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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Zaha Hadid wins Pritzker

Goodness Gracious Meme

18:30 / 22.03.04

"Would they call me a diva if I was a guy?", Zaha Hadid.

Yay! Am astonished; am a big fan of her work, and her attitude.

Mind you, She's been nominated before, I'm mainly so surprised as she hasn't actually produced a huge amount of work, either in proposal or finished pieces. (though this will hopefully now change, let's hope it gets her the 2012 NY Olympic village, love to see what she'd do with a project of that scale.)

And typically, despite being London-based, Iraqi-British, she's had real problems getting commissions here, but in Europe/Asia, they love her.

Anyway, thoughts?

beelzebub jones

21:31 / 23.03.04

thanks for the info. she IS amazing.

Goodness Gracious Meme

21:36 / 23.03.04

Hurray! Somebody else cares!

01:11 / 24.03.04

Zaha is amazing. Architects like her could truely make the world an incredible experience. I think it's geat she's one this prize, she deserves the recognition. I just hope to fuck people don't assume she's received it because she's Iraqi. Her presentations of her work are fantastic - sadly, often better than the actual experience of the buildings. I've heard her speak a few times, she's quite the tosser, but this is almost compulsory in her profession.
her work truely honours the canon that architecture is the mother of all arts

10:59 / 24.03.04

I'd never heard of Zaha Hadid before, but I just asked my architect flatmate about her and he pulled out a couple of books of her work - wow. Particularly smitten by a deconstructionist (he told me that was the right word) painting of London, showing speculative routes for the emergence of buildings, transport flows and public spaces flowing from West to East in a graf-design-explosion stylee. I always find it amazing how in architecture it's possible to rise to the very top of your field while the vast majority of your work exists as unrealised concepts - I suppose this is a corollary to couture designers' work very rarely being seen worn by 'real people' but those same designs informing the high street for the next ten years.

November - "I've heard her speak a few times, she's quite the tosser" - so I hear! Aforementioned flatmate was just saying how he recently had to give a presentation in front of a bunch of top architects, and was extremely relieved that she turned down her invitation because he knew she would destroy him. Well, the word he used was 'nutter' rather than 'tosser'... maybe 'passionate' would be better?

22:25 / 24.03.04

I don't think anyone could seriously deny Zaha is brimming with passion. So, tosser was unkind. I suppose i'm sensitive to pretentious architectural carrying on. Architecture is that curious blend of art and science that is extremely attractive. But to conceptualise fantastic architecture isn't especially hard - to get it built is another matter alltogether. To do that requires a fair degree of business savy,connections people skills etc. So like any artistic industry, big personalities get rewarded... I'm generalising to fuck here, but oh well. Thing is, I'm not the cleverest guy around but I know and appreciate my fair share of big words and abstract concepts - and boy do these come out to describe walls and what not. thats all fine, but too many times have I seen some of the ...erm, "famous" architects, Zaha included, be really nasty with this. And from my perspective for questionable reasons that I can only attribute to choices of character. It always reminds me of those guys who squeeze the fuck out of you when you shake hands. I find the motivation to such actions questionable and generally consider the people who apply them tossers.
okay off topic rant is over. Everyone go check out Zaha's work, it is fantastic.