For International Women’s Day, we thought we should highlight a groundbreaking, powerful architect, that also happened to be a woman; Dame Zaha Hadid.

Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, and by 1979 she had her own practice in London, England. It didn’t take long for her to establish a reputation across the globe for her revolutionary theoretical works. She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker architecture prize in 2004 and was the first women to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) gold medal in 2016. Unfortunately, we lost this icon far too soon. On March 31, 2016, she died from a heart attack at 65. Her death sent sweeping sadness through the architectural community, but her flowing structures will forever leave a mark on skylines around the world.

 Some of her More Well-Known Works Include:

Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein (1994)

Riverside Museum of Transport, Glasgow (2011)

London Aquatics Center, London (2012)

Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, Baku (2012)