Today’s Google Doodle Celebrates the Late Zaha Hadid
Image courtesy Google
Just over a year after her passing, and exactly thirteen years after she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, Google today celebrates the life of architect Zaha Hadid with its signature Doodle feature.
The Doodle portrays a smiling Hadid standing tall alongside the dramatic, swooping forms of the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. The center, which comprises a library, museum, exhibition spaces, and event venues, was completed in 2012, and is considered to be one of the architect’s most important works. The Doodle’s font evokes the form of Arabic script—a nod to Hadid’s Iraqi heritage.
Born in Baghdad in 1950, she studied under Rem Koolhaas at the Architectural Association in London before working for OMA in Rotterdam, and eventually founding her own London-based firm in 1980. While leading the firm, Hadid broke barriers with her audacious, sometimes other-worldly designs—three-dimensional evocations of her early abstract paintings. In 2016, just two months before she died, she became the first woman to receive the Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects—its highest honor.
Today, as the current leader of Hadid’s eponymous firm, her longtime collaborator Patrik Schumacher is devoted to keeping her legacy alive and expanding the practice. “We have to explore the world market in all its corners,” he told RECORD this March. “That’s the ambition... and that’s what Zaha was also very keen on.”
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