Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid DBE RA (Arabic: زها حديد Zahā Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi and British architect, artist and designer, recognised as a key figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries.

In search of an alternative system to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building".

[16] He was the co-founder of the National Democratic Party in Iraq[16] and served as minister of finance after the overthrow of the monarch after the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état for the government of General Abd al-Karim Qasim.

But the project demonstrated Hadid's ability to use architectural forms to create interior drama, including its central element, a 30-metre long black stairway that passes between massive curving and angular concrete walls.

[33] Situated along the Spittelauer Lände, the series of buildings interact with and cross over the railway viaduct by Viennese Modernist architect Otto Wagner, a protected structure.

The museum structure resembles an enormous ship, with sloping walls and asymmetric scatterings of windows, and the interior, with its angular columns and exposed steel roof framework, gives the illusion of being inside a working vessel or laboratory.

"[42] Between 1997 and 2010, Hadid ventured into the engineers' domain of bridge construction, a field also occupied by other top architects including Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava.

[49] Edwin Heathcote, writing for the Financial Times, noted Hadid's concentration on how her design could transform the urban landscape of Guangzhou, as the building rose as the centre of the new business area.

"[50] Nicolai Ourousoff, architecture critic of the New York Times, wrote that "stepping into the main hall is like entering the soft insides of an oyster...The concave ceiling is pierced by thousands of little lights—it looks like you're sitting under the dome of a clear night sky."

Rowan Moore of The Guardian of London wrote: "Obviously the space is about movement...Outside it is, typologically, a supermarket, being a big thing in a parking lot that is seeking to attract you in...It has enigma and majesty, but not friendliness.

The roof, made of steel and aluminium and covered with wood on the inside, rests on just three supports; it is in the form of a parabolic arch that dips in the centre, with the two pools at either end.

Hadid wrote that "its fluid form emerges from the folds of the natural topography of the landscape and envelops the different functions of the centre", though the building when completed was largely surrounded by Soviet-era apartment blocks.

Containing 28,000 square metres of space, its distinctive Hadid features include walls sloping at 35 degrees and massive black volume cantilevered at an angle over the plaza in front of the building.

Early designs experimented with a facade made of reinforced plastic, textiles or aluminium, but Hadid finally settled upon metal panels with multiple layers.

The institute aims to harness, develop and initiate research of the Arab world to enhance and broaden debate on public policy and international relations.

[71][72] The statement issued by her London-based design studio announcing her death read, "Zaha Hadid was widely regarded to be the greatest female architect in the world today".

[87] The Opus designed by Zaha Hadid is a mixed-use 20 storey tower, housing residences, offices, a mix of restaurants, retail spaces and a five-star hotel.

[92] The "Masaryčka Connects" project is a significant urban regeneration effort in the centre of Prague, transforming the city's first railway station, operational since 1845, into a modern transport hub.

Reflective of Hadid's iconic style, the building integrates fluid forms and dynamic structures, intended to harmonize with Prague's existing architectural heritage while adding a modern element to the cityscape.

[102][103] Hadid also undertook some high-profile interior work, including the Mind 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, amongst many other designs.

In 2007, Hadid designed Dune Formations for David Gill Gallery and the Moon System Sofa for leading Italian furniture manufacturer B&B Italia.

[108] In 2013, Hadid designed Liquid Glacial for David Gill Gallery which comprises a series of tables resembling ice-formations made from clear and coloured acrylic.

In 2016 the gallery launched Zaha's final collection of furniture entitled UltraStellar[110] ZHD now operates under the lead of Co-directors Woody Yao and Maha Kutay who ensure consistency with the Founder's ethos by continuing to coherently translate and apply Hadid's methodological approach to any new design.

[114] Following her death in March 2016, Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times wrote: "her soaring structures left a mark on skylines and imaginations and in the process re-shaped architecture for the modern age...Her buildings elevated uncertainty to an art, conveyed in the odd way of one entered and moved through these buildings and in the questions that her structures raised about how they were supported ... Hadid embodied, in its profligacy and promise, the era of so-called starchitects who roamed the planet in pursuit of their own creative genius, offering miracles, occasionally delivering.

"[132] These would be large paintings that would aspire towards her design process and "rational nature of her construction, the drawings pulled the parts and pieces apart, exploding its site and programme.

"[132] When she was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the jury chairman, Lord Rothschild, commented: "At the same time as her theoretical and academic work, as a practising architect, Zaha Hadid has been unswerving in her commitment to modernism.

"[42] The Design Museum described her work in 2016 as having "the highly expressive, sweeping fluid forms of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry that evoke the chaos and flux of modern life".

[139] In 2006, she was honoured with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

[145] She won the Stirling Prize, the UK's most prestigious award for architecture, two years running: in 2010, for one of her most celebrated works, the MAXXI in Rome,[146] and in 2011 for the Evelyn Grace Academy, a Z‑shaped school in Brixton, London.

[176] As the estimated cost of the construction mounted, however, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced in July 2015 that Hadid's design was scrapped in favour of a new bidding process to seek a less expensive alternative.