These 17 Zaha Hadid Buildings Are Her Most Beautiful—and Ones Everyone Should Know

Swooping, sinuous, and striking, they’re the most awe-inspiring architectural creations of the late Queen of the CurveThe Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan.Photo: keladawy/Getty ImagesYou know Zaha Hadid buildings when you see them. The Iraqi British architect became famous for her intensely futuristic style characterized by curving façades, sharp angles, and severe materials such as concrete and steel. The structures she designed have successfully accomplished what mystifies so many when they observe great architecture: She took the strongest materials in the world and manipulated them to form objects that appear soft and sturdy at the same time.It’s no surprise then that over the past two decades, her work has been honored by a long list of awards. In 2004 she was the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize; in 2010 and 2011 she received the Stirling Prize, a British decoration for excellence in architecture; in 2014 her Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, like an undulating sheet of graph paper, won the Design Museum design of the year award; and in 2016 she became the first woman to win the RIBA Gold Medal. Hadid’s projects, many of which transform depending on the viewer’s perspective, turn architectural convention on its head—even those that never made it to completion, such as her design for the Cardiff Bay Opera House, or her towering Signature Towers concept for Dubai’s Business Bay district.The world lost a true visionary in 2016, when 65-year-old Hadid died unexpectedly in a Miami hospital. Since her death, her practice, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), has continued to complete and unveil projects worldwide under the leadership of her longtime collaborators. Below, dive into the most striking buildings completed by the inimitable force.Photo: Hufton + CrowEli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, USA (2012)Michigan State University’s campus was never the same after Zaha Hadid completed her design for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. Opened in 2012, the contemporary art museum appears frozen in motion. Clad in lustrous stainless steel and glass, the building’s folded design was intended to evoke movement, representing the intersecting paths of people flowing between the university and the city.Photo: Courtesy of OKOGroup.comCapital Hill Residence, near Moscow, Russia (2018)Located in a forest near Moscow, the $140 million Capital Hill Residence is half submerged into the ground. The home was designed for Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin and was completed posthumously by Hadid’s firm, ZHA.Photo: Andrea Pistolesi/Getty ImagesHeydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2012Clad in reinforced concrete and polyester, the 619,000-square-foot Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, is known for its swooping façade. Amongst the most famous Zaha Hadid buildings in the world, the center houses a museum, library, and auditorium. Its uninterrupted, wave-like surface was engineered without a single sharp edge—the proud result of years of material testing in order to achieve the effect at scale. Buildings such as this helped propel Hadid’s nickname, the Queen of the Curve.Photo: Allan Baxter/Getty ImagesRiverside Museum, Glasgow, Scotland, 2011The Riverside Museum, an addition to the Glasgow Museum of Transport in Scotland, cuts a striking figure with its zigzagging zinc-clad roof. The deliberately unstable and disjointed roofline is hallmark deconstructivism, a style that Hadid was known for pioneering. She first realized this aesthetic on a smaller scale two decades earlier with the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, which is now considered one of the early defining works of deconstructivism.Photo: View Pictures/Getty ImagesLondon Aquatics Center, London, England (2011)The London Aquatics Centre was designed to accommodate 17,500 spectators for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Its undulating concrete roof features cutouts that allow natural light to filter in across the pool’s blue water. Inspired by the fluid geometry of water in motion, the roof was later reduced in size after the Games to convert the venue into a public swimming facility for local residents. It is one of her most notable London projects, alongside the Evelyn Grace Academy and the Serpentine North Gallery.Photo: View Pictures/Getty ImagesGuangzhou Opera House, Guangzhou, China (2010)The Guangzhou Opera House in China’s Guangdong province is shaped to resemble two pebbles on the bank of the Pearl River. The interior of the shimmering main auditorium is lined with panels of gypsum molded in flowing organic shapes and lit with thousands of tiny lights that resemble stars in the night sky.Photo: View Pictures/Getty ImagesZaragoza Bridge Pavilion, Zaragoza, Spain (2008)The Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion, built in 2008, doubles as a pedestrian bridge across the Ebro River in Zaragoza, Spain. The building’s exterior, comprising 29,000 triangles, is made out of fiberglass-reinforced concrete. Hadid returned to bridge design just a couple of years later with the Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi, but the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion is notable for its distinct, triangular skeleton.Photo: View Pictures/Getty ImagesRosenthal Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (2003)One of Hadid’s few projects that make use of cubic shapes, Cincinnati’s Rosenthal Contemporary Arts Center, completed in 2003, is the first US museum designed by a woman. The building features the oft-praised Urban Carpet: a dynamic ground plane that curves upward to form the back walls, leading visitors into a suspended mezzanine ramp. This was also one of the few buildings Hadid completed before she won the Pritzker Architecture Prize.Photo: View Pictures/Getty ImagesOrdrupgaard Museum, north of Copenhagen, Denmark (2005)Hadid’s 2005 addition to the Ordrupgaard Museum, just north of Copenhagen, is constructed from black lava concrete and glass, which reflects the lush surroundings.Photo: Arcaid/Getty ImagesNational Museum of the 21st Century Arts (MAXXI), Rome, Italy (2010)Hewn from concrete and steel, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome is built on the site of a disused military compound.Photo: Global Moments/Getty ImagesPhæno Science Center, Wolfsburg, Germany (2005)Hadid’s design for the Phæno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany—an immense concrete structure on stilts—won a 2006 RIBA European Award. The building’s tapering concrete supports echo Hadid’s Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, Austria, where a single concrete tower lifts the ski jump’s runway.Photo: View Pictures/Getty ImagesPierresvives, Montpellier, France (2012)The concrete-and-glass Pierresvives building in Montpellier, France, houses three government departments of the Hérault region: the archives, the media library, and the sports administration offices. Since its public opening in 2012, the roughly 650-foot-long “fallen tree” structure has become a fixture of Montpellier’s eco area.Photo: Getty Images520 West 28th Street, New York, New York (2017)Located along Manhattan’s West Side and next to the city’s iconic High Line public park, this residential building was among the final projects Zaha Hadid designed before her untimely death.Photo: Getty Images/Wei-WangNanjing International Youth Cultural Center, Jiangsu, China (2015)It took three years to complete China’s Nanjing International Youth Cultural Center. The two swooping skyscrapers are located along the Yangtze River and contain offices, a five-star hotel across, a second hotel, and a conference center.Photo: Getty ImagesAntwerp Port House, Antwerp, Belgium (2016)Opened in 2016, the year of her death, the Antwerp Port House was the only government building designed by Hadid. The neo-futuristic design is aggressive in its dynamic lean forward, as if to symbolize the innovation of Belgium’s port city.Photo: Getty ImagesOne Thousand Museum, Miami, Florida, USA (2019)Rising just over 700 feet tall, Miami’s One Thousand Museum is an all-residential condominium tower located on the waterfront. The building’s signature look comes courtesy of its curved structural exoskeleton, comprising of some 5,000 pieces of glass-fiber-reinforced concrete. The tower was completed three years after Hadid’s death, with ZHA seeing the project to its finished form.Photo: Getty ImagesGalaxy Soho, Beijing, China (2012)Galaxy Soho, a retail, office, and entertainment complex in Beijing, comprises four spherical structures clad in aluminum and stone that are bound together by pedestrian bridges. It is one of the most famous projects in China by the Queen of the Curve, ranking alongside the Guangzhou Opera House and Beijing Daxing International Airport.Not a subscriber? 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