Zaha Hadid receives the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture at a ceremony held today at the University of Virginia. The honor is only the latest for the British architect, born in Iraq, who in 2004 became the first women to win architecture’s top prize, the Priztker. In winning the Jefferson, Hadid joins a distinguished group of architects, writers, and planners including Mies van der Rohe, Lewis Mumford, Ada Louise Huxtable, James Stirling, Frank O. Gehry, and Jane Jacobs. The Jefferson Foundation and the University of Virginia have jointly awarded the medal for architecture since 1966. Former Federal Reserve chairman

Starchitects Join Abu Dhabi's Big Cultural Gambit For architecture lovers its name seems especially apt: Saadiyat, the “island of happiness.” In roughly a decade, this undeveloped piece of land in Abu Dhabi will be home to an unprecedented concentration of buildings by Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando, and Zaha Hadid. The Saadiyat Cultural District is one of six neighborhoods planned for a harbor island in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. Spearheaded by Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development and Investment Company, the $27 billion project is intended to increase tourism to this oil-rich Persian Gulf state. It is