WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Zaha Hadid, an
Iraqi-born architect who struggled for years to get her audacious and
unconventional designs built, won the prestigious 2004 Pritzker
Architecture Prize on Sunday, the first woman to receive the
profession's highest honor.
Hadid "is probably one of the youngest laureates and has one of
the clearest architectural trajectories we've seen in many years. Each
project unfolds with new excitement and innovation," said
California architect and juror Frank Gehry, a 1989 Pritzker winner.
Hadid, 53, now a British citizen, exploded on the world architecture
scene two decades ago when she won a competition to design a clifftop
resort above Hong Kong. The project was never built, but it thrust her
into the public eye.
For years, Hadid was most famous for being the architect whose
buildings — universally lauded as distinctive and dynamic — remained
unbuilt.
"It became like a cause celebre, because it perpetuated this
wondering 'why not,' 'it's not possible,' 'it's not buildable,'"
Hadid said during a recent interview in West Hollywood.
Hadid said the "very extreme" drawings she created for
architectural competitions were met with skepticism. "They did not
believe it was possible," Hadid said of her inventive designs.
"There was not any work like that being done."
She credits the 1997 opening of the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum
that Gehry designed for Bilbao, Spain, with sparking greater interest in
her work.
A year later, Hadid said, she won four competitions, followed by four
more the following year. Among them were two museums: the Rosenthal
Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati and the National Center for
Contemporary Arts in Rome.
"Without ever building, Zaha Hadid would have radically expanded
architecture's repertoire of spatial articulation," juror Rolf
Fehlbaum said. Now that her designs have begun to take shape, "the
power of her innovation is fully revealed."
Her 60-person London firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, has been flooded
with commissions, including a BMW factory in Germany, an arts center in
Oklahoma and a train station in Italy.
Hadid will be awarded a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion during
a May 31 ceremony at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg,
Russia.
The Pritzker Prize, sponsored by the Chicago family that developed
the Hyatt Hotel chain, was created 26 years ago.
