Aquatics centre architect wins her own gold medal

Hadid was on the show to discuss being awarded the royal gold medal for architecture by the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA). Her neofuturistic style has been both celebrated and derided in projects that have spanned the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics to the Guangzhou Opera House.

An angry Hadid told Montague there had been no deaths on her project and that she should check her facts.

“Many of our chattering classes and not a few fellow architects have treated her with characteristic faint praise”, Prof Cook said.

Responding to the issue, an RIBA spokesman said: “The RIBA was surprised and disappointed by the focus of the Radio 4 Today programme interview with Dame Zaha Hadid this morning”. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, “you are okay for a girl”.

According to The Guardian Hadid said: “I have nothing to do with the workers”.

Montague then ended the item. “I have to put you right”.

“More than 1,200 migrant workers have died there?”

“I sued someone in the press for it and they had to withdraw it and apologise”.

Last year, Dame Zaha said that she was powerless to do anything about working conditions in Qatar, adding: ‘I have nothing to do with the workers.

Montague stuttered “Ok” and moved onto the equally doomed topic of the New National Sports Stadium in Tokyo.

“I didn’t pull out”. If I can just make it clear, the Japanese Prime Minister pulled the plug on it, as we understand it, because of soaring costs – it was a $2bn price. Again, this is a very serious story and it should be reported accurately’. “Somebody should be interested in it because it is a scandal”. “Let’s stop this conversation right now”. “Thank you very much”.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1959), Le Corbusier (1953), Frank Lloyd Wright (1941) and George Gilbert Scott (1859).

After joining former professors Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, she became a partner in 1977 and established her own practice, Zaha Hadid Architects, by 1979.

Commenting on her award, Hadid says she was proud to be the first woman to receive the honour in her own right and that although she is seeing an increasing amount of female architects, a variety of gender-specific challenges still remain for women in the architecture industry.

Prominent Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid is known for her work on landmarks that include Hong Kong’s The Peak. Highly experimental, rigorous and exacting, her work from buildings to furniture, footwear and cars is quite rightly revered and desired by brands and people all around the world.

The Royal Gold Medal award, which recognises lifetime work, is given to a person or group who has had an influence “either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture”.