Zaha Hadid: The Nonpareil Impact On The World

In 2008 Zaha Hadid was ranked 69th on ‘The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’ list of Forbes. Every building, artifact or installation crafted by her screamed of her identity through them. The bold shapes, asymmetric designs and lots of curves, crystallized contours were her signature style. Breaking the barriers of the contemporary architecture of her times, Hadid became the first Muslim women to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize.

Counted at the top of her game, Hadid was the most influential and powerful women in her arena, known for her futuristic and unconventional spaces that she created in Cincinnati, Guangzhou, Baku and London. She was and continues to be an inspiration for many designers in the fashion industry. Each work of an artist embodies a personality in itself and hadid’s architecture and designs are characterized by the expression of a sense of movement. However, her imagination was not just confined to the realm of architecture, but fashion as well. Apart from being a celebrated architect, Hadid designed Shoes, Jewelry, Furniture, Interiors, Installations, fittings and chandeliers and was also a painter.

Her inspirations stemmed from the dynamic motions of the intersecting routes, volumes and shapes that are not static. Hadid tried to capture the beauty of randomness and chaotic occurrences into massive structures, like freezing an explosion in real-time, or capturing the moment when a tidal wave is in action. The buildings designed by Hadid can never be simple, bland or prosaic, as every segment of the architecture stands bold, as if making an assertive statement of its identity. Her inspirations were drawn from a vast range from geological patterns, topography, landscapes or even sedimentology. The modern infrastructure, the curves, separations, bundling or intersections of motorways served as the ocular exemplars for some of her works. The dichotomy between nature and man-made, and their meticulous interactions were integrated in her experimentation with the visual imaging of the digital videography. The ‘unexpected’ and the ‘dynamic’ are the words synonymous with the design materialized of hadid’s imagination.

The embodiment of Hadid’s dedication and contribution to fashion is the exhibition designed by her known as the “Women Fashion Power” at London’s Design Museum.The uber luxurious designs by Hadid ranged from the mobile art pavilion, inspired by the Classic quilt handbag, that soon found glory globally and became mainstream in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Paris – to the unique Pharrell Adidas sneakers. For the Danish label Georg Jensen, Hadid crafted the sculptural jewelry that represented an extension of her imagination and her unconventional fashion statement and a rustic blend of curves and edges to create the bold geometrical jewelry designs for Aziz and Walid Mouzannar, a Lebanese brand.

Although an ideal Zaha Hadid architecture would be mainly in the hues of whites and shades of Silver, Hadid extended her range in choice of colors by designing the jewelry using yellow gold, shades of Pink, Black and of course, White. Her signature fashion statement was unconventional, dramatic, bold and all black ensembles that made her stand out in the kind of edgy attires and jewelry.

According to Hadid, there was, in recent times, more fluidity between architecture, art and fashion. Having designed for Louis Vuitton, Melissa, United Nude, Georg Jensen, Lalique, Lacoste and Atelier Swarowski, Hadid always found an association between fashion and architecture. Since fashion gives you the immediate spatial and temporal feeling of moving ahead in time.

Zaha Hadid was in effect an exceptional personality, who was way ahead of her time, marking her spirit, brilliance and passion in everything she did. An unrelenting dedication to her art and the unique and spontaneous imagination, Zaha Hadid was a product of her time, who visualized the world in a different perspective and showed us how the future ought to look like.