ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS

Zaha Hadid studied architecture at the Architectural Association from 1972 and was awarded the Diploma Prize in 1977. She became a partner of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, taught at the AA with OMA collaborators Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, and later led her own studio at the AA until 1987. Founding partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, she was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and is internationally known for her built, theoretical and academic work. Working with senior office partner Patrik Schumacher, Hadid’s interest is in the rigorous interface between architecture, landscape, and geology as the practice integrates natural topography and human-made systems that lead to experimentation with cutting-edge technologies. The MAXXI: National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome, BMW Central Building in Leipzig and Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg are excellent demonstrations of the practice’s quest for complex, dynamic space. Currently, the practice is working on a multitude of projects including; the Fiera di Milano master-plan and tower, the Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games, High-Speed Train Stations in Naples and Durango, the CMA CGM Head Office tower in Marseille and urban master-plans in Beijing, Bilbao, Istanbul, Singapore and the Middle East. Hadid’s recently completed projects include the Nordpark Railway stations in Innsbruck, Mobile Art for Chanel in Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York, the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion in Spain and the Burnham Pavilion in Chicago. Zaha Hadid has held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois, School of Architecture, Chicago; guest professorships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg; the Knolton School of Architecture, Ohio and the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and Commander of the British Empire, 2002. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria and was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.