Zaha Hadid (1950–2016) was an Iraqi-British architect whose buildings broke with straight-edged modernism, first through sharp, tilting planes and later through long, flowing curves. Born in Baghdad and trained at the Architectural Association in London, she used painting as a design tool, was shown in the 1988 "Deconstructivism in Architecture" exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and in 2004 became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize.
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Her first built project, the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein (1993), is made of angled planes of exposed concrete. The Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg (2005) lifts a concrete building onto ten hollow cones, each holding a room, leaving open space beneath. MAXXI in Rome (2010) won the Stirling Prize. The London Aquatics Centre (2011), built for the 2012 Olympics, has a wave-like roof that Hadid said was inspired by moving water. The Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku (2012) folds the ground into one continuous surface and avoids straight lines altogether. Zaha Hadid's projects are studied for the way new forms and their structure were invented together.