Zaha Hadid

Synopsized mainly from an article by Salah Soliman from Munich from: Link
Synopsis and additions by Editor Dhia Younis

The architect of Iraqi origin, Zaha Hadid in 2004 won the highly prestigious architectural engineering award, 'The Pritzker Architecture Prize'. It is equated with an 'Architectural Nobel Prize' for architects.

She was born in Baghdad Iraq in 1950, the daughter of a renowned Iraqi politician and economist, Mohamed Hadid. She completed her secondary school education in Baghdad and went to the American University in Beirut and majored in mathematics. Then she went to Britain in 1972 to study architecture and graduated in 1977. After working for a short period with Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, she opened her own practice in London in 1980. Said practice now has 250 employees. Link. Link.

Parallel with her private practice, Hadid has continued to be involved in academics, holding chairs and guest professorships at Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Visual Arts in Hamburg and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Prominent accomplishments: the architectural design for the BMW main offices in Leipzig, the Vitra Fire Station (1993), Weil am Rhein, Germany, the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome (1999) Greenwich, UK, a ski jump (2002) in Innsbruck, Austria, the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (2003) in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Olympic swimming pool in London for the 2012 games.

Her achievements have made her a famous figure and among other things she has been designated the 68th most powerful woman in the world as per Forbes Magazine for the year 2007. In the United Kingdom she has been considered to be the third most famous and rich woman. There is a book focusing on her work (Zaha Hadid Bauten Projekte Design) published in Germany and contains more than 600 of her designs. (Editor’s opinion – Iraq is very proud of this accomplished academician.)

Zaha Hadid

On Amazon.com there are more than 30 (thirty) books either written about her or by her Link. That isn't even mentioning books referencing her or her works.