by Rosie Alfatlawi
These are tough times for Iraq. Only yesterday, Tuesday, at least 27 were killed in two bomb blasts in Baghdad. However, Wednesday has begun on a brighter note, with the celebration of a hugely sucessful Iraqi.
Today's Google Doodle celebrates the late Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid. The Facebook page “Baghdad”, which has 1.7 million likes, shared the following this morning.
Google celebrates the awarding of the Pritzker Architecture Award [to Zaha Hadid] on this day, May 31, 2004.
Hadid, who was born in Baghdad in 1950, died on March 31 last year. Known as “the Queen of the Curve”, she was internationally renowned for her innovative and influential architectural style, which can be seen all over the world.
Notable Hadid designs include the London Olympics’ aquatics center, Michigan State University’s Broad Art Museum and the distinctively curved Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan, which can be seen in today’s Doodle.
Iraqis in particular have been expressing their pride in the life and works of one of their most internationally successful compatriots.
Yes we are the most proud of her even after a year and half since she left this world the most greatest Iraqi woman #zahahadid #زها_حديد pic.twitter.com/kiUmUtnbXh
— Simaa Altmimi (@Mileyliam1003) May 31, 2017
i'm proud of you #zahahadid #زها_حديد https://t.co/4nJaectI4H
— AYA #HW (@Ayushaiiq) May 31, 2017
Others have taken to Twitter to mourn the loss of a creative genius, known for introducing unconventional circular and fluid forms into her buildings.
"بموت #زها_حديد لم يعد أحد يكتب الشعر بحبر الحجارة" pic.twitter.com/VyEtlfG9dB
— ٓ (@nakatantheshore) May 31, 2017
"With the death of #Zaha_Hadid there will be no one to write poetry using stone as her ink"
قوقل تستذكر الراحلة "زها حديد" ..
— ماريّا (@imaria_ali) May 31, 2017
مرّ عام على غياب شمس العِمارة، رحمةُ الله عليكِ يامن خرجتِ من بلادٍ مُدمّرة فعمّرتي بُلدان العالم أجمع pic.twitter.com/nwCT2a6I33
Google remembers the late "Zaha Hadid" ...A year has passed since the passing of the sun of architecture, rest in peace you who emerged from a devastated country to construct countries for all of the world.
The Royal Institute of British Architects tweeted the following, including a link to Google’s online exhibit of Hadid’s early paintings and drawings.
We the Dame Zaha Hadid #GoogleDoodle - discover more and see some of her unrealised architecture in VR > https://t.co/BoJxPU294Z pic.twitter.com/MEQMUqfFsY
— RIBA (@RIBA) May 31, 2017
Hadid was also a pioneer for women, and for Arab women in particular.
في ذكرى الرائعة زها حديد المهندسة المعمارية التي ألهمت الكثيرين #نساء_عربيات
— Lama Haddadin لمى (@LHaddadin) May 31, 2017
In the memory of the Amazing #ZahaHadid #Design #ArabWomen pic.twitter.com/erSprGa8Fn
In memory of the wonderful Zaha Hadid, the architect who inspired many #ArabWomen
Hadid may have been the first woman to win the ‘Nobel Prize of architecture’, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, but she was not stranger to sexism.
In an interview with BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs shortly before she passed away, she attributed the various controversies of her career to a “triple whammy: I’m a woman and that’s a problem for some people, I’m a foreigner, and I do work which is not normative, not what they expect.”
RA
