Session Two: Writing from the Last Decade - Jonathan Meades - An Article on Zaha Hadid

THE FIRST GREAT FEMALE ARCHITECT by Jonathan Meades - Intelligent Life 2008

Admittedly, I had to read the article a few times—with my dictionary in hand, it has far too many jargon words for a foreign student—and every time there were different feelings or thoughts about the article. The article reads like a mandatory 3000 word essay and is quite an heavy read and clearly the interviewer seems to be more interested in what he has to say rather than to focus on the interviewee. A read that left much to be desired, to be sure.

Jonathan starts his article with some basic observations on Zaha's office and the people who work there.

The location remains the same, only the building's signage has been upgraded. This 'factory for art' remains and is even bigger than ever, with nearly double the employee count today at 350.

At first I found Meade's article to be somewhat disrespectful towards Zaha, like he wanted to provoke some sort reaction. I felt maybe this was another gender attack...

Reading for the second time and putting my professional hat on, I realized, actually he is telling us about the facts of today's architecture and being critical about Zaha's work and not talking about her personality or whatever it felt like when I read this the first time around,

I think Jonathan in his article is looking for answers. Who is Zaha Hadid? She is known and publicized as an "Icon", but little else is known about the person behind the image, which may very well be an intentional move to project a specific image.

"The first architect to be so blessed since Mies(van der Rohe)". Surely this is not true. How about Alvar Aalto or Gaudi? Their architecture seems to be more relevant to Zaha's work rather than what is suggested by Meades article.

Where do her inspirations come from, what is her process? Those are what one should be asking.

"I rather suspect that Zaha has an ancient fear: that to discover how her processes work would be to jeopardise them."

Zaha is mysterious; she doesn't want to share her private life, or work/creative processes. I suspect there is no great mystery but rather some simple and poignant facts that when revealed, the allure to the architect maybe lost.  
However, she shared one thing her dream to design an entire city.  "A city. A city! Without looking backwards".  She contradicts herself several times throughout.
Her distaste for anti-modernist escapism architecture is total, doesn't like retro-developments and Disney's celebration. She still dreams about creating Hadidopolis.

However, she is not the first architect who dreams big - maybe even not the first female to do so. 
Certainly is the only internationally known and clearly sought after, as Zaha's company growth indicates.
Le Corbusier in 1920's wanted to demolish downtown Paris to pull up his monster towers. 
Architect's purpose is to call attention to the different roles architecture can play, and the potential of cities to function differently. 

"Despite its practitioners' fastidious, perhaps delusional protests that it is a creative and scientific endeavour, architecture is a very big business, one that is involved in the creation and sale of one-off objects: it is a trade dealing mostly in the bespoke."

Seven years ago Jonathan Meades said about Zaha "The world is waking up to her". I think he was right. The world is recognizing her work, even thought she still gets criticised and maybe not every project has been such a great success.


Zaha will next year become the first woman to win the Royal Gold Medal in her own right in the 167-year history of the prize.
Unfortunately what should have been her moment of thunder, was instead yet again cut short as the story hit the headlines shortly after the announcement was made - being cut off during a live radio interview over allegations regarding deaths on her Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar. 
Design critic Stephen Bayley later described her as aggressive, intractable and bitter. Would Bayley see the same way if Foster or Koolhaas did the same?

While the gender aspect is still a wall that must come down, there are many issues that stifle the growth and recognition of Architects throughout the world.
In some ways I would have liked to have read about how politics have impacted the progress of Zaha's recognition as an Architect. However it does mention architecture as a big business and in my opinion aiming at the top 1% something somewhat of a problem for the future of architects and architecture, while perpetuating this absurdly archaic legacy that has remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.