Making Waves (and Architectural Fashion Collaborations): Zaha Hadid (1950-2016)

The official email from Zaha Hadid Architects announcing last week the sudden death of Dame Zaha Hadid in Miami came as a shock for many people working in different fields, not just in architecture. You may have liked or not her swirling curves and dynamic waves, but Hadid will pass to history for her futuristic buildings and for a myriad of projects linked with the interior design and fashion industries as well.

Modern fashion has got us used to one architect or studio being favoured by a company or a fashion designer (think about Rem Koolhaas-OMA/AMO and Prada or Peter Marino and Dior) and mainly being called to design a boutique or come up with the concept and space for a catwalk show presentation. Zaha Hadid has instead been among the very few ones working with different houses and brands, developing not just architectural projects, but wearable products as well.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving in 1972 to London. Here she enrolled at the Architectural Association; six years later she established her own practice – Zaha Hadid Architects.

Her early projects were at first inspired by the rigorously aggressive lines of the Russian Suprematists and Constructivists, but later on she achieved an unexpected fluidity of shapes and forms.

Her first major built commission was the daringly pointy Vitra Fire Station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany (1993); more known projects included the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2003); MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome (2009); the Guangzhou Opera House in China (2010); the Riverside Museum in Glasgow (2011); the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games (2011); the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London (2013) and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku (2013).

Hadid held various academic roles at prestigious universities all over the world and her studio often created unique installation at the Venice International Architecture Biennale.

The first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, she won twice the RIBA Stirling Prize (for the MAXXI Museum in Rome and the Evelyn Grace Academy school in Brixton) and, in 2012, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. This year she became the first woman to be awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal. Hadid contracted bronchitis last week and suffered a heart attack while being treated in hospital, dying last Thursday.

Controversies surrounded some of her projects: costs of the London Olympic pool overrun; the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku – named after the former dictator of Azerbaijan (and commissioned by his son) – was built on a site from which families were forcibly evicted; her Qatar stadium project was surrounded by reports about large numbers of deaths in construction that she actually denied, and she was removed from the job of designing Tokyo's Olympic stadium again on the grounds of an escalating budget, although she blamed the opposition of the local architects.

Working with office partner Patrik Schumacher, Hadid developed an interest in designs that combined architecture, landscape, and geology, employing in recent years advanced software to create fascinating curves: her works could be situated at the intersection of nature and the built environment, with her buildings often looking like alien shapes, while her interior design pieces looked like abstract visions of cityscapes.

Her critics may have expressed doubts about the fluid lines characterising her buildings in which the laws of physics were maybe suspended, but her passion for futurism, fondness for parametric patterns and those shapes that combined technologies with forms found in nature, inspired many architects and fashion designers and at times it was easy spotting in different collections the trademark undulating lines, curvilinear geometries and complex elements of her structures, buildings and renderings.

Fashion became another field of experimentation for Hadid who created for Chanel the Mobile Art Pavilion, a spaceship-like structure that toured Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York and Paris between 2008 and 2010.

The structure celebrated the French fashion house through the works of 15 contemporary artists inspired by Chanel's 2.55 handbag (Chanel's resort show in Seoul in 2015 was also held at the DDP, a modernistic space designed by Hadid with the Korean studio Samoo). "She is the first architect to find a way to part with the all-dominating post-Bauhaus aesthetic. The value of her designs is similar to that of great poetry. The potential of her imagination is enormous," Karl Lagerfeld explained when the Mobile Art Pavilion was launched at the 2007 Venice Art Biennale.

Advanced technologies often characterised her fashion projects: Hadid's shoes for Melissa (2008) featured flowing shapes; her footwear for Lacoste (2009) was characterised by a waving pattern reminiscent of a 3D topography and obtained by applying metal plates through a heat embossing and debossing technique to the calf leather.

The sleek "Nova" metallic chromed vinyl rubber shoe for United Nude (2013) was made by combining injection molding and hand-molded methods such as vacuum casting, while rotation molding enabled the shoes' seamless detailing.

A more recent collaboration with United Nude last year produced instead the "Flames" high-heeled shoes, covered in 3D printed spiky thorns that fiercely embraced the foot.

In 2013 Zaha Hadid Architects was commissioned by Atelier Swarovski to create an installation paying tribute to her drawings for the Vitra fire station; she also collaborated with Swiss goldsmiths Caspita on a collection of multi-faceted latticework rings and bracelets entitled "Skein" and inspired by strong cellular structures within nature.

This year, Hadid unveiled instead an eight-piece jewellery collection in collaboration with Georg Jensen inspired by her Wangjing Soho complex in Beijing.

Hadid's ranges of designs included homeware products such as candles and candle holders, candelabra, vases, stools and side tables, and at times she designed exclusive pieces for historical companies such as Lalique, or came up with other alternative projects like a perfume bottle for Donna Karan (2012).

Zaha Hadid also worked on boutiques developing the Neil Barrett Flagship Store in Tokyo (2008), the modular spaces for Barrett's Shop in Shop concepts (2012), and more recently worked on the Stuart Weitzman flagship stores (based in Milan, Hong Kong and Rome, 2013-14), in which Hadid included intricate combinations of curves that formed display elements and seating.

In 2014, Hadid designed the 14-foot high all-white undulating shell-shaped stylised set for "Così Fan Tutte" at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, that featured Hussein Chalayan's transformative costumes; in the same year she customised for Fendi a multi-layered mille-feuille Peekaboo bag for a London charity auction.

Last summer Zaha Hadid Architects worked with musician Pharrell Williams on a pair of trainers for Adidas (the Superstar Pharrell Supershell shoes) featuring toes characterised by the studio's signature lines. Hadid also offered her gallery in East London to young designers (including Thomas Tait and jeweller Noor Fares) so that they could use it to present their collections.

In a way it is easy to understand why Hadid remained one of the most sought-after architects in the fashion industry: her style was indeed as recognisable as that of specific brands and labels.

When Zaha Hadid was awarded the RIBA's 2016 Royal Gold Medal, author, architect, teacher and founder of Archigram Sir Peter Cook (who was also Hadid's former tutor) wrote the following citation: "In our current culture of ticking every box, surely Zaha Hadid succeeds, since (to quote the Royal Gold Medal criteria) she is someone 'who has made a significant contribution to the theory or practice of architecture…. for a substantial body of work rather than for work which is currently fashionable'. Indeed her work, though full of form, style and unstoppable mannerism, possesses a quality that some of us might refer to as an impeccable 'eye': which we would claim is a fundamental in the consideration of special architecture and is rarely satisfied by mere 'fashion'."

Quite a few distinguished architects often attacked Hadid about her projects (maybe jealous of the way she developed her fluid lines from her mathematical knowledge?), but she certainly contributed to open up new perspectives in architecture and also brought changes in a profession that has been traditionally dominated by men (in 1995 her winning design for the Cardiff Bay opera house was cancelled, a decision she put down to prejudice against her being a woman and a foreigner).

Zaha Hadid's portfolio features still unfinished projects, including the Metro Station in Riyadh and the Maths Gallery at London's Science Museum, so we will still be able to see in a near future some of the structures – designed with her studio team – pushing the limits of buildability and offering us all a glimpse of the future.