Dame Zaha Hadid, the pioneering architect, passed away earlier today. Architects, critics and other members of the larger cultural community have taken to Twitter and other social media to express their shock and grief.
Here are some of the reactions – we'll add more throughout the day:
36 Comments
A Permanent Void Unique has Materialized in Architecture.
Condolences to her family...but also to her Firm. They all must be shocked and devastated.
Jeezus, leave it to Peter Eisenman to damn with faint praise, essentially saying "she was pretty good, for a girl."
"Said architect Peter Eisenman, who taught at Yale with Hadid. "She was an important person for her gender, but, for me, the most important thing was that she was a defender or architecture. And that's what we need more than anything else today, someone who believes in and defends the discipline."
I thought this Eisenman quote was good. Certainly very few defenders out there in the design intelligenca these days.
Cheeky.
Zaha was beyond brilliant.
LiMX I totally agree with the second half of his statement, but she wasn't just important for her gender. She was, and still is, important to our entire profession, which is not only made up of old white men like Eisenman.
I don't think he was suggesting that she was good for a girl with that statement. I imagine he meant she was important for women in architecture, as in an example for women to aspire to.
I'm sorry, but when you state she was important for her gender, the implication is that she didn't matter for shit, to a majority of the profession; white men. That, is the epitome of sexism.
She mattered to the profession, she mattered to a lot of people, not just women.
You're reading far too much into that statement.
I really feel like I need to clarify. When I opened my Facebook feed today my stomach, my heart, dropped out of the cavity of my torso. Tears actually filled my eyes for a person I never met. That was the Void I spoke of upon seeing the passing of this incredible Genius. I also worry for her Firm and Associates. Though they may be the undoubted support / talent Machine that ran Zaha Hadid Architects, her Signature, Touch on Architecture is no more. This is truly a very sad day for Architecture. Such is life, the torch is passed...
ffs look at the typical insults on this forum whenever zaha came up and ask to whom she mattered.
I think peter's quote is being horribly mangled here: his point is how much she mattered to architecture, with a nod to all the people who want to make it about gender tacked onto the front like a bumper. Shame he even bothered with it, but I imagine he felt an acknowledgement in that direction was worth it. lets all get bent about it.
She was good for everybody's gender.
Can always count on this board to distort someone else's words and create an issue out of none.
I thought Eisenman's words were to acknowledge that Zaha mattered a whole lot more to the profession and not just her contribution to women in this profession as most too often talk about.
Seriously, why are we questioning his words or words of someone who knew Zaha on a far more personal level. Eisenman was her close friend, colleague and taught many studios together. He knew her better than any of us. It made me wonder earlier also when even Gehry had to correct his words about Zaha.
Copied from a link elsewhere.... "among the other quotable moments in the article, Gehry notes that "she was one of the guys," before correcting himself: “[That’s] sexist in its own way I suppose. I don’t mean it that way ... She was undaunted by all the stuff that would be against a woman coming into a field at that level. She didn’t pay attention to it… She was very confident."
We're all too quick to judge and distort words. I'll bet most of us never even had the opportunity to talk to Zaha, let alone know her on a personal level like Eisenman or Gehry did.
No, I'm not reading to much into that statement. Eisenman has always had issues with women. And I love Eisenman's work, he's meant a lot to my gender.
accesskb, this is what media allows, all the more so in social media (unedited). a great architect leaves us early and within 24 hours everyone takes to their agenda to create narratives that fit their world perspectives. and the public including architects are just dumb. for example: when Rachel Maddow has to explain Donald Trumps statements on abortion are essentially the working out of pro-lifer positions - she is being rational, while some other news station report - what brought the pro-lifers and pro-choicers together.........to accuse people who actually knew the architect Zaha of being sexist on her passing is just dumb and inappopriate. now that she cant defend herself or her friends lets make up some bullshit narrative to fit an agenda.....as noted above the negative knee jerk reaction to her work, including the whole Qatar thing has somehow in social media out weighed her architecture - already. architecure is real and social media is not. at least this architects buildings will still be standing when the dipshits on social media trend in another direcrion......instead you should be posting her legacy and if you are so worried about sexism - call Zaha - one of the greatest architects in our era. done.
b3tadine[sutures] : You're reading into it in one of the two ways that sentence can be read.
1. She was an important person for her gender. Meaning, she was an important person for her gender (ie she was important for a woman architect).
2. She was an important person for her gender. Meaning, she was important person for her gender (ie she was important for women architects).
Eisenman didn't even stop there as he went on to say she was important for the architectural profession as a whole. He tried to steer people away from the whole gender thing. You chose the pessimistic view of his first point and then completely ignored his second point.
"Said architect Peter Eisenman, who taught at Yale with Hadid. "She was an important person for her gender [for women], but, for me [white guy], the most important thing was that she was a defender or architecture. And that's what we need more than anything else today, someone who believes in and defends the discipline."
keep at it zenza, you might come to the right conclusion. Because it doesn't take a master linguist to discern that this is a white man's version of "I don't see color."
As I said, context, and the person saying it, matters.
Peter is a good defender of [a]rchitecture, he means a lot to my gender.
Peter is good, he means a lot to my gender.
Yes, perhaps what Eisenman was trying to say was that in addition to being important to everyone, she was especially important to women in the field.
But within the larger context of all the offensive, bone-headed, self-aggrandizing things Eisenman has said in his career, I think there's also a pretty high chance that he was throwing shade. This is a guy who brags about abusing interns. He routinely elevates himself by bashing others.
In the face of losing Zaha, I'm totally over Eisenman, whose output of built work utterly pales in comparison to ZHA's.
On the other hand, that comment wasn't, possibly, as bad as AIA National's tweet, quote: "Rest in peace Zaha Hadid; you were a ground-breaking female architect"
Eff that. She was a ground-breaking ARCHITECT.
I didn't read Eisenman as sexist, especially in reaction to the quotes coming out earlier... Basically a pissing contest for some to put Zaha in their own political context.. Especially Kimmelman who puts gender as primary (see tweet), and then shat on her work in his hatchet-obit: "They were also sometimes deeply impractical, colossally expensive and seemingly indifferent to the program at hand." Never miss a good death to promote your anti-architect agenda! Then, maybe after reading Goldberger's great column in the New Yorker about her "social art", changed his hatchet-obit completely. I guess if there isn't an obvious socialist narrative, Kimmelman isnt on board.
The most sincere, best reaction, probably Pharrell.... Worst, whoever posted a Paul Rudloph picture... WTF.
I agree that the most important thing (to me) about Zaha was her defense of architecture, though that doesn't negate her gender being important as a separate topic.
(Also, beta: the phrase "He means a lot to my gender" made me LOL. That's exactly the point.)
Ugh, the patriarchy rears its ugly head again and half the archinect commenters just don't get it. Of course what Eisenman said was sexist.
I assume most of the people commenting here are half or even a quarter of the age of Frank Gehry. He caught himself slipping up and saying something sexist and immediately corrected himself. One would hope the younger generation would be at least as advanced as an old dog like Gehry.
In any case Zaha Hadid produced way better buildings than Peter Eisenman has ever managed to do and he can't take that away from her.
I agree that Zahas work was better, though Zaha doesn't exist without Eisenman. Anyway, do you mean sexist as in any white male that opens his mouth?
No, because Frank Gehry, who is self-aware, said something about her, immediately understood that it could be taken in a way he didn't mean, and explained his meaning, out of respect for her.
The better quote from his article, though, was this one: (Gehry) says, “I can’t wait to get everybody together and just get drunk some night and talk about her.”
why does zaha not exist without eisenmann? eisenmann is a bad designer, bad architect, and all around bad person.
I think we need to have a talk about architecture Twitter, i.e. people who act offended about zaha being called a "female starchitect" when that is really all they want to talk about
More Than A Female Architect
"What happens next? Her work will continue for years, in the form of buildings that are under construction or just starting construction, products that are designed and ready to begin and plans that have been mapped out but not executed. But her presence, that woman who turned to me in the middle of Manhattan rush hour and told me I could make it? It’s an irreplaceable loss, not just for those of us in her studio, but for an entire generation of architects — men and women alike."
RIP Zaha, because you could care less about pedantic pc interpretations, ya know what Peter really means, and you were always about the work.
Peter is an asshole. He is an inspiration to assholes.
fuck this shithole internet pseudo dialogue. plox continue to stimulate your appropriate orifices . . fucking hate this place.
fucking done.
adios: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FITwy6afNw
adios: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XhQRFO4M7A
NIPPLES STIFFEN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_e6MsZ9-N4
TOGETHER IN THE DARKNESS
together in the darknesss yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQUCpMhLM-4
yawn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qgSBrgZlzM yawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo35O1AJOfg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uJ9jz8NVqk
sing it themselves
love the kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7L-DAqlHrA
hate the digital burbs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5kP-lRh7qw
lets go out buring
Nate, very seriously: Zaha being labeled a "female starchitect" is exactly what feminists don't want to have to talk about. But by ignoring it, the fact that it's a disrespectful label continues to be ignored, and therefore nothing changes.
In twenty years, we likely won't have to talk about how gender labels are exclusionary anymore. Which will be a huge relief to everyone.
Yes, I agree that feminists don't want that. But maybe we should call out those that were pushing that angle in the beginning; many of these design media men and women on Twitter that sort of set it up so that they can act angry later at the very thing they started. Notice many of the architects offered very nice statements.
But some of the reaction was just... ugh. Or worse, those that praised her "female starchitect-ness" and then bashed her work.
On a lighter note, it slays me to see pictures of young Zaha after her passing. There's something so sad about it... like seeing a full life flash before your eyes. Maybe architect should do a series on young architect pictures.. very cute.
AIA National's tweet is the one that pissed me off the most. And I'm a super-active AIA member and supporter! But, damn, did whoever runs their Twitter get it offensively wrong.
I agree that the vast majority of people, architects, have only had great things to say about how important Zaha is/was to our discipline. Even people who don't like her work have been saddened.
Paul's Archinect Weekly newsletter memorial was especially lovely, I thought.
She does look like a funny, mischievous and beautiful Arab kid in that picture.
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