The first woman to design a museum in the United States has died. Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid created The Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati - a feat the New York Times called "the most important American building to be completed since the cold war."
Hadid was 65.
In 2004, she became the first woman to win architecture's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize.
According to a statement, she suffered a heart attack Thursday while being treated for bronchitis in a Miami hospital.
CAC Director Raphaela Platow tells WVXU in a statement, "We're deeply saddened by the loss of Zaha Hadid, one of the world's most inspirational, important architects. Contemporary Arts Center here in Cincinnati is proud to keep her legacy alive here in the Rosenthal Center for the Arts."
Philanthropist Dick Rosenthal worked with Hadid on the museum. He says she changed the way women were thought of in the world of architecture. "She approached the job artistically, philosophically, in ways that, at least working with other architects, were unique and frankly even magical."
Rosenthal says he will personally miss her a great deal. "She was a star beyond description and I think that the city was very fortunate that she has left her mark on Cincinnati."
More From NPR
From an obituary on NPR's Two-Way blog:
Hadid was born in Iraq — and in a Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, said that her contemporaries had fundamentally inaccurate understanding of the Arab world she grew up in. "Many women went into university and higher degrees and worked in variety of professions," she says. She noted that she went to a Catholic school, despite being Muslim, and her parents were "very liberal and open." Hadid went to school in Beirut, where she studied math, and London, where she later settled. After studying at the Architectural Association in London, she launched her own practice in 1979. She quickly became famous for striking, dramatic and experimental designs — often dismissed as impractical or impossible to build. Her first major design, in the early 1980s, was for the Peak Leisure Club in Hong Kong. She envisioned a gravity-defying, jagged-edged structure perched on top of a mountain. It won a competition for the building's design but was never built. A decade later, Hadid envisioned an angular auditorium for the Cardiff Bay Opera House. That, too, won the design competition for the project but was never built. In fact, despite numerous high-profile designs, only two of Hadid's building designs were realized before 2000: an eight-story housing project in Berlin and the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany.
