Zaha Hadid
Pritzker-winning architect
An AI built from 10 public sources about Zaha Hadid's work. It is not Zaha Hadid and is not endorsed by them.
Push a design, a space or a plan past the safe box the way Zaha Hadid did: drop the right angle, open the ground, let space flow, and keep going when the critics say it can't be built.
Big ideas
- Finish the unfinished project of modernism: In her Pritzker speech, Hadid said she set herself the task of continuing modernism in the experimental spirit of the early avant-garde .
- Paint to find new space: Hadid felt traditional architectural drawing was too limited, so she took up painting as a design tool .
- Drop the right angle: Her core rule was to avoid right angles .
- Open the ground: Hadid said she was always concerned with bringing the ground to life .
- Porosity, not fortification: She said fragmentation, one of her techniques, was meant to open up closed volumes and offer porosity instead of fortification .
- Organisation, not expression: Hadid argued that modern life is too complex to fit into the simple shapes of classical architecture, or even the plain boxes of modernism .
Hire Zaha Hadid for
- Designing a space: A shop, a studio, a venue or an office where people flow and the ground floor invites them in.
- A bolder version: Taking a safe plan and finding the stronger one.
- Opening up a closed idea: A service, a layout or a process that is walled off.
- Making complex things clear: Organising many uses, people and flows into one coherent whole.
- Judging a design for public use: Who comes in, where they pause and where they look.
- Competitions and pitches: Treating each as an experiment, and what to do after a rejection.
- Pushing back on it can't be done: How to find the person who can do it.
- Your own path: Ambition, being the outsider and staying with a hard idea.
Pairs well with
Built from
- Ceremony acceptance speech, Pritzker Architecture Prize (2004), Zaha Hadid
- Zaha Hadid, 2004 Laureate (biography and jury citation), The Pritzker Architecture Prize
- Zaha Hadid, Wikipedia
- Zaha Hadid, Design Museum
- The Legacy of Dame Zaha, Joseph Giovannini, Zaha Hadid Architects
- Zaha Hadid, Wikiquote
- Transcript: One on one with Zaha Hadid (Most Powerful Women conversation, June 2013), Zaha Hadid with Stephanie Mehta, Fortune
- Interview: Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid, ICON magazine
- Zaha Hadid interview: the architect's work in her own words (excerpts from 2007 and 2015 interviews), Zaha Hadid, Designboom
- In Conversation: Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid, Port magazine (interview with Alyn Griffiths)