Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid remains the most famous female architect of all time. Renowned the world over for her avant-garde approach to architectural projects that reflect modern living, Hadid made abstract drawings and paintings for most of her projects. Her artistic works proposed a new and different worldview, exploring fluid forms that bring to mind the dynamics of contemporary urban living. Her creative process made history while on exhibit at the world’s most prestigious museums including the Solomon Guggenheim in New York, The London Design Museum, Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, and MAXXI in Rome, just to name a few. Her paintings expand the field of architectural exploration, proposing a new and different worldview through abstract exercises, questioning the physical constraints of design, and showing the creative support of her vision as an architect.

Throughout her career, Hadid excelled in creating and communicating pioneering concepts for buildings, urban planning, and design. The New York lithograph, “Chevron South”, is a study by ZAHA HADID DESIGN of Zaha Hadid Architect's first residential tower in New York at 520 West 28th Street. It depicts the dynamic façade of the tower consisting of layered volumes seamlessly connected by chevron shapes.



The Serpentine Sackler Gallery, was designed by Zaha Hadid as two distinct spaces; a conversion of a former 19th gun-powder magazine into a cultural centre, and a restaurant and café extension. Situated in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, the undulating tensile roof-structure is an immediately iconic landmark, and the lithography was commissioned to commemorate the opening of the gallery spaces in 2013. The Serpentine Sackler Gallery – Perspective Sketch, is an edition that has been translated from an original painting, and emphasises the role of the sketch, and of this medium, within Zaha Hadid’s design process. 

Born in Baghdad in 1950, Zaha Hadid studied mathematics at Beirut University before enrolling in London's radical Association School of Architecture (AA) in 1972. She rose to fame through hard work in the male dominated world of Architecture while pushing the boundaries of Architecture, Design and Art.

Hadid began her own practice in 1979 with the design of an apartment in Eaton Place, London. Her first major work was a winning entry for The Peak Club in Kowloon, Hong Kong in 1983, followed by first place awards for the Kufurstendamm, in Berlin (1986), KMR, Art and Media Centre in Dusseldorf (1989), and Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994). She was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2004 – the first woman to earn this prestigious honor. She was also made a Dame by Queen Elisabeth II for her services to Architecture. Zaha Hadid passed away on the 31st of March 2016, and her legacy endures within the DNA of the design studio she created.