Architect Zaha Hadid has died at age 65.
Hadid was being treated for bronchitis at a Miami hospital when she suffered a heart attack on Thursday.
“It is with great sadness that Zaha Hadid Architects have confirmed that Dame Zaha Hadid, DBE died suddenly in Miami in the early hours of this morning,” her company released in a statement.
“She had contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital. Zaha Hadid was widely regarded to be the greatest female architect in the world today.”
The Iraqi-born architect was an icon in the industry. She was the first woman to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects Award, and her designs include the London Olympic Aquatic Centre, Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, the Riverside Museum at Glasgow’s Museum of Transport, and Guangzhou Opera House in China.
Hadid was born in Baghdad in 1950, and gradated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1977. She launched Zaha Hadid Architects in 1979, garnering a reputation for her groundbreaking theoretical works including the Peak in Hong Kong (1983), the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (1986), and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994).
In 2004, Hadid became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling Prize. Other awards included the Republic of France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; Japan’s Praemium Imperiale; and in 2012, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Hadid was also named an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture.
