She is the 26th Pritzker
Laureate to be honoured and the third from the UK. The
State Hermitage Museum of St.Petersburg, Russia will
be the site for the ceremony awarding the 2004 Pritzker
Architecture Prize to Zaha Hadid on Monday, May 31.
Every year the Pritzker Architecture Prize honours a
living architect whose work demonstrates a combination
of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment,
which has produced consistent and significant contributions
to humanity and the built environment through the art
of architecture. The prize was established in 1979 by
The Hyatt Foundation.
The field of architecture was chosen by the Pritzker
family because of their keen interest in building due
to their involvement with developing the Hyatt Hotels
around the world; also because architecture was a creative
endeavor not included in the Nobel Prizes. The procedures
were modeled after the Nobels, with the final selection
being made by the international jury with all deliberations
and voting in secret. Nominations are continuous from
year to year with hundreds of nominees from countries
all around the world being considered each year.
Zaha Hadid
 Clothed
in haute couture and as big in personality as any of
her visions for the landscape, Zaha Hadid has been called
a diva of architecture. But her designs have long suffered
from the perception of being incredible but impractical,
in one critic's phrase, "brilliant, but unbuildable".
Architectural Superstar
Her gravity-defying ideas, with her resistance to right
angles and celebrations of movement, have often failed
to make it off the drawing board. Only in the last couple
of years, with multi-million-pound projects from Cincinnati
to Singapore under her designer belt, has Hadid finally
emerged into an architectural superstar.
Her passage has not been easy. She designed a leisure
complex in Hong Kong, before the developer went bankrupt.
She proved the surprising choice to design Cardiff's
new opera house, before the committee lost its nerve
and cancelled her commission.
Despite receiving a CBE last year for services to her
profession, Hadid has the dubious distinction of being
Britain's most celebrated architect without a building
here to her name. After making her home in London for
nearly three decades, she laments, "There isn't
a belief here in the fantastic. They don't think it's
possible."
"A planet in her own inimitable orbit"
Born in Baghdad and educated by French nuns, Hadid
came to England in her twenties, and studied at what
Prince Charles later called the "Frankenstein Academy",
the radical Architectural Association.
Under the auspices of ambitious tutor, Dutch architect
Rem Koolhaas, Hadid created her own drawing language.
When she graduated in 1977, Koolhaas called his prodigy
"a planet in her own inimitable orbit".
"All strong ideas never really fail"
Always recognised as a great visionary and inspiring
teacher, Hadid survived for ten years on lecture fees.
Her avant-garde thinking originally confused pragmatists,
but her work has become more commercially responsive
and increasingly popular across the globe.
From her first actual building, a German fire station,
through to her current projects, ranging from an art
centre in Rome to a ski jump at Innsbruck, Hadid has
always created on a grand scale. Intent on creating
a better world, she is convinced that "buildings
should keep you dry and feed the soul".
Now, finally enjoying the rewards of her determination,
individualism and undoubted patience, she is philosophical
about her years in the architectural wilderness. Of
her years as a lone visionary with only plans, not buildings,
on the horizon, Zaha Hadid can reflect, "I think
all strong ideas never really fail."
For more information, please visit www.zaha-hadid.com
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