Zaha Hadid

Just a few months after her death, Zaha Hadid was awarded the Gold Medal that the Royal Institute of British Architects confers annually on a professional whose work has had a significant influence on the advancement and dissemination of architecture. Jane Duncan, current RIBA president and chair of the selection committee for the award, described Hadid as “a formidable and globally influential force in architecture. Highly experimental, rigorous and exacting, her work – from buildings to furniture, footwear, and cars – is quite rightly revered and desired by brands and people all around the world.” The architect, who set up her London practice back in the year 1979, has received in the course of her career important awards like the Pritzker Prize in 2004 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2009. In 2011 she was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). As with the Pritzker, and despite the RIBA Gold Medal’s being around since 1848, Hadid is the first woman ever to win it solo. In accepting it she joins a hall of fame that includes the likes of Rafael Moneo, Álvaro Siza, or Peter Zumthor.