Continuing the saga of the most prolific architects of recent times, the editor of the Architecture Now! series, Philip Jodidio, has now published a monograph on Zaha Hadid (Baghdad, 1950) that updates one of 2009 and is to date the most ambitious and complete compilation of her work.

Starting with a run-through of the London firm’s thirty years, the book is organized in four parts. ‘Early Work’ presents the beginnings of the architect’s career, from student works to competition entries that did not win, yet defined her tectonic vision of architecture, expressed mainly in large acrylic paintings: projects like The World (89 Degrees) or The Peak, a 1983 proposal for a Hong Kong sports club that, included in ‘Deconstructivist Architecture’, the MoMA exhibition curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley in 1988, would catapult Hadid to global fame. ‘Built Work’ presents 26 completed projects, from her Sapporo restaurant (1989) or the Vitra fire station in Weil am Rhein (1993) – through the Planeo Science Center in Wolsburg and the BMW Building in Leipzig (both 2005), and lesser known works like the Sheikf Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi (2010) – to recent ones like the Heydar Aliyev Center in Bakú. ‘On Site’ shows 13 projects under construction, and ‘Design Stage’ another 14 in the creative process, followed by a section on products and exhibitions.

The book shows no plans, but it documents the artificial landscapes that have always obsessed Zaha Hadid in her unrelenting search for fluid, complex, dynamic space.