for more Zaha Hadid quotes:Click Here

1. What’s similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.
2. Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.
3. I don’t think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don’t take any rubbish, and that doesn’t make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it?
4. I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion.
5. The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.
6. Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It’s a nice idea but not true.
7. I’m a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them.
8. I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It’s always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.
9. When I taught, all my best students were women.
10. You don’t always have to show art in what’s called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
11. I don’t think people should do things because you know, ‘I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.’ If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it’s very nice. But if you don’t, you don’t.
12. The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it’s really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it’s nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.
13. Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
14. I really love Miami, but I don’t think the architecture matches the city. It’s a bit too commercial.
15. I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.
16. For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere — a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
17. Women are always told, ‘You’re not going to make it, its too difficult, you can’t do that, don’t enter this competition, you’ll never win it,’ — they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on.
18. I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.
19. I miss aspects of being in the Arab world — the language — and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it’s Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, ‘This river has flown here for thousands of years.’ There are magical moments in these places.
20. All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.