The Architecture of Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA, died suddenly this morning at the age of 65. The firm she founded in 1979, Zaha Hadid Architects, released a statement confirming the news. Her passing is an immeasurable loss for the profession, as her work has challenged the limitations of form and computational design for decades. Hadid has changed the nature of architecture itself through her drawings, buildings, and explorations, and her legacy both within and outside the profession will be enduring.

Fellow architect Peter Cook described her work and its impact in his address to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on the occasion of her winning the 2016 RIBA Gold Medal:

“Surely her work is special. For three decades now, she has ventured where few would dare: if Paul Klee took a line for a walk, then Zaha took the surfaces that were driven by that line out for a virtual dance and then deftly folded them over and then took them out for a journey into space. In her earlier, ‘spiky’ period there was already a sense of vigour that she shared with her admired Russian Suprematists and Constructivists – attempting with them to capture that elusive dynamic of movement at the end of the machine age.”

Here, we recognize the profound, multidimensional impact her work has had on architecture and trace its formal evolution through built and unbuilt projects by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Click on the links below to see more about each project ARCHITECT‘s Project Gallery.