Have you Googled Zaha Hadid?

6 years ago

2 minutes

If you landed on Google yesterday, you would have seen their commemoration of the late and very much renowned architect, Zaha Hadid.

We’ve spoken about Hadid’s work here before. A true pioneer, she died unexpectedly last year, with a number of unfinished projects including many apartment buildings left to be completed by her international practice.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid moved to London to study architecture, later establishing her own practice there in 1979. At the time she was one of only a handful of females in what is, even today, a male dominated area. And she went on to radically reshape what modern architecture had the potential to achieve.

Let’s take a look at just some of Hadid’s work to see why it was so important to the world of architecture – and why those living in any of her residential apartment buildings can truly claim to have an iconic address.

1. The Heyday Aliyev Centre, Azerbaijan

If there’s one word to summarise most of Hadid’s buildings, it would be ‘curvy’. Almost all of her prominent projects feature curvy, organic elements and soft edges. This resulted in many of her buildings having a ‘neofuturistic’ character, like tithes one, for which Hadid won the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year Award.

2. Wangjing SOHO, Beijing

Like huge, striated pebbles poking out of the beach – or perhaps shark fins emerging from the water – this building showcases more of Hadid’s affinity for curved forms. Completed in 2014 it contains a mix of retail spaces and offices.

3. Opus Tower, Dubai

A building with a hole in it, this Dubai tower has a free -orm void that leaves the structure looking like a half-melted ice cube. Located across from Dubai Canal, the building will feature office space, a hotel and 60 apartments. Due to the irregular shape of the building, it contains a vast number of different sized spaces – for example, the hotel features 93 rooms, and 68 of them are completely different layouts.

4. Riverside Museum, Glasgow

Winner of the European Museum of the Year Award in 2013, this striking building of steel and glass almost looks like a giant cardiograph and houses the Glasgow Museum of Transport’s collection of cars, trains and other vehicles in this former shipyard location.

5. 520 West 28th Street, New York

Featured in one of our earlier articles, this futuristic apartment building will doubtless be popping up in sci-fi movies sometime soon. Its organic metal facade and curved glazing offer a striking vision of the future of city living, juxtaposed beside the urban greenery of New York’s elevated linear park, The High Line.