Zaha Hadid: Definitely worth taking her first on top. 

“Would they still call me a diva if I were a man?”

——Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. In an industry dominated by men, she has achieved groundbreaking success: she is the first and only woman to win the Pritzker Prize solo.


From left to right: Bernard Tschumi, Helmut Swiczinsky, Wolf D. Prix, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Mark Wigley

Her works are signature with bold geometric designs which challenge the norms of an architect, explore the utmost of structure, and promote the application of parametric design. Although Zaha Hadid began her remarkable architectural career in the late 1970s, it would not be until the 1990s that her work would lift her drawings and paintings to be realized in physical form. Her one-of-a-kind designs are beyond imagination, popping her out from a “male-dominant” industry. 


Vitra Fire Station, Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, 1993 


Heydər Əliyev Mərkəzi, Azerbaijan, 2012
 

MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy, 2012

Lina Bo Bardi: Brazil's legendary architect

 
1914.12.5-1992.3.20

Lina Bo Bardi is the most important and expressive modernist architect in Brazil in the 20th century. She is a talented and diversified designer not only involve in architecture, but also in jewelry, and furniture. 

She has the same passion and dedication to each identity.

A prolific architect and designer, she devoted her working life, most of it spent in Brazil, to promoting the social and cultural potential of architecture and design. During her lifetime it was difficult to be accepted among the local Brazilian architects because she was both a "foreigner" and a woman.

With her office destroyed in World War II, Batty, and Bruno Zevi founded Cultural Life Publishing House. As a member of the Italian Communist Party, she met the critic and art historian Pietro Maria Bardi, with whom she returned permanently to Brazil.
 

Glass House

The home she designed for herself in 1951, the Glass House, became a representative work of Brazilian modernism.

Her influence is felt throughout Brazil, not only in the architectural structures she left behind but also in her writing, judging, curating, and teaching methods.


MASP is one of the most important museums in Latin America, The São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), a well-known work of Lina Bo Bardi

Many of her representative works have broken the situation that women have no right to speak in large-scale public construction and created a precedent.
  



SESC Pompéia 1985
 

林璎 Maya Lin: Connecting Human Emotions and Environment

 


Maya Ying Lin, in 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. 


▲ Vietnam Veterans Memorial Project


▲ Vietnam Veterans Memorial Project


▲  v-shaped, with one side pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument

 "I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, and with the passage of time, that initial violence and pain would heal."

It was not well-recognized at the moment. Her winning design was initially controversial for several reasons: its minimalist design, her lack of professional experience, and her Asian ethnicity.
 

“They could not understand how a woman, a youth, and a Chinese American could design a memorial for men, for soldiers, and for Americans.” She recalled. 

But the building has become a bridge for emotional communication, and people let go of their minds in front of the monument. This space expresses people's longing for peace all the time, and it pays attention to the pain caused by war.

The completely non-political and humanized design allows people to react psychologically to it. All the names are arranged in chronological order of death. When facing these names, in a sense, symbolically, you Will see yourself, these names, and then their world, the dark world you can't enter, the living people can only turn around and walk back into the light



Lin has designed numerous memorials, public and private buildings, landscapes, and sculptures. Although best known for historical memorials, she is also known for environmentally-themed works, which often address the environmental decline.

 
▲ Storm King Wavefield, Storm King Art Center, 2007-2008