Iranian-born Zaha Hadid is one of the most acclaimed architects of this century, a woman who shot to international acclaim with a stratospheric rise that began shortly after leaving London’s Architectural Association and working alongside her previous teacher, AMO’s Rem Koolhaas. Her deconstructivist style was a revolution in large scale architecture in terms of interior layout, the use of spatial parameters and the pure ambition of reaching for the sky, with projects that hold “a huge robustness with infinite refinement”.
Inspired by Russian Avantgarde artists such as Vladimir Malevich, Zaha has been responsible for works of grand scale and abstract form across the world, including some of her earliest work being the Vitra fire station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany, to Rome’s Contemporary Art Centre, and more recently the travelling Chanel Mobile Art Container. Rem Koolhaas calls her work:
“Commanding yet graceful, the buildings all harbour huge power and huge delicacy. The buildings are like Zaha, full of amplitude and generosity.”
For A#2, Joseph Giovanni has written about this mistress of form on the eve of her 2004 Pritzker Prize win, the highest accolade in the architectural field. He speaks of her enigmatic personality that exists on as large a scale as her buildings, and her dynamic creativity that delivers a constant in her aesthetic yet never repeats on itself. His words are accompanied by Hélène Binet’s specialist architectural photography of Zaha’s projects. Not only concerned with architecture, the piece details Zaha’s interest in fashion, designing her own from an early age in Baghdad. On Yohji Yamamoto, for whom she has a great fondness, Zaha Hadid says:
“Sometimes they’re deconstructed and sometimes more tailored, and he often makes use of material folding. But the cuts are always fabulous, and he is an expert in the transformation of a piece laying flat to when it’s worn.”
One design prophet speaking of another with reverence and respect: a beautiful exchange.
