Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid – Iraqi-British architect

Sketch of the new Al Wakrah stadium designed by architect Zaha Hadid, Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the first Arab country to host the event.

Indeed, there has been much buzz about the open-lipped stadium since Hadid’s firm released images of it last week. While the artist has said the curves enveloping the stadium’s open roof are meant to evoke the sails of a traditional Qatar fishing boat, Buzzfeed was quick to note the design’s likeness to lady bits, as was The Guardian, which coined it the “accidental vagina building.” The Wire referred to it as “an enormous, illuminated vagina” and, in response to Hadid’s huffy remarks to Time, Jezebel’s Callie Beusman wrote that she couldn’t comprehend “how you could look at this stadium and think anything but ‘giant vagina.’

As  the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize for Architecture, Zaha Hadid is known for her innovative architectural designs.  Born in  Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, Hadid’s  studied mathematics at the American  University of Beruit and began her architectural studies at the Architectural Association of London in 1972, graduating in 1977.  Only two years after graduation, Hadid set out  to establish her own design firm, Zaha Hadid Architects. From that time, Hadid has gone on to design many projects in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia that have international recognition.

She has also undertaken some high-profile interior work, including the Mind Zone and Feet zone at the Millennium Dome in London as well as creating fluid furniture installations within the Georgian surroundings of Home House private members club in Marylebone, and the Z.CAR hydrogen-powered, three-wheeled automobile. In 2009 she worked with the clothing brand Lacoste, to create a new, high fashion, and advanced boot.^[10] In the same year, she also collaborated with the brassware manufacturer Triflow Concepts^[11] to produce two new designs in her signature parametric architectural style.

Dame Zaha Hadid has taught at prestigious universities around the world, including at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was the Kenzo Tange Professorship and the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago‘s School of Architecture. She also served as guest professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg), the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture. From the year 2000 on Dame Zaha Hadid is a guest professor at The University of Applied Arts – Vienna, in the Zaha Hadid Master Class Vertical-Studio.

She was named an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

credits: wikipedia.com, thedailybeast.com, http://wickedurbanity.wordpress.com