Architectural Visionary
Elyse Weingarten

In her cult classic novel, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand allegorically presents the architect as the ideal man. It is the architect who stands as rough creator, transforming high-stake aesthetics into the practical, everyday experience of the domicile. The singular foresight of the architect alone urges civilization into being. Changing the out-dated pronoun he into the more politically charged, 21st century, post-feminist vernacular choice of person, the first candidate that comes to mind that could possibly claim to share this distinction with the imaginary, but unforgettable architectural mastermind, Howard Roark, is Iraqi born, British architect Zaha Hadid, the winner of this year’s Pritzker Prize Award. Hadid is the first woman to win the coveted Pritzker prize in the prize’s 26 year history. Celebrated for her unique modernist approach which plays with spatial articulation, the interplay between buildings and landscape, and optical perception, Hadid is simultaneously engaged in practice, teaching and research through out the world. Her most famous buildings include the Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Vitra Fire Station and the LFone pavilion in Weil am Rhien, Germany; and the Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, Austria.

	Zaha Hadid's Website
	Zaha Hadid's Buildings

In May 2003, when Zaha Hadid’s design for the Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio opened, New York Times' architecture critic Herbert Muschamp heralded it as the "most important American building to be completed since the end of the Cold War." Five years earlier, Hadid had sent shock waves through the international architectural community after winning the competition to design the 85,000 sq. foot gallery. At that time, Hadid was a respected paper architect, but had few completed projects to her credit. The finished CAC is an energized seven-storey structure that sits at the corner of a typical street in a typically declining downtown setting, in a typical American Midwestern city. In contrast to the anonymous corporate presence and stiff quasi-urban ambience, the new building is an electrifying geometric conglomeration, a balancing act of hovering galleries spaces. The façade of the building is composed of overlapping rectilinear shards of concrete and black aluminum; inside, a spine-like stair-ramp (that appears to be askew) spirals upward, puncturing into the various gallery rooms.

Throughout her career, Hadid has consistently pushed the boundaries of architecture and urban design, experimenting freely with spatial articulation, the interplay between buildings and existing landscapes, and optical perception. Hadid’s signature style is simultaneously recognized for both its sensuous, explosive qualities and its ability to merge seamlessly within any surroundings.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid studied mathematics at Beirut University before enrolling in London’s radical Association School of Architecture (AA) in 1972. While the fervor of the 1970’s critical upheaval led to a general discrediting of Modernism and a movement calling for the resurrection of classical form, under the direction of Dutch architects Elia Zenghelis and Rem Koolhas, AA continued to run a daring, almost subversive, modernist program. Agreeing with Zenghelis and Koolhas that modernism had not been given its fair theoretical due, Hadid joined the cause, producing designs inspired by the Russian Suprematist painter, Kazemir Malevich, 20th century Western abstraction, and social utopianism. Upon graduation, Hadid became a partner at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, taught at AA with former mentors Koolhaas and Zenghelis, and led her own studio at AA until 1987. Hadid began her own practice in 1979 with the design of an apartment in Eaton Place, London. Her first major work was a winning entry for The Peak Club in Kowloon, Hong Kong in 1983, followed by first place awards for the Kufurstendamm, in Berlin (1986), KMR, Art and Media Centre in Dusseldorf (1989), and Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994). While none of these design plans materialized into actual buildings due to various political, economic and social conflicts surrounding each project, the blueprints for these designs ultimately fostered Hadid’s reputation for being completely novel and daring with her use of space and shape, and for envisioning structures in places where others believed it impossible to build.

Hadid is unique among the living architects of her caliber because only in the last decade has her seminal work been completed. This includes the Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (2003 ) in Cincinnati, Ohio; a Tram Station and Car Park (2001) in Strasbourg, France; the Vitra Fire Station (1993) and the LFone pavilion (1999 ) in Weil am Rhien, Germany; the Bergisel Ski Jump (2002) in Innsbruck, Austria; and the Millennium Dome (1999) in Greenwich, London.

As an architect, Hadid continues to be distinguished by the modernist approach she developed during her formative years at AA. While this engagement has set Hadid at odds with many of her contemporaries, most of her critics and peers admire her unrelenting dedication to modernist exploration. The Pritzker Prize jury chairman, Lord Rothschild, notes, “As a practicing architect, Zaha Hadid has been unswerving in her commitment to modernism. Always inventive, she’s moved away from existing typology, from high tech, and has shifted the geometry of buildings.” Juror Jorge Silvetti, Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, adds, “Zaha Hadid’s buildings are today among the most convincing arguments for the primacy of architecture in the production of space. What she has achieved with her inimitable manipulation of walls, ground planes and roofs, with those transparent, interwoven and fluid spaces, are vivid proof that architecture as a fine art has not run out of steam and is hardly wanting in imagination."

Hadid’s paintings and drawings are another testament to her creativity, serving as a testing field for her design projects. This work is published widely in periodicals and monographs and has been shown in major exhibitions that include a retrospective at the Architectural Association, London (1983), the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1978), the GA Gallery, Tokyo (1985), the Deconstructivist Architecture show at MoMA, New York (1988), the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (1995), and the Venice Architecture Biennale 2002. In addition to her own architectural endeavors, Hadid also remains a strong force in academia, having held visiting professorships around the world at institutions that include Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Many skeptics have voiced concerns that winning the Pritzker, a prize that has been described as the Noble prize of architecture, will be hard on Hadid, who, up until a few years ago, was most known for designing a German fire station. But the record demonstrates that contrary to the tendency of architects to become formulaic in their work as they become more recognized and sought out, Hadid continues to confound the expectations of her discipline, churning out newer and more inventive work with every project. It would be unfair to claim that Zaha Hadid is anything less than a true visionary: her work, which spans barely a decade, has reinvented the architectural language of our time. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable explains, “Zaha Hadid [has] a consistently original and strong personal vision that has changed the way we see and experience space. Hadid’s fragmented geometry and fluid mobility do more than create an abstract, dynamic beauty; this is a body of work that explores and expresses the world we live in.”

Currently, Hadid’s London office is juggling many of the world's most high profile projects. In various stages of development is the new BMW Central factory in Leipzig, Germany; Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany; a National Center of Contemporary Arts in Rome; a high speed train station outside of Naples; Herault Culture Sport Centre in Montpellier, France; and a Guggenheim Museum in Taiwan, for which Hadid was commissioned to design.

And finally, it seems impossible to end an article on Hadid without the slightest mention of her ethnic background, but even harder to find a place to fit it. Born Iraqi, but a British citizen, Hadid has managed to place her cultural identity in the background to her professional achievements, a remarkable feat given the current state of world affairs. Rarely does she mention her heritage in interviews, and when she does, she never appears nostalgic; unlike other artists of diaspora, Hadid refuses to claim her ethnicity as a motivating factor in her work. But, one has to wonder, and rightly so, how a Baghdad upbringing has affected the designs of one of cotemporary architecture’s most prominent voices. A brief glance at Hadid’s CV registers a cross -culturalism that is at once impressive and hard to ignore. At the very least one can say that, like all artists working away from home, Hadid’s work is richer for having crossed the world.