The most successful female architect of all time, Zaha Hadid, CEO of Zaha Hadid Architects, died at teh age of 65, from a heart attack in Miami.

• Hadid was among the most famous and celebrated “starchitects” of her time—a legacy secured in 2004 when she became the first woman and first Muslim to win the coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize, a crowning achievement in the profession.
• She received the Sterling Prize in 2010 and 2011. She was honored as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012—earning her the moniker, “Dame Zaha.”
• In 2016, she became the first woman awarded (in her own right) with a Royal Institute of British Architects’ Gold Medal.

Also nicknamed “Queen of the curve,” the prolific architect was renowned for her dynamic neo-futuristic buildings, stadiums, museums, and industrial designs—distinguished for their multi-perspective sinuous forms, and fragmented geometry.

More about Zaha

• The daughter of an upper-class industrialist and artist, she was born Zaha Mohammad Hadid on Oct. 31, 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq, where Bauhaus and modernism profoundly influenced her youth.
• She studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to study at the Architectural Association School.
• In 1979, she launched her own firm, Zaha Hadid Architects. She also served as an architecture professor and on several boards, including The Architecture Foundation.