Zaha Hadid : 1950

Building the future now. The iconic work of a singular architect. Zaha Hadid is a wildly controversial architect, who for many years built almost nothing, despite her designs winning prizes and critical acclaim.

Some even said her work was unbuildable. Yet over the past decade she has completed numerous structures including the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (which the "New York Times" called "the most important new building in America since the Cold War"), the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany, and the Central Building of the new BMW Assembly Plant in Leipzig.

Today, Hadid is firmly established among the elite of world architecture, her audacious and futuristic designs having catapulted her to international fame. Every book in TASCHEN's "Basic Architecture Series" features: approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans; introductory essays exploring the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects; the most important works presented in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes as well as construction problems and resolutions; and an appendix including a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations of the architect's most famous buildings.