A film about Zaha Hadid honours the ‘queen of the curve’ at Virtual Design Festival
Ashort film about British-Iraqi architect Dame Zaha Hadid was shown for the first time as part of the Virtual Design Festival, the world’s first online event for the industry, which runs until Tuesday.
Architecture critic and designer Laura Mark and filmmaker Jim Stephenson made Zaha Hadid: Words by
Eva Jiricna, using footage that was originally shot as part of a documentary for the Architects’ Journal in 2017, to mark the one-year anniversary of Hadid’s death.
This new film shows snippets of the architect’s work and features the words of her friend, Jiricna. The pair had known each other since Hadid was a student at the Architectural Association.
“I do remember vividly how I met Zaha for the first time,” Jiricna says in an opening narration to the film.
“She never lost her confidence, she always knew that her work was really outstanding,” Jiricna says. “It had movement, it had the forms which nobody had ever seen before. It was fluent, it was communicative, it was beautiful ... When you look around there is absolutely no way not to see her touch all over the world.”
Stephenson returned to the original documentary, which featured people Hadid knew well, and the filmmakers decided to make a short film focusing only on Jiricna.
“Hearing Eva speak about Zaha is always very touching and there is a warmth in her words,” Mark said, according to design website Dezeen. “Sometimes with stars we forget about the person behind the work or the image of them, and Eva’s words really help us to remember this. What we hear is really raw.”
Hadid, who was born in Baghdad in 1950, won many accolades and was described as “the queen of the curve”. She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. She was also the recipient of the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011.
In 2012, Queen Elizabeth made Hadid a Dame for her services to architecture. And, in 2016, a month before she died, she became the first woman to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Hadid’s company has designed some of the most recognisable structures of modern times, such as the London Aquatics Centre, Guangzhou Opera House and Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Bridge.
Hadid died on March 31, 2016, of a heart attack in Miami.
Among Hadid’s many famous works are the London Aquatics Centre and Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Bridge
Katy Gillett