Extinguished Star...
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March 31, 2016 the world-renowned architect Dame Zaha Hadid, suddenly died in Miami aged 65. The British designer had a heart attack on Thursday in a Miami hospital, where she was being treated for bronchitis.
Hadid’s buildings have been commissioned around the world and she was the first woman to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) gold medal.
Hadid's architecture is distinct in peculiar design, extraordinary originality and identity. It is featured by a curvilinear perspective, the abundance of broken lines and wave curves, stunning dynamics of forms.
Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdadin 1950.She became a revolutionary force in British architecture even though she struggled to win commissions in the UK for many years.
She studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before launching her architectural career in London at the Architectural Association.
By 1979, she had established her own practice in London – Zaha Hadid Architects – and gained a reputation across the world for groundbreaking theoretical works including the Peak in Hong Kong (1983), Kurfürstendamm 70 in Berlin (1986) and the Cardiff Bay opera house in Wales (1994).
The first major build commission that earned her international recognition was the Vitra fire station in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1993), but her scheme to build the Cardiff opera house was scrapped in the 1990s and she did not produce a major building in the UK until the Riverside museum of transport in Glasgow was completed in 2011.
Other notable projects included the Maxxi: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome (2009), the London aquatics centre for the 2012 Olympic Games (2011), the Heydar Aliyev centre in Baku (2013) and a stadium for the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar.
Buildings such as the Rosenthal Centre of Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2003) and the Guangzhou opera house in China (2010) were also hailed as architecture that transformed ideas of the future. Other designs include the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in Kensington Gardens, west London, and the BMW factory in Leipzig, one of her first designs to be built.
She became the first female recipient of the Pritzker architecture prize in 2004 and twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling prize. Other awards included the Republic of France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Japan’s Praemium Imperiale.
Hadid was recently awarded the RIBA’s 2016 royal gold medal. She was the first woman to be awarded the honour in her own right for her such an extraordinary contribution to architecture.
The death of Zaha Hadid - an irreparable loss for the world of architecture.Our sincere condolence to her family and colleagues, her death is universally mourned. Cherished memory.