The Architecture of Zaha Hadid

All people owe to architecture which plays racy part in their life. Architecture is designing structures and outdoor spaces according to some main principles. Architecture provides settings for certain activities; remind people of what these activities are; signify power, status or privacy. Rapoport (1979, p. 17) wrote about architecture “Architecture differentiates between here and there; men and woman; front and back; private and public; sacred and profane and habitable and inhabitable.” The main function of architecture is to make certain that the parts of a system work together to meet the necessary needs of users. Architect has a vital role in architecture nowadays, since he/she is the main factor that makes architecture good or successful. The architect is the one who design and plan the structure of buildings. Frank Gehry, Hassan Fathy, Ignazio Gardella, Don Erickson and Frank Lloyd Wright are five of thousands of most famous architects of the world. Who is the most famous architect in Iraq in the 20th century? Zaha Hadid is the most famous Iraqi architect in the 20th century. According to Zaha Hadid , an examining of the investigate causes of her philosophy and life relating to architecture to reveal how they influenced the processes of her design projects and work.

Zaha Hadid is a British Iraqi architect. She was born in 31 October 1950 in Bagdad, Iraq. She grew in a family, which was showing interest in architecture. Her parents took her to architectural exhibitions, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s exhibition at the Opera House in Bagdad. Due to the impact of her parents, Zaha became interested in architecture. She was reflecting deeply on the world around her when she was a child. She was studying mathematics; she figured a strong relationship between mathematics and architecture. Zaha’s parents encouraged her to study architecture. Oscar Niemeyer encouraged her too to complete her education in architecture. When she was asked about the reason of making her architect, Hadid (2008, p. 2) answered “I became interested in architecture when, I remember vaguely; my parents took me to a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition at the Opera House in Baghdad. I was around six years old and I remember seeing models and things. I think both my parents were interested in architecture in an indirect way.” She continued by saying “As a child I also travelled with my family on a small boat to visit some of the villages within the marshes of southern Iraq, and the landscape was so beautiful. There was this amazing flow between the sand and the water and the wildlife that extended to incorporate the buildings and the people. What I am trying to do is capture that kind of seamlessness and flow in an urban context for the contemporary city and its users.”

“Zaha M. Hadid: Biography” (2001) discussed Zaha Hadid’s biography. Zaha Hadid studied mathematics in the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. After getting her degree in mathematics, she went to London to study Architecture in a college of Architecture there. She worked as a partner with her teachers in an office of architecture when she got a degree in architecture. Architect Peter Rice encouraged Zaha Hadid in the beginning of her career life, when she was facing difficulties of starting her own business. She started her own office in London in 1980. Also she worked as a teacher in many associations in London and other countries all over the world. Some good examples of these universities are; Harvard University, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, the Knowlton School of Architecture, the Ohio State University, Columbia University, New York, the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria, the Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut. Zaha received many international awards and she was the first women who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Zaha has done many popular projects all over the world. Good examples of her works are; London aquatics center, regium waterfront, civil courts for Madrid, etc. Talking briefly about these projects; London aquatics center located in London. It has a waved roof, which makes this building special. Regium waterfront is a museum located in Italy. She has also designed residential buildings. The dancing towers in Dubai are a good example of this type of building.

Zaha Hadid has created her own path in architecture by using several appearances of things relative to one another as determined by their distance from the viewer to show the state of extreme confusion and disorder of the modern life. In “Zaha Hadid architecture and design” (2007) described Zaha Hadid’s philosophy. Zaha Hadid’s strength is her curse and her blessing. A curse because strong character can make clients run for the hills. A curse because stiff character can make clients run for the hills. Hadid had her own ideas on architecture to nurture and it was a long incubation. She created her own company neo-modernist architecture. Zaha Hadid’s philosophy in architecture takes after accommodating, designing a landscape which can be called baroque modernism. Zaha Hadid damages both the classically formal, rule bound modernism of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier and the old rules of space walls, ceilings, front and back, right angles. She then reassembles them as what she calls “a new fluid, kind of spatiality” of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry, designed to embody the chaotic fluidity of modern life. She reassembles them as a new fluid, kind of spatiality of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry, designed to embody the chaotic fluidity of modern life. Her architecture denies its own solidness. She defines the solid apparatus to make people comprehend place. She speaks about theory and she wears her cultural identity.