Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA, has been chosen as the 2004 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She is the first woman to receive the Pritzker in its 26-year history.

Her initial influence, however, evolved before she built a single building. Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the board of Vitra and a Pritzker juror this year, enthuses, “Without ever building, Zaha Hadid would have radically expanded architecture’s repertoire of spatial articulation. Now that the implementation in complex buildings is happening, the power of her innovation is fully revealed.” Jury Chair Lord Rothschild, says, “At the same time as her theoretical and academic work, as a practicing architect, Zaha Hadid has been unswerving in her commitment to Modernism. Always inventive, she’s moved away from existing typology, from high tech, and has shifted the geometry of buildings.”

The 53-year-old Iraqi-born British citizen has recently completed her first project in the U.S., the Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, and currently is developing an extension to the Frank Lloyd Wright Price Tower Arts Center in Bartlesville, Okla. She has other projects on the boards, including a building for BMW in Leipzig and a Science Center in Wolfsburg, both in Germany; a National Center of Contemporary Arts in Rome; a Master Plan for Bilbao, Spain; a Guggenheim Museum for Taichung, Taiwan; a high-speed train station outside Naples; and a new public archive, library, and sport center in Montpellier, France.

Her other completed projects in Europe include a fire station for the Vitra Furniture Company in Weil am Rhein, Germany; LFone/Landesgartenschau, an exhibition building to mark the 1999 garden festival in that same city; a car park and terminus Hoenheim North, a “park and ride” and tramway on the outskirts of Strasbourg, France; and a ski jump situated on the Bergisel Mountain overlooking Innsbruck, Austria.

In announcing the jury’s choice, Thomas J. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, says, “It is gratifying to us as sponsors of the prize to see our very independent jury honor a woman for the first time. Although her body of work is relatively small, she has achieved great acclaim and her energy and ideas show even greater promise for the future.”

“Not traditional or easy”
“Her path to worldwide recognition has been a heroic struggle as she inexorably rose to the highest ranks of the profession. Clients, journalists, fellow professionals are mesmerized by her dynamic forms and strategies for achieving a truly distinctive approach to the architecture and its settings. Each new project is more audacious than the last and the sources of her originality seem endless,” her Pritzker citation reads.

Juror Frank Gehry, FAIA, who is also the 1989 Pritzker Laureate and an AIA Gold Medal winner, notes, “The 2004 laureate is probably one of the youngest laureates and has one of the clearest architectural trajectories we’ve seen in many years. Each project unfolds with new excitement and innovation.” A new juror this year, journalist Karen Stein who is editorial director of Phaidon Press, comments, “Over the past 25 years, Zaha Hadid has built a career on defying convention—conventional ideas of architectural space, of practice, of representation, and of construction.”

Hadid studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London from 1972 to 1977. She then became a partner of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Rem Koolhaas, the 2000 Pritzker winner, and later opened her own firm in London. She has held prestigious teaching posts including the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois School of Architecture in Chicago; and guest professorships at many other leading universities. The citation notes, “Much admired by the younger generation of architects, her appearance on campuses is always a cause for excitement and overflowing audiences.”

“The full dimensions of Ms. Hadid’s prodigious artistic outpouring of work is apparent not only in architecture, but in exhibition designs, stage sets, furniture, paintings, and drawings,” the jury notes.

Hadid will receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 31, 2004. The prize presentation ceremony moves to different locations around the world each year, paying homage to historic and contemporary architecture.

—Tracy Ostroff

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