Hadid, Zaha

A British architect, designer, painter and teacher of Iraqi descent, Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad. Hadid draws on the Suprematist ideas of Kazimir Malevich; her work, labeled "deconstructivist," finds shape in the clash between fragmentary superimposed geometric forms. Her award-winning designs, often rendered as oil paintings, are widely exhibited.

From the description of Architectural drawings (photographs), 1979-1987. (Getty Research Institute). WorldCat record id: 80149431

Biographical/Historical Note

Zaha Hadid is a leading architect, currently practicing in London, whose work encompasses urban planning, interior design, and product and furniture design. She was born in Iraq in 1950 and received her degree in mathematics at the American University in Beirut. From 1972 to 1977, Hadid attended the Architectural Association in London where she encountered the work of the architects Elias Zenghelis and Rem Koolhaas. After completing her studies, Hadid joined the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) as a partner and worked on the Dutch House of Parliament Extension in the Hague. She established her own practice in London in 1979 and soon after won the Peak International Design Competition, Hong Kong, in 1983. This award was the first of Hadid's many international exhibitions, awards and commissions. Since 1986, Hadid has intermittently taught architectural design at the Architectural Association, London; the Graduate School of Design, Harvard; and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University. Hadid is known and admired as much for her extraordinary abstract, deconstructionist architectural drawings as for her built designs, which, though few, include the fire station in Vitra Germany and the IBA housing block in Berlin.

From the guide to the Zaha Hadid drawings for "The Great Utopia" exhibition, 1992, (Getty Research Institute)