Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1950. As a child, she visited ancient cities in southern Iraq, and seeing their shapes and structures made her fall in love with buildings and design. She studied maths at university in Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to study architecture. After finishing her studies, she opened her own architecture company in London in 1980. For many years, people thought her ideas were too unusual and strange to actually build. Some people even called her a “paper architect”, because her amazing drawings never seemed to become real buildings. Everything changed in 2004, when she became the first woman ever to win the Pritzker Prize, the biggest award in architecture. After that, she designed some incredible buildings all over the world, including the swimming pool centre for the London 2012 Olympics, a huge cultural centre in Azerbaijan, and a museum in Rome. Her buildings were famous for their curved, flowing shapes, completely different from the straight lines and square boxes most buildings have. In 2012, she was made a Dame, a special honour in the UK, and she continued designing buildings until her death in 2016. Today, she is remembered as one of the most important architects in history, someone who changed what people thought buildings could look like.

Creativity, enthusiasm and appreciation shaped everything Zaha Hadid created. Her creativity showed in how she refused to build boring, boxy buildings. Instead, she imagined swooping, curved shapes inspired by rivers, sand dunes and mountains, and found new ways to use computers to help her design them. Her creativity came from her appreciation of the world around her. She loved patterns and shapes, especially in art and mathematics, and was inspired by the geometric patterns and beautiful writing from her Iraqi background. She also appreciated nature, wanting her buildings to look like they were flowing, just like water or sand. Zaha also brought huge enthusiasm to her work. When computers were still new to architecture, most designers were nervous about using them, but Zaha was excited to try them out, seeing them as the perfect tool to finally build the shapes she had dreamed of for years. Her enthusiasm did not stop with her own buildings. She taught at famous universities, including Harvard and Yale, and her students often said her energy and passion for architecture were contagious. Together, her creativity, appreciation and enthusiasm helped her turn bold ideas into buildings that inspire people all over the world.