Zaha Hadid Facts: "The Queen of Curves"

Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, she first started her studies at the AUB (American University of Beirut), she then came to London to study architecture in the year 1972. She suddenly died in 2016, due to a heart attack. She is known for her pioneering use of avant-garde design and form in the world of architecture.

So then, Zaha Hadid, the late Iraqi-British architect, left an indelible mark on the world of architecture with her unconventional and innovative designs. Known for her distinctively futuristic visions, Hadid challenged traditional notions of space and form. Her awe-inspiring structures can be found in cities around the globe, from the Guangzhou Opera House in China to the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan.

In this blog post, we'll explore some fascinating facts about Zaha Hadid's life, career, and the groundbreaking contributions she made to architecture. Furthermore, we will be discussing some of the late Zaha Hadid's facts, still unrevealed to many others that are about her beginnings and starting in her career that will conquer the world later.

So, if you're an architecture enthusiast or simply curious about this visionary architect, keep reading for a Zaha Hadid bio like no other! Let's get started!

The late Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid Facts: Starting Designing Small Projects in the early years

Her father, Mohammed, was a leading Iraqi politician while her mother, Wajiha al-Sabunji, was a painter-artist from Basra. She was so talented and magnificent in a way that her unbuilt projects that remained on paper, generated attention and relativeness but nevertheless transformed expectations of what architecture could be.

🛈 Well-surnamed "The Queen of Curves”, one of the most popular Zaha Hadid facts was to transform the skylines of cities around the world with her bold, fluid, and free-line designs. (See Fig. 1 below)

The extraordinarily dynamic paintings that she used to convey the essence of the design commanded worldwide attention and continue to shape Hadid’s thinking today.

Some Other Zaha Hadid Facts

She began designing small projects in 1973 after graduating from Baghdad University. She moved to London in 1975 and started working as a freelance designer.

She then went on to work for the well-known Architect Richard Rogers from 1979-1983. In 1983 she founded her own firm, "Zaha Hadid Architects - ZHA", where she designed numerous architectural buildings around the world including the Guangzhou Opera House, the MAXXI Museum for Contemporary Art in Rome, and the National Stadium in Abu Dhabi.

Her work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. She received the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the highest honor given out annually to architects worldwide.

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One of the Most Architecture Influencers in the World

As an Architect and a Lebanese as well, I permit myself to say that I’m proud of this person and admire her various projects at the same time. Before, when I was a student at the College of Architecture, I always heard her name repeated by our instructors as a role model and top influencer in the architecture industry to follow. I meant by following, not to copy but to be inspired by her strategy and philosophy which was her road to success.

So we are all invited to be creative and to be influenced by our leaders like Hadid. That’s why I found it necessary as concerned about what is happening in the architecture profession, to take at least a glance at the bio of Zaha Hadid, for those who don’t already know much or want to learn more about her biography.

Having that said, I did write a post about Hadid and Schumacher’s Philosophy (Patrick Schumacher: Hadid’s partner) but because of the high originality and quantity of her works, even hundreds and hundreds of articles will be insufficient.

🛈 Want to know more? You can read the article at the following link: Zaha Hadid and Patrick Schumacher’s Philosophy. I would like to do a lot of research concerning her projects and reviews about it; not to comment or criticize but to highlight her magnificent concepts and make it public to all the world to see and benefit from her theories in Arts in general. The most distinguished creative talent is one of Zaha Hadid's facts of her generation.

Zaha Hadid Facts: Early (ZHA) Projects

When Hadid arrived in London as a student in the 1970s, the recession was at its highest levels; all the professions were experiencing a lack of work and loss of confidence, especially the architects due to a hidden conflict that then came to light.

The modernism of the 30s, led by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, the famous Architects, was inhaling his last breath: The idealism of the 60s was taking its place. So, in consequence, The Architectural Association, where Hadid studied from 1972 to 1977, leads a sort of discussion to find an alternative to the modernism of the ’30s, i.e. providing new directions in design.

Alvin Boyarsky, a Russian Architect, came to the head of the Architectural Association and was leading the campaign which attracted mostly radical thinkers and practitioners of every ideological persuasion.

Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Leon Krier, and Brian Anson were all on the same teaching team. Classicists, community activists, conservationists, and radical Modernists all had a platform. The experience clearly had a deep and essential effect on Hadid.

The school provided an environment in which Hadid could explore one of the twentieth century’s great art movements, Russian Constructivism.

This revolutionary period was the point of departure for her breakthrough project – the winning design for The Peak – an apartment complex and club overlooking the city of Hong Kong. The design rejected the current architectural style of Post-Modernism that applied decorative classical columns and cosmetic stone claddings to every new project.

Although never built, the extraordinarily dynamic paintings that she used to convey the essence of the design commanded worldwide attention and continue to shape Hadid’s thinking today. But even though her early projects or conceptions were never been executed in reality, this didn’t stop her flow of design energy to merge on top of the new vision to modernize Architecture if we can say.

Meanwhile, her battle didn’t go in vain; her first realized projects went to Vitra, a furniture manufacturer owned by Rolf Felhbaum, who delegated Hadid to design a fire station on the company’s factory complex at Weil am Rhein in Germany. It was followed by a series of Zaha Hadid Architects' projects with unexecuted designs, including the Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994-96), one of the great might-have-been of architecture in Britain.

One of the further Zaha Hadid facts: It was clear that she believed in the idea of architecture as a speculative, theoretical activity in which design drawings were as important as construction, even more maybe. The delay between conceiving the designs that made her reputation, and building them, made it inevitable that Hadid would be represented as being more concerned with theory than practice.

Fig.2- The Phaeno Science Center, Credit to Wikipedia.org

These schemes, however, allowed her to develop ideas and working methods that would form the basis of new work. After the Vitra Fire Station was completed in 1993, Hadid built very little until the major projects of the last three years.

Another of the Zaha Hadid facts: The Phaeno Science Center (Fig.2 above), the BMW Central Building (Fig.3 below), and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (fig.4 below) were taken together, a thing that came to prove the theory that Hadid is primarily a theorist rather than a builder.

Each of those projects has a strong material quality and demonstrates her ability to translate the dynamic warping and disruption of space evident and very strong in her drawings into physical reality. In these projects, the jagged edges of the linear spaces of her earlier work have melted into more voluptuous forms and shapes.

Fig.4- The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art- Credit: flickr.com

She continues to explore fresh shapes and new thinking, making the transition from the world of theory and research to large-scale practice.

In the last decade, most Architects began to work on small-scale projects like furniture. The design on a 1: 1 or larger scale can offer the opportunity to explore an idea or an architectural shape that needs practical evaluation and cannot be fixed only by mind imagination. Here comes the big help of designing a chair or other furniture for example.