Renowned Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, whose fluid, futuristic designs were used in buildings across the world to widespread acclaim, passed away of a heart attack in Miami on Thursday, March 31.
Hadid, whose projects included the MAXXI museum in Rome, the London Aquatics Centre used in the 2012 summer Olympics and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan, died at the age of 65, reported Reuters.
“She had contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital,” her company Zaha Hadid Architects said in a statement.
Born in Baghdad, she went to boarding schools in England and Switzerland before studying mathematics at the American University of Beirut. She turned to architecture in London in the 1970s, establishing her own practice in 1979.
Few of her geometrically complex designs in the 1980s and 1990s were realized, but she refused to compromise.
Her company’s design was chosen for the 2020 Tokyo summer Olympic stadium but was scrapped due to ballooning costs.
Hadid also designed the al Wakrah stadium, currently under construction in Qatar for the 2022 soccer World Cup.
In 2004 she became the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the highest honor in the field and one of many honors bestowed on her across the world.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said she had served the world with her creativity. “With her loss the whole world has lost one of the great energies that served society,” he said in a statement.
Hadid was made a Dame by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 2012 and was recently awarded the 2016 Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal, the first woman to receive the honor in her own right.
