A Breakthrough Moment
Vitra Fire Station, Germany, 1993
Early on, Ms. Hadid earned a reputation for her audacious plans — even though her designs went unbuilt for many years.
Her first major completed work was this fire station on the campus of the furniture manufacturer Vitra in Weil am Rhein, Germany.
Credit Mike Simons/Getty Images
A Major Talent
Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003
The former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, one of Ms. Hadid’s great champions, wrote of this contemporary art museum in Cincinnati in 2003:
Might as well blurt it out: The Rosenthal Center is the most important American building to be completed since the end of the Cold War.
The acclaim continued to build. Ms. Hadid won the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the first woman to receive her profession’s highest honor.
The towering lobby inside Maxxi. Credit Max Rossi/Reuters
Radical, With Range
Maxxi Art Museum, Rome, 2009
Some Romans may have wondered whether a building by Ms. Hadid would overwhelm a placid neighborhood full of apartment buildings.
But Ms. Hadid’s design for this contemporary-art museum drew high praise. The former Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote, “Its sensual lines seem to draw the energy of the city right up into its belly, making everything around it look timid.”
Part of Maxxi's exterior, with a reflection of its surroundings. Credit Giulio Piscitelli for The New York Times
Credit Virgile Simon Bertrand
In Demand
Guangzhou Opera House, China, 2010
In the last decade, Ms. Hadid’s output grew at a furious pace, with scores of projects around the world.
In a review of this building in China’s third-largest city, Nicolai Ouroussoff got at some of the complexities of Ms. Hadid’s highly productive recent years:
Because this is China, a country that is still undergoing cultural growing pains and whose architectural monuments are mostly being built by unskilled migrant labor, the opera’s construction was racked with problems and the quality of some of it is abysmal. Still, if you’re an architecture lover willing to find your way to the building, you probably won’t care much.
Starchitect Status
London Aquatics Center, 2011
In designing this complex for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Ms. Hadid said she drew inspiration from “the fluid geometry of water in motion.” Since then, the center has been embraced by locals as part of the sprawling Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, near Westfield Stratford City.
Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Heydar Aliyev Center, Azerbaijan, 2013
Every roof and ceiling panel is different in this expansive cultural center in Baku, Azerbaijan, Ms. Hadid said.
The commission was part of the government’s grand expansion plan to turn Azerbaijan into a cultural destination. Ms. Hadid’s vision and expansive use of space drew praise, but the project, named for an authoritarian former leader of the country, also drew the ire of human rights activists.
The oak-paneled auditorium inside the Aliyev Center. Credit Helene Binet
Zaha Hadid Architects
Unfinished Legacy
Al Wakrah Stadium, Qatar, in progress
Ms. Hadid was also criticized in some quarters for working in Qatar, where human rights groups raised serious questions about the treatment of migrant workers. Speaking to The Guardian, Ms. Hadid said it was the responsibility of the Qatari government to ensure the workers’ safety.
At her death, she and her firm, with hundreds of employees, had dozens of projects in progress, including an Iraqi Parliament building in Baghdad, where she was born, and her first residential building in New York.
