About this talk

Running time: 27 minutes

Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid took a degree in mathematics at the American University in Beirut, before coming to the Architectural Association School in London where she qualified in 1977. She studied under Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and subsequently partnered them for a year. She has also taught at the AA and Harvard and Columbia Universities, and has been published and exhibited all over the world, becoming enormously influential.

In her talk she discusses a number of her designs, including The Peak, after explaining how her approach to architecture came about. "The work was layered in terms of ideas" she says "in the same way that culture is layered". Whatever she was designing, whether on a large or small scale, buildings or furniture, she saw it as part of a whole language: the notion of fluid spaces within landscapes.

She was of the opinion that architectural representation in general is too confining to the design process, and thus invented a new and very striking way of depicting her ideas.

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