Dame Zaha Hadid was born on October 31, 1950, Baghdad, Iraq. Sadly, she died of a heart attack on March 31, 2024 in Miami, Florida.
Hadid was an architect known for her radical deconstructivist designs. In 2004 she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Hadid gained international recognition with her competition-winning entry for The Peak, a leisure and recreational centre in Hong Kong. This design, a “horizontal skyscraper” that moved at a dynamic diagonal down the hillside site, established her aesthetic: inspired by Kazimir Malevich and the Suprematists, her aggressive geometric designs are characterized by a sense of fragmentation, instability, and movement. This fragmented style led her to be grouped with architects known as “deconstructivists,” a classification made popular by the 1988 landmark exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Her first major built project was the Vitra Fire Station (1989–93) in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Composed of a series of sharply angled planes, the structure resembles a bird in flight. Her other built works from this period include a housing project for IBA Housing (1989–93) in Berlin, the Mind Zone exhibition space (1999) at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, London, and the Land Formation One exhibition space (1997–99) in Weil am Rhein.
Just In! Just over a year after her death, Zaha Hadid's life and work is being remembered with a Google Doodle.
Before computers made her designs easier to put on paper, Hadid's studio was known to use the photocopier in creative ways to bend lines and create new shapes. The type in today's Doodle finds inspiration in Hadid's energetic sketches, which explored both form and function. Find out more about Zaha Hadid and her most impressive buildings at The Telegraph.