Thinkers Timeline

Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect. She was one of the most important architects of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, the highest honour in architecture, in 2004. Her buildings are known for bold curves, dramatic angles, and shapes that look impossible to build. She was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She came from a wealthy and progressive Iraqi family. Her father was a politician and businessman. Her mother was an artist. Iraq in the 1950s was modernising rapidly. Zaha grew up surrounded by modern art and modern architecture. She attended a Catholic school in Baghdad and a boarding school in England. She studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut, in Lebanon, before turning to architecture. In 1972 she moved to London to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, one of the most experimental architecture schools in the world. She graduated in 1977. She worked briefly with her former teachers Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at OMA. In 1980 she founded her own practice, Zaha Hadid Architects, in London. For her first 15 years, almost none of her designs were built. Her drawings won prizes and inspired other architects, but clients found her buildings too radical to commission. Her breakthrough came with the Vitra Fire Station in Germany, completed in 1993. From then on, her practice grew. By her death she had designed buildings on every inhabited continent. She died suddenly in 2016, aged 65, of a heart attack while being treated for bronchitis in Miami. Her practice continues without her. Her partner Patrik Schumacher has led it since her death. Her best-known buildings include the Aquatics Centre at the 2012 London Olympics and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan.