The Deconstructivist

Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid produced wildly futuristic designs that pushed back the boundaries of what was impossible in architecture.

- Natalie Westernoff

Zaha Hadid needs no real introduction. One of the world’s most lauded architects, she was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, the Stirling Prize, and the Royal Gold Medal, and by the time of her death in 2016 had become a household name.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid didn’t believe in straight lines or rectangular forms. She created wildly futuristic designs that grabbed your attention, held it, and forced you to re-evaluate the very nature of architecture.

“Zaha liberated herself and architecture from regular geometry and pre-established orders in architectural design,” says Nabyl Chenaf, dean of the School of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University in Dubai. “Pre-established orders that were mainly dictated by technology or the absence of technology capable of producing unconventional form.

“Some called her the ‘queen of the curve’, the more technical ones would qualify her design as deconstructivist, and others would simply hesitate between sculpture and architecture. But all agree that she managed to move design out of its comfort zone, pushing creativity further and further every time she designed a new building.”

Hadid’s ambition was to create fluid space. An ambition that increasingly relied on computers and algorithms to free her from the constraints of gravity. She also sought to reinterpret the spaces we occupy. “Architecture does not follow fashion, political or economic cycles – it follows the inherent logic of cycles of innovation generated by so-cial and technological developments – and buildings must evolve with new patterns of life to meet the needs of its users,” Hadid told Forbes in 2015.