How Zaha Hadid, whom no one believed, became “the Mozart” of architecture

On October 31, 1950, one of the most brilliant architects of our time, Zaha Hadid, was born. Her name means “bright” in Arabic. And in 2019 she would have turned 68. Zaha refused to see the world through the “standard” lens, and her projects were often considered “too crazy” or “unrealizable”. For this reason, her ideas were rejected for 17 years, but even so, Hadid still managed to become the woman who would change the world of architecture.

We, from awesome.club, we have always been fascinated by the futuristic shapes and curves of this architect’s grand buildings, many of which are still being built, even after her death. We hope her story can inspire and encourage everyone to follow their dreams no matter how unrealistic they may seem.

Zaha was born into a fairly wealthy Iraqi family, so don’t expect to read here about someone “who had a difficult childhood”. By the way, the famous models, Gigi and Bella Hadid, are not related in any way to Zaha’s family, despite the fact that the girls’ father is also involved in construction.

She first wanted to become a mathematician and even studied math at the American University of Beirut. At a certain point, however, she realized that her love was not in numbers, but in the different shapes and configurations that numbers could take. Therefore, she shifted her focus to Architecture.

Zaha then moved to London, where she met the famous Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. She immediately stood out for her talent as a student, and Rem became her mentor.

Professor said Zaha was like a “planet rotating in its own orbit”🇧🇷 After graduating from university, Koolhaas invited Zaha to work in his office in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. After 3 years of working together, Hadid decided that she was ready to start her own company and therefore decided to move back to London.

After diving headlong into the world of architecture, Hadid began to receive many projects, and also a lot of criticism along the way. Despite the creativity and sea of ​​ideas she had, until the early 1990’s no building was built according to his sketches.

Zaha’s projects even won important international competitions, but all her innovative ideas never got off the ground. All this because the sketches were considered “too fictional” and “unrealizable”. The architect then continued to work in her office, hoping that one day there would be some progress in the world of architecture.

In 1982, it seemed that luck had begun to smile on the architect: a project for a sports club on top of a mountain in Hong Kong was approved. A year later, however, the client canceled the construction, and from the project, only the blueprint remained.

Zaha decided open your own office with the money he had won in competitions, which became a veritable empire 30 years later. She never gave up and insisted on continuing to draw her craziest and most fascinating ideas.

Left — IBA residential building, right — fire station in Vitra.

In 1993, Hadid’s first project was a small fire station. for the furniture company Vitra, which became a true work of art. For those times, it was a real innovation, which really impressed with its unusual shape. The fire station in Vitra is a composition of concrete planes that bend so that they appear to be frozen in the middle of a bizarre dance.

In addition, in the same year, another building designed and signed by Zaha was built, the IBA residential building🇧🇷 Local feminists helped bring the project to fruition, as they were fighting for an increased presence of women in modern German architecture.

Hadid was a huge fan of the work of Kazimir Malevich, a Russian abstract painter who was the mentor of a movement known as Suprematism, which was based on geometric shapes and abstract concepts. Zaha named his thesis, a project for a hotel on the Hungerford Bridge over the River Thames (London), “Malevich’s Tecktonik”, in honor of the painter.

Furthermore, Hadid’s early work showed clear intersections with Russian constructivism. For example, if we compare his famous fire station in Vitra with the works of the constructivists, it is easy to notice the similarities.

O “Residencial Casa Atlântica” was Zaha’s first project in South America, which would be built in Copacabana. This luxury condominium began to be designed in 2013, but unfortunately it was abandoned in 2018 due to the city hall delay in releasing licenses for the works.

Over the years, Hadid favored styles avant-garde and futuristic.

According to Zaha, the real interest in her work came after her participation in the construction of the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati. In addition to being the first museum in the United States to be designed by a woman, Hadid’s style was very evident: walls overlapping each other, pointed ends and irregular shapes.

But Hadid’s real triumph was in 2004, when she won the Pritzker Prize for his project at the Water Sports Center (Water Sports Center) in London, which is considered as an “Oscar” for the world of architecture. Zaha was the first woman to receive this award.

Hadid has since become one of the most modern and sought after architects in the world. This, however, has also given rise to much criticism. many said that she was so focused on expressing her creativity that she forgot about the functionality of the buildings.

For example, after the construction of its extraordinary Water Sports Center, some spectators in the highest rows complained that couldn’t see clearly into the arena pools because of the building’s ornate roof🇧🇷

Another example is the Museum of Contemporary Art MAXXI In Rome. Experts considered it unsuitable for displaying artwork🇧🇷 The fact is that the building is a long, one-story labyrinth, and it’s not clear which items could fit into the environment. In addition, the museum turned out to be so huge that even large paintings were difficult to find. With that, the MAXXI building itself became a monument in its own right.

Despite the disagreements, the fact is that Hadid’s designs left no room for indifference, and her signature is one of the most recognized in the world.

The newspaper The Guardian nicknamed Zaha “queen of curves” and the one that “deconstructed architectural geometry”. Hadid really spent her whole life breaking stereotypes and canons, thus distancing herself from the commonplace. She also rejected traditional geometry and used a distortion perspectivewhich is when the curves came to the fore.

Zaha almost always got what she wanted and didn’t let anyone doubt her work. Apparently, that’s why his incredible projects, often bordering on the impossible, managed to be realized.

By the way, Zaha Hadid’s office was one of the first to switch to an approach parametric of design. This approach allowed processing huge amounts of data, based on which it was possible to form a very complex building structure. In addition, the plastic composite it was often used to realize the architect’s most “outlandish” formats and projects.

In general, Hadid’s approach can be considered artistic. She rejected functionalism and rationalism, relying more on the conception of the idea.

In the beginning and middle of the year 2000, Zaha began to materialize, in fact, his most ambitious ideas. Everyone already knew the architect’s unique style, and imitators began to appear. Her buildings are not just elements occupying space, but true works of art, which can be admired for hours. We can compare their constructions to spaceshipsbecause they are so eccentric to the human eye.

It seems that each subsequent project was grander than the last. It is evident, therefore, that his ideas began to become more valuable. For example, the construction of the Design Center Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul and the famous Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku cost in the millions of dollars.

At the same time, the world was going through an economic crisis in 2008 and, therefore, many companies and entrepreneurs sought to save money. Afterwards, Zaha was also criticized for the inefficient use of space in their projects. No negative comments were able to stop the architect’s creative process or reduce the demand for her work. In China and countries with oil reserves in the Middle East, the economy was still good, and there they could afford to build the most expensive buildings.

It was during this time that Hadid’s projects such as the 40-storey hotel in Macau, the opera house in Guangzhou, the polytechnic university in Hong Kong and the Galaxy SOHO complex in Beijing emerged.

Unfortunately, the last years of Zaha Hadid’s life were marked by very unpleasant incidents in some countries. For example, several workers died during construction of the stadium in Qatar. The well-known name of the architect was a trigger for journalists to divulge this news in the media, which had an evidently negative bias in her career. The design of the building itself was not dangerous for people coming to or working in the stadium.

Many critics found the shape of the Qatar stadium too extravagant. and even provocative: some thought the building looked like female genitalia from above. The author herself was indignant at this association, calling it “ridiculous”, and clarified that she had been inspired by the traditional Arab boat. dhow🇧🇷

Another problem happened during the works of the Olympic stadium in Tokyo. The project was considered very expensive: about 2 billion USD. The Japanese press compared the stadium to a sea turtle, saying it would “drag” Japan…