Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, whose modernist, futuristic designs included the swooping aquatic center for the 2012 London Olympics, has died at age 65.
Hadid designed the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games.APHadid’s firm said she died Thursday of a heart attack in a Miami hospital.
Born and raised in Baghdad, Hadid studied in Beirut and London, where she based the architectural firm that bore her name.
She designed buildings around the world: a BMW facility in Leipzig, Germany; sleek funicular railway stations in Innsbruck, Austria; and the strikingly curved Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan.
She twice won Britain’s Stirling Prize for architecture and in 2004 became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, known as the “Nobel prize of architecture.”
The Pritzker jury praised her unswerving commitment to modernism and defiance of convention.
Hadid also designed the Maxxi museum in Rome.Reuters