Architect Zaha Hadid died of a heart attack in Miami yesterday, March 31st, at age 65, shocking the architecture community and fans of her work the world over. The obituaries were swift: The New York Times' Michael Kimmelman wrote that Hadid "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity. New York magazine architecture and classical music critic Justin Davidson said that Hadid was "an absolutist visionary...who designed building that [inspired] awe and derision but never indifference."
And then there was this choice bit from New Yorker writer John Seabrook, who profiled Hadid in that magazine's December 21, 2009 issue:
"...Hadid was a woman who had dared to enter a man's world, and took no shit from anybody, though plenty was offered. She had to be twice as smart and three times as tough as her male counterparts in order to get anything built."
We've rounded up the most notable obituaries, from The Los Angeles Times to Al Jazeera and The Guardian.
1. Curbed
"[Hadid] will be remembered for introducing daring curves and futuristic shapes to modern architecture."
2. The Guardian
"Hadid, born in Baghdad in 1950, became a revolutionary force in British architecture even though she struggled to win commissions in the UK for many years."
"[Hadid's] was the shadow none of us could escape, and whose contours we puzzled over and tried, often in vain, to precisely measure."
"She had to be twice as smart and three times as tough as her male counterparts in order to get anything built."
5. BBC
"Her legacy is to prove what can be done; that you can be a Baghdad-born British citizen who can cut through all the red tape, all the machismo, all the macho behaviour and become an internationally-respected architect who creates buildings which will stand the test of time."
"Her work, with its formal fluidity — also implying mobility, speed, freedom — spoke to a worldview widely shared by a younger generation."
7. Al Jazeera
"Hadid... was known for her neofuturistic design..."
8. Time
"Zaha Hadid, the world-renowned architect who has died at 65, made a name for herself with her bold designs and bold opinions."
"She was an anomaly in many ways: an Iraqi-born woman in a profession that has traditionally privileged European men, and a fierce visionary in a business that runs on compromise."
"Zaha Hadid, the acclaimed Iraqi-British architect known for her sensuous curvilinear structures that blurred the line between architecture and art, died Thursday morning in a Miami hospital."
Ms. Hadid was not a utilitarian designer of the square-box school, but believed that architecture should be an expressive art form in its own right.
∙ Zaha Hadid Dies at Age 65 [Curbed]