Zaha Hadid Quotes & Sayings

I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial. — Zaha Hadid

Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society. — Zaha Hadid

My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame. — Zaha Hadid

I like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical. — Zaha Hadid

You really have to have a goal. The goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. Know what it is you want to find out. — Zaha Hadid

Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places. — Zaha Hadid

I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper. — Zaha Hadid

When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project. — Zaha Hadid

The beauty of the landscape - where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together - has never left me. — Zaha Hadid

I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place. — Zaha Hadid

People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them. — Zaha Hadid

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing. — Zaha Hadid

It's not my duty as an architect to look at it — Zaha Hadid

I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven. — Zaha Hadid

In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran. — Zaha Hadid

Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough. — Zaha Hadid

Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space. — Zaha Hadid

Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious. — Zaha Hadid

The paintings have only ever been ways of exploring architecture. I don't see them as art. — Zaha Hadid

I am eccentric, I admit it, but I am not a nutcase. — Zaha Hadid

Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true. — Zaha Hadid

I'm into fashion because it contains the mood of the day, of the moment - like music, literature, and art. — Zaha Hadid

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality. — Zaha Hadid

I don't think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I've never had the desire I should have a kid. — Zaha Hadid

I loved London. In the 1970s ... it was very exciting, really wild. — Zaha Hadid

In hospital, people should be able to have time to themselves. — Zaha Hadid

My generation were all careerists. — Zaha Hadid

It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history. — Zaha Hadid

Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person. — Zaha Hadid

I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes. — Zaha Hadid

My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that. — Zaha Hadid

For a woman to go out alone into architecture is still very, very hard. It's still a man's world. — Zaha Hadid

People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner. — Zaha Hadid

My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress. — Zaha Hadid

Men think a woman should not have an opinion. — Zaha Hadid

Would they call me a diva if I were a guy? — Zaha Hadid

What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings. — Zaha Hadid

You have to really believe not only in yourself; you have to believe that the world is actually worth your sacrifices. — Zaha Hadid

I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn't say beautiful. — Zaha Hadid

I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't. — Zaha Hadid

It was such a depressing time. I didn't look very depressed, maybe, but it was really dire. I made a conscious decision not to stop, but it could have gone the other way. — Zaha Hadid

Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women. — Zaha Hadid

I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong. — Zaha Hadid

Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated. — Zaha Hadid

The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it's really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it's nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme. — Zaha Hadid

I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion. — Zaha Hadid

As a woman, you're not accessible to every world. — Zaha Hadid

I really believe in the idea of the future. — Zaha Hadid

You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well. — Zaha Hadid

When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building. — Zaha Hadid

Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless — Zaha Hadid

It is insufficient for architecture today to directly implement an existing building typology; it instead requires architects to carefully examine the whole area with new interventions and programmatic typologies — Zaha Hadid

I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid. — Zaha Hadid

For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK. — Zaha Hadid

I will never give myself the luxury of thinking, 'I've made it.' — Zaha Hadid

I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions. — Zaha Hadid

People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok. — Zaha Hadid

When I taught, all my best students were women. — Zaha Hadid

As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality. — Zaha Hadid

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde. — Zaha Hadid

I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places. — Zaha Hadid

I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums. — Zaha Hadid

Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there's no reason for it to be. I don't want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the building industry is all male. — Zaha Hadid

Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society. — Zaha Hadid

I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they become something else. — Zaha Hadid

I'm a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them. — Zaha Hadid

I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all. — Zaha Hadid

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms. — Zaha Hadid

I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.' — Zaha Hadid

When women do succeed, the press, even the industry press, spend far too much time talking about how we dress, what shoes we're wearing, who we're meant to be seeing. That's pretty sad for women, especially when it's written by women who really should know better. — Zaha Hadid

I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it? — Zaha Hadid

Yes, I'm a feminist, because I see all women as smart, gifted and tough. — Zaha Hadid

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East. — Zaha Hadid

I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends. — Zaha Hadid

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby. — Zaha Hadid

I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples. — Zaha Hadid

There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one? — Zaha Hadid

No. I don't have the patience, and I'm not very tactful. People say I can be frightening. — Zaha Hadid

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness. — Zaha Hadid

The funkiest housing in Holland is for low-income, and I think that's very nice. — Zaha Hadid

There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day. — Zaha Hadid

What's nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished. — Zaha Hadid

If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it. — Zaha Hadid

Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time. — Zaha Hadid

People often ask me if I consider myself to be an architect, fashion designer, or artist. I'm an architect. The paintings I've done are very important to me, but they were part of a process of thinking and developing. — Zaha Hadid

Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun. — Zaha Hadid

I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it. — Zaha Hadid

It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future. — Zaha Hadid

Contrary to popular view, I've never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don't hate women. It's a very different kind of mentality. — Zaha Hadid

I think that in life you don't need too much; you need friends, you need to do what you like doing. — Zaha Hadid

Women are always told, 'You're not going to make it, its too difficult, you can't do that, don't enter this competition, you'll never win it,' - they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on. — Zaha Hadid

If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella. — Zaha Hadid

I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think. — Zaha Hadid

Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard. — Zaha Hadid

My friendships are very important to me. — Zaha Hadid

Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space ... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure. — Zaha Hadid