Hadid bridges the gap A few years ago, she was known as a "paper architect" whose majestic designs rarely made it off the drawing board. But now, the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid has won a coveted industry award for a recently opened art museum in Rome, while another of her creations - the Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi - is finally set to open. Baghdad-born Hadid's angular concrete Maxxi contemporary art museum won the UK's Riba Stirling Prize for architecture on October 2. The £20,000 (Dh116,000) prize, now in its 15th year, is given for the building deemed to have made the greatest contribution to British architecture.
The arching Sheikh Zayed Bridge, which is expected to open in the coming weeks, some four years overdue, has been dubbed by its engineers "the most difficult bridge ever built" and was projected by the Abu Dhabi Municipality to cost Dh1billion. The Stirling prize's judges praised Maxxi's rabbit warren-like design and roof of adjustable skylights, which "orientate and excite the visitor and create uplifting spaces".
Other works by Zaha Hadid Architects include China's Guangzhou Opera House, the BMW Central Building in Germany, the Contemporary Arts Center in Ohio and Abu Dhabi's forthcoming Performing Arts Centre on Saadiyat Island. As well as giant buildings and bridges, Hadid's varied career has even seen her design ski-jumps and a fire station. In 2004, she won one of the world's top architecture awards, the Pritzker Architecture Prize for the giant fibre glass-covered Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain.
