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Architect Zaha Hadid Has Died at 65

by Rick Anderson

The Pritzker Prize –winning Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid —arguably the most famous female architect of her time—died this morning in Miami. According to the architect's firm, Hadid was being treated for bronchitis in a hospital when she suffered a sudden heart attack. She was 65.

Swooping silhouettes and sharp angles have defined Hadid’s work across more than three decades, accenting contemporary skylines with forms that seem imported from a far-off future. The fluid curve of her Heydar Aliyev Center (2013)—a performance venue in Baku, Azerbaijan—resembles a sheath of graph paper caught by the wind. The perforated-concrete winged roof of the London Aquatics Center (2011), designed for the 2012 Summer Olympics, allows natural light to speckle the pool inside. The gilded gypsum interior of her Guangzhou Opera House (2010) in China shimmers with thousands of tiny lights, evoking the night sky. And by the end of the year the architect’s first residential building in New York City, will open along West Chelsea’s High Line.

Such distinguished structures never left Hadid short on awards—from the Pritzker Prize in 2004 to the U.K.’s RIBA Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011 and Royal Gold Medal in 2016. “Only rarely does an architect emerge with a philosophy and approach to the art form that influences the direction of the entire field,” architect Bill Lacy, the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, said when she received the coveted award. “Such an architect is Zaha Hadid who has patiently created and refined a vocabulary that sets new boundaries for the art of architecture.”

Beyond pushing boundaries with her futuristic buildings, Hadid made strides for women in architecture, a group that remains underrepresented in the field: “As a woman in architecture, you’re always an outsider,” she told the Financial Times in 2015. “It’s okay, I like being on the edge.”

Click here to look back at Hadid’s most stunning structures.

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