In her latest children’s book, “The World Is Not a Rectangle,” author and illustrator Jeanette Winter portrays the life of Zaha Hadid, a selection of her works, and her world of inspirations.
With colorful illustrations, Winter tells the story of Zaha and how she became a radical architect. Starting from the beginning, she depicts Zaha as a child living with her family in Baghdad, being inspired by the country’s beautiful rivers, dunes, and above all ruins of ancient cities. Winter offers a playful glimpse into Zaha’s world, inviting the young readers to approach things with Zaha’s perspective, who was able to see beyond everyday objects. In an excerpt from her book, Winter depicts the young Zaha standing on a carpet. “[She] looks long and hard at patterns in her Persian carpet and sees how the shapes and colors flow into each other, like the dunes and rivers and marshes,” writes Winter.
Winter then depicts Zaha’s unbuilt Cardiff Bay Opera House, which was slated for Cardiff, Wales, and the controversial story of how her winning design never received the support needed for construction. “The idea that… the place was designed by an Arab lady interested in abstract painting, did not sit well with many of the Welsh,” writes John Seabrook in an article for the New Yorker. After facing discrimination from the architecture world, Zaha vowed to never let a piece she designed go to waste. “I made a conscious decision not to stop,” said Zaha of the unfortunate incident, which Winter uses in her book.
Winter then illustrates some of Zaha’s eye-catching buildings including Qatar’s Al Wakrah Stadium, Signature Towers in Dubai, Guangzhou Opera House in China, Beijing’s Galaxy Soho, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s Sleuk Rith Institute, and, with a simple language,explains how each of those buildings were inspired by natural elements. “Zaha remembers the grasses in the marshes swaying, and sees tall buildings dancing like grass…Zaha looks at stones in a stream, and builds an opera house like the pebbles in the water…Zaha looks up at the stars and galaxies and sees swirling buildings.”
"The World Is Not a Rectangle"
Spreads from "The World Is Not a Rectangle"
Spreads from "The World Is Not a Rectangle"
Published by Simon & Schuster, “The World Is Not a Rectangle” will be released on Aug. 22.
