Zaha Hadid Quotes

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Zaha Hadid

Profession : Architect

Birth : October 31, 1950

People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.

Zaha Hadid

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.

Zaha Hadid

I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.

Zaha Hadid

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.

Zaha Hadid

I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn't say beautiful.

Zaha Hadid

Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?

Zaha Hadid

I'm a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them.

Zaha Hadid

I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place.

Zaha Hadid

I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.

Zaha Hadid

Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.

Zaha Hadid

I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'

Zaha Hadid

I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places.

Zaha Hadid

If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.

Zaha Hadid

Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true.

Zaha Hadid

The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it's really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it's nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.

Zaha Hadid

I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all.

Zaha Hadid

People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.

Zaha Hadid

For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.

Zaha Hadid

I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.

Zaha Hadid

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.

Zaha Hadid