A permanent museum, research centre and gallery is in the works to honour the late architect, designer and artist. The Zaha Hadid foundation will feature over 10 000 works housed at the historic Shad Thames and Bowling Green lane in Clerkenwell in London. Curator, writer and historian Paul Greenhalgh was appointed as the foundation’s director following Zaha’s untimely passing in 2016 and is overseeing the planing of several ZHF projects in the developmental stages.
“Part of the mission of the Zaha Hadid foundation is to advance research into Zaha Hadid, her legacy, and into modern architecture and design more generally,” shares the foundation. For her contributions to architecture, design and town planning, Zaha one many awards including being the first woman to receive the prestigious Pritzker Award in 2004. She was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth and became Dame Hadid. Her ouevre of work is testament to her natural talent and her conviction to create revolutionary buildings that change the way people view and interact with buildings.
There’s simply no denying the impact that her work has had on architecture from a design and human perspective. While her firm, Zaha Hadid architects continues to produce innovative work, ZHF will work in collaboration with other research organizations, including academic, museum, and research funding partners to maintain and promote her legacy.
Zaha Hadid was born in Bagdad and moved to London where she studied architecture at the Architectural Association, obtaining her degree in 1977 and thereafter opening her own practise in 1979. Her prolific contribution to design and architecture combined traditional elements of architecture with limitless possibilities of what the future will look like. Zaha’s perspective was one that integrated nature and man-made buildings beyond geographical boundaries. A word that often comes to mind when examining her buildings is “fluid”, her designs were considered by many as ahead of their time as she is critically dubbed “the queen of curves”.
