"Queen of the curve," first woman to win the Pritzker Prize
An Iraqi-British architect, one of the most influential architects of our time, and in 2004 the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor. Called "the queen of the curve," her buildings have almost no right angles or straight lines, but are full of flowing, twisting, weightlessly stretching surfaces, like frozen speed and motion. With powerful parametric design and computing, she realized complex streamlined forms once only imaginable, unbuildable (the Guangzhou Opera House, Beijing Daxing Airport). Her work is radical and futuristic, once mocked as "paper architecture," yet finally rose building by building. In a long male-dominated field, she opened a road, with uncompromising edge, for women and for "impossible" forms alike.
Zaha’s early twisting, flowing designs were dismissed by many as fanciful, impossible to build, and she was for a time called a "paper architect." But she would not compromise. As computer parametric design matured, those "unbuildable" curves finally rose, one by one, in Guangzhou, Beijing, and London. Her life proved: a form that looks impossible today is often only waiting for the technology to realize it.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.