About Zaha Hadid: Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid is an Iraqi-British architect. In 2004 she became the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011.
Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.
Contrary to popular view, I've never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don't hate women. It's a very different kind of mentality.
Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.
In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran.
Men think a woman should not have an opinion.
Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.
When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unl...
I'm a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them.
As a woman, you're not accessible to every world.
I don't think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I've never had the desire I should have a kid.
People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.
I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.
Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.
I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up wi...
I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they be...
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.'
I will never give myself the luxury of thinking, 'I've made it.'
What's nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished.
Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.
My friendships are very important to me.
