Beyond architecture: Celebrating Zaha Hadid, the artist

News of Zaha Hadid’s untimely death earlier this year shook the architecture community to its foundations.

At the Masterpiece collectors’ fair in London, Hadid’s friend and collaborator Francis Sultana of David Gill Gallery has curated a special commemorative salon that offers an insight into the Baghdad-born architect’s extraordinary life and career.

“The fair and myself felt it would be lovely to do something in her memory this year as Zaha was taken from us very unexpectedly,” says Sultana.

“I wanted to make sure this year that she’s not going to be forgotten, that we’re going to start to think about all the work she did and the woman behind that work.”

The exhibition presents a selection of objects designed by Hadid over a career that saw her create some of the world’s most distinctive buildings and earned her architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, in 2004.

Having come to London in 1972 to study at the Architectural Association, Hadid founded her own studio in 1980 and began pioneering a form of parametric design which utilized computer software to enable the creation of buildings and objects with an unprecedented plasticity.

Examples such as her Aquatic Center for the London 2012 Olympics and the Guangzhou Opera House in China encapsulate her ability to challenge conventions and find ways to realize incredibly complex forms.

The exhibition at Masterpiece includes paintings, prototypes and finished products loaned by her studio, which provide evidence of Hadid’s singular approach to every project she worked on.

Courtesy Brigitte Lacombe

Renowned architect Zaha Hadid has died at 65. We look back at some of her most memorable buildings.

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The Vitra Fire Station, Zaha Hadid's first independently realized building, was completed in 1993.

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This cancer care center on the grounds of Victoria Hospital was Hadid's first UK building.

Hufton + Crow

Hadid's Riverside Museum took home the European Museum of the Year Award in 2013.

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With her fluid design, Hadid hoped to move away from the rigidity that defined Azerbaijan when it was part of the USSR.

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The distinctive curves of the Sheikh Zayed Bridge are meant to recall desert sand dunes.

Werner Huthmacher

This interactive science center that resembles a space ship was a landmark project for the country.

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A year after completing the BMW Central Building, Hadid won the prestigious Prikzter Prize, making her the first woman to do so.

Inexhibit

Sitting atop Mount Kronplatz, the mountain museum was a collaboration between Hadid and Reinhold Messner, the first man to complete the ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen.

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A hybrid of pedestrian footbridge and exhibition pavilion. Hadid's fluid design mirrored the theme of the Expo that year; water and sustainable development.

Hufton + Crow, courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

Hadid's curvy London Aquatics Centre was the highlight of the 2012 Olympic Park.

zhang zhenghua/Moment Editorial/Getty Images

Hadid likened her Guangzhou Opera House in China to two rocks washed up from the Pearl River and deposited on its bank.

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The 290,000-square-foot structure became Italy's first national public museum of contemporary art when it opened in 2010.

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The Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, which opened in 2003, was Hadid's first building in America.

ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/Getty Images

Along with the ramp itself, the Austrian ski jump includes a cafe and viewing terrace.

Also included are press clippings and artifacts giving a sense of her formidable personality, but also of the journey she undertook as a woman setting out to make a difference in a male-dominated profession.

“There is a very beautiful, very large archive that will be shown, slowly and gradually,” Sultana adds, “and we’ll see a really beautiful story of someone’s life and career and what she’s left behind for us all to enjoy in the future.”

“Masterpiece London 2016”, sponsored by Royal Bank of Canada, takes place from 30 June – 6 July at Royal Hospital Chelsea, London.