CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Stardom & Notable Awards •
Zaha Hadid has won countless awards throughout her career, some of which included the European
Union
Prize
for
Contemporary
Architecture
(2003),
the
Japan
Art
Association’s Praemium Imperiale Prize for Architecture (2009), the Glamour Architect for the Architect-in-chief (2012), the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (2016), and many more (John Zukowsky, 2021). •
In 2004, Zara Hadid became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. "Without ever building, Zaha Hadid would have radically expanded architecture's repertoire of spatial articulation. Now that the implementation in complex buildings is happening, the power of her innovation is fully revealed.“, said Pritzker juror, Rolf Fehlbaum (NPR, 2004).
•
Zara Hadid received the Structural Steel Design Award in 2010 for her eye-catching dynamic and curvaceous roof structure of the London Aquatics Centre. According to the judges, they deemed the legacy roof of the London Aquatics Centre to be a “heroic engineering achievement”, and its “necessarily complex structure delivers the form and shape at the heart of what will become the emblematic and beautiful icon of the London 2012 Olympics” (Kelly Minner, 2011).
•
In 2010, Zaha Hadid was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize for the MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, as she managed to captivate the juror with the uplifting and cavernous spaces she designed (archimagazine, 2010). Moreover, Zaha Hadid won a second Stirling Prize in 2011, as she was awarded £20,000 for her sleek structural design for the Evelyn Grace Academy in London (Kelly Minner, 2011).
•
In 2014, Zaha Hadid became the first woman that won the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year award, as she impressed the juror with her complexed and fluid design for the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku (BBC News, 2016).
Figure 4 Zaha Hadid’s stardom and notable awards photomontage, 2022 photomontage by Brianna Chan
PAGE 11
