Iraqi-born designer and architect Zaha Hadid studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, forming a close working relationship with her tutor, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, with whom she worked during the 1970s. In 1980, she opened her own practice in London.

There is no doubt that Zaha Hadid has a reputation for her remarkable design and architecture, along with her extraordinary character and temperament. His lively imagination began at the age of 11, and now transcends to his striking design of furniture and objects and particularly his architectural design.

His strong and often determined determination, allowing little compromise, has resulted in some of his best works going unbuilt. (The Cardiff Bay Opera House was spectacularly lost.) Yet this same uncompromising spirit has also made Hadid arguably the world’s most successful designer and architect. Immortalized as the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in her 26-year history, Hadid, or “the diva,” as her critics call her, has succeeded in a field traditionally dominated by men.

His designs are completely untraditional and challenging, which is what makes them so dramatic. Clients for whom he has designed furniture and objects include Swarovski, Dupont, Sawaya & Moroni, and Alessi.

Hadid’s ‘Moraine’ sofa was commissioned by the renowned

Italian company Sawaya & Moroni. Covered in red ‘Fantasy Leather’, the ‘Moraine’ breaks new ground in its radical curvilinear asymmetric form, a piece of furniture that is both sculpture and seat, abstract and functional.

Dupont was said to be delighted with Hadid’s ‘Z Kitchen Design’, which features the company’s remarkable design material, Corian.

to perfection. Done in glacier white, the kitchen features 2 islands.

– Fire (to cook) and Water (to wash). the futuristic design

It comes equipped with many features, such as integrated thermal membranes, touch control panels, sound activators and aroma dispensers, LED lighting and a multimedia entertainment system.

A limited edition “Tea and Coffee Tower” was created for an Alessi project in which 22 renowned designers were asked to create a “tea and coffee object”, with complete freedom. Hadid’s sterling silver sculpture is divided into four elements: teapot, coffee pot, milk jug and sugar bowl. This exceptional work of art behaves like a three-dimensional puzzle, sitting inside a tray that guides the user through the multiple configurations.

In 2006, he created an Aqua table for Established & Sons, which he describes as “like flying over water”.

With a translucent silicone gel, contours were formed on the smooth surfaces of the tables, creating a liquid color that attracts the viewer’s attention. Once again Hadid was able to establish another ‘first’ when the table sold for a record amount at a New York auction.

Similarly, the ‘Seamless’ range of modern furniture, again for Established and Sons, has a liquid quality with 9 designs done in painted polyester resin. The New York Times stated that Hadid gives “liquidity” a whole new meaning.

Total fluidity also prevails in his interior design and architectural projects that have an indescribable ‘movement’. In fact, Hadid herself has expressed that her ideal home would have “movable walls”, so the kitchen could move and the bathroom would not have to be fixed in one place. In 2007, she exhibited “My Dream Home” at the International Furniture Fair in Cologne, Germany, a creation that literally “transformed” every living space.

He has created interiors for the Guggenheim Museum in New

York, the Vienna Kunsthalle and the Hayward Gallery in London.

His architectural feats are of course more notable, both for his startlingly vivid presence and his ambitious structural achievement. The creation of a structural space was certainly a shaky start. His first big hit, The Peak, a spa planned for Hong Kong, was never built. Neither do the buildings on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, or an art and media center in Dusseldorf.

Hadid’s first project, The Fire Station at the Vitra office furniture group’s production complex, was a formal but not a functional success. The fire service moved out and the building was turned into a chair museum. And the public opposition to his unconventional take on the Cardiff Bay Opera House in the 1990s is now notorious, but history.

This became a turning point and architectural successes followed. These include the BMW plant, Leipzig – Germany. The central

The building is the active nerve center or brain of the entire factory complex. Mind Zone at London’s Millennium Dome, completed in December 1999, Zaha’s largest build to date. Center for Contemporary Art of Rome, the first national museum of contemporary art in Italy. The Bergisel ski jump, located on the

The Bergisel mountain overlooking the center of Innsbruck, the ski jump is an important landmark. The Wolfsberg Science Center, the first of its kind in Germany, and a landmark project. The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. The New York Times described it, without exaggeration, as “America’s most important new building since the Cold War.” Zaha explains his style as a ‘virtuoso of elegance’. explaining that

investigation and personal investigation

it’s loaded with so many ideas that you can’t come up with a single one, so there’s no formal repertoire.

“It’s like a pianist practicing constantly, it’s the same level of intensity. It increases repertoires immensely, it’s unpredictable,” he says.

Inspiration comes from many influences, including Erich Mendelsohn, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. While he respects many contemporary designers and architects, he says “many are too obsessed with method. It becomes a dogma.”

By all means, Zaha has not followed any method, but instead focused on her goals, she has swept rigidly throughout her career, leaving a string of international awards, prestigious titles and accolades in her wake.

She is currently a professor at the Vienna University of Applied Arts in Austria and her work will be featured in a major exhibition at the London Design Museum throughout 2007.

Zaha Hadid has achieved recognition as both a modern furniture designer and architect as well as a woman. In a field where women have to work much harder to make a difference, her work is often more surprising, in more subtle ways.