current culture of ticking every box, surely zaha hadid succeeds, since (to quote the royal gold medal criteria) she is someone “who has made a significant contribution to the theory or practice of architecture…. for a substantial body of work rather than for work which is currently fashionable.” indeed her work, though full of form, style and unstoppable mannerism, possesses a quality that some of us might refer to as an impeccable ‘eye’: which we would claim is a fundamental in the consideration of special architecture and is rarely satisfied by mere ‘fashion’.

and surely her work is special. for three decades now, she has ventured where few would dare: if paul klee took a line for a walk, then zaha took the surfaces that were driven by that line out for a virtual dance and then deftly folded them over and then took them out for a journey into space. in her earlier, ‘spiky’ period there was already a sense of vigour that she shared with her admired russian suprematists and constructivists – attempting with them to capture that elusive dynamic of movement at the end of the machine age.

necessarily having to disperse effort through a studio production, rather than being a lone artist, she cottoned–on to the potential of the computer to turn space upon itself. indeed there is an urban myth that suggests that the very early apple mac ‘boxes’ were still crude enough to plot the mathematically unlikely – and so zaha with her mathematics background seized upon this and made those flying machine projections of the hong kong peak project and the like. meanwhile, with paintings and special small drawings zaha continued to lead from the front. she has also been smart enough to pull in some formidable computational talent without being phased by its ways.

thus the evolution of the ‘flowing’ rather than spikey architecture crept up upon us in stages, as did the scale of her commissions, but in most cases, they remained clear in identity and control. when you entered the fire station at vitra, you were conscious of being inside one of those early drawings and yes, it could be done. yet at perhaps its highest, those of us lucky enough to see the heydar aliyev center in baku in the flesh, can surely never have been in such a dream-like space, with its totality, its enormous internal ramp and dart-like lights seeming to have come from a vocabulary that lies so far beyond the normal architecture that we assess or rationalize.

so we are presenting her with this medal as a british institution: and as a dame commander of the order of the british empire: thus she might seem to be a member of our british establishment. yet in reality, many of our chattering classes and not a few fellow architects have treated her with characteristic faint praise, and when she heroically won the cardiff opera house competition, blocking the scheme. or when we awarded her the riba stirling prize for the school in south london – her second win in a row – we, the jury, were loudly derided by a number of distinguished architects. of course, in our culture of circumspection and modesty her work is certainly not modest, and she herself is the opposite of modest. indeed her vociferous criticism of poor work or stupidity recalls the line-side comments of the tennis player john mcenroe. yet this is surely characteristic of the seriousness with which she takes the whole business: sloppiness and waywardness pain her and she cannot play the comfy british game of platitudinous waffle that is the preferred cushion adopted by many people of achievement or power. her methods and perhaps much of her psychology remain mesopotamian and not a little scary: but certainly clear.

as a result, it is perhaps a little lonely there up at the top, surrounded now by some very considerable talent in the office, but feared somewhat and distanced from the young. yet in private zaha is gossipy and amusing, genuinely interested in the work of talented colleagues who do very different architecture such as steven holl, and she was the first to bring to london talent such as lebbeus woods or stanley saiotowitz. she is exceptionally loyal to her old friends: many of whom came from the alvin boyarsky period of the architectural association: which seems to remain as her comfort zone and golden period of friendship. encouraged and promoted at an early age by boyarsky, she has rewarded the aa with an unremitting loyalty and fondness for it.

the history of the gold medal must surely include many major figures who commanded a big ship and one ponders upon the operation involved that gets such strong concepts as the maxxi in rome – in which the power of organization is so clear – or the bergisel ski jump in innsbruck where dynamic is at last captured – or the aquatics centre for the london olympics where the lines diving boards were as fluid as the motion of the divers – made into reality. and she has done it time and time again in vienna, marseilles, beijing and guangzhou. never has she been so prolific, so consistent. we realize that kenzo tange and frank lloyd wright could not have drawn every line or checked every joint, yet zaha shares with them the precious role of towering, distinctive and relentless influence upon all around her that sets the results apart from the norm. such self-confidence is easily accepted in film-makers and football managers, but causes some architects to feel uncomfortable, maybe they’re secretly jealous of her unquestionable talent. let’s face it, we might have awarded the medal to a worthy, comfortable character. we didn’t, we awarded it to zaha: larger than life, bold as brass and certainly on the case.

our heroine.

how lucky we are to have her in london.”

details of zaha hadid’s memorial service will be announced shortly.