Top 60 Zaha Hadid Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless.”

— Zaha Hadid

2. “There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?”

— Zaha Hadid

3. “You have to really believe not only in yourself; you have to believe that the world is actually worth your sacrifices.”

— Zaha Hadid

4. “Yes, I’m a feminist, because I see all women as smart, gifted and tough.”

— Zaha Hadid

5. “I don’t think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.”

— Zaha Hadid

6. “Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It’s very tough.”

— Zaha Hadid

7. “I am eccentric, I admit it, but I am not a nutcase.”

— Zaha Hadid

8. “I think about architecture all the time. That’s the problem. But I’ve always been like that. I dream it sometimes.”

— Zaha Hadid

9. “I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It’s always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.”

— Zaha Hadid

10. “For a woman to go out alone into architecture is still very, very hard. It’s still a man’s world.”

— Zaha Hadid

11. “Women are always told, ‘You’re not going to make it, its too difficult, you can’t do that, don’t enter this competition, you’ll never win it,’ – they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on.”

— Zaha Hadid

12. “The beauty of the landscape – where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together – has never left me.”

— Zaha Hadid

13. “Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.”

— Zaha Hadid

14. “You really have to have a goal. The goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. Know what it is you want to find out.”

— Zaha Hadid

15. “I really believe in the idea of the future.”

— Zaha Hadid

16. “No. I don’t have the patience, and I’m not very tactful. People say I can be frightening.”

— Zaha Hadid

17. “I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.”

— Zaha Hadid

18. “I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.”

— Zaha Hadid

19. “Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It’s about being educated.”

— Zaha Hadid

20. “As a woman, I’m expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don’t design nice buildings – I don’t like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.”

— Zaha Hadid

21. “Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.”

— Zaha Hadid

22. “I’ve always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic – you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.”

— Zaha Hadid

23. “I used to not like being called a ‘woman architect.’ I’m an architect, not just a woman architect. The guys used to tap me on the head and say ‘you’re OK for a girl.’ But I see an incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it can be done, so I don’t mind anymore.”

— Zaha Hadid

24. “Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.”

— Zaha Hadid

25. “I can’t focus when there’s too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, ‘Tidy up.’”

— Zaha Hadid

26. “I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.”

— Zaha Hadid

27. “Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there’s no reason for it to be. I don’t want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the building industry is all male.”

— Zaha Hadid

28. “People don’t talk to you properly. It’s the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it’s a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.”

— Zaha Hadid

29. “It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it.”

— Zaha Hadid

30. “Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?”

— Zaha Hadid

31. “When I taught, all my best students were women.”

— Zaha Hadid

32. “Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.”

— Zaha Hadid

33. “People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that’s ok.”

— Zaha Hadid

34. “Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.”

— Zaha Hadid

35. “I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion.”

— Zaha Hadid

36. “When women do succeed, the press, even the industry press, spend far too much time talking about how we dress, what shoes we’re wearing, who we’re meant to be seeing. That’s pretty sad for women, especially when it’s written by women who really should know better.”

— Zaha Hadid

37. “I miss aspects of being in the Arab world – the language – and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it’s Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, ‘This river has flown here for thousands of years.’ There are magical moments in these places.”

— Zaha Hadid

38. “When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.”

— Zaha Hadid

39. “People often ask me if I consider myself to be an architect, fashion designer, or artist. I’m an architect. The paintings I’ve done are very important to me, but they were part of a process of thinking and developing.”

— Zaha Hadid

40. “I don’t think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I’ve never had the desire I should have a kid.”

— Zaha Hadid

41. “The paintings have only ever been ways of exploring architecture. I don’t see them as art.”

— Zaha Hadid

42. “I don’t think people should do things because you know, ‘I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.’ If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it’s very nice. But if you don’t, you don’t.”

— Zaha Hadid

43. “I love driving around east London – it’s always full of surprises. Actually, I don’t drive myself – I like to be driven.”

— Zaha Hadid

44. “Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.”

— Zaha Hadid

45. “When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.”

— Zaha Hadid

46. “As a woman, you’re not accessible to every world.”

— Zaha Hadid

47. “All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.”

— Zaha Hadid

48. “I will always have two regrets. I don’t have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.”

— Zaha Hadid

49. “It was such a depressing time. I didn’t look very depressed, maybe, but it was really dire. I made a conscious decision not to stop, but it could have gone the other way.”

— Zaha Hadid

50. “It’s very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don’t think they are burdened by their history.”

— Zaha Hadid