Architect Zaha Hadid, whose design style was instantly recognisable, with buildings including the London Olympic Aquatic Centre, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and MAXXI, Rome, has died.
Other buildings designed by her office include The Peak in Hong Kong (1983), the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (1986), the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994), the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku (2013) and the Guangzhou Opera House in China (2010).
Iraqi-born, London-based, she was made a dame in 2012. This year she was the first woman to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal and the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling Prize. Hadid’s other awards included the Republic of France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale and in 2012.
She held various academic roles including the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois, School of Architecture. Hadid also taught studios at Columbia University, Yale University and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Hadid died of a heart attack on Thursday in a Miami hospital, where she was being treated for bronchitis.
31 March 2016.
