Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.
— Zaha Hadid
My generation were all careerists.
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.
The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it's really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it's nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.
I will never give myself the luxury of thinking, 'I've made it.'
I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.
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.'
I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.
I really believe in the idea of the future.
I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends.
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.
In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran.
I'm into fashion because it contains the mood of the day, of the moment - like music, literature, and art.
I'm a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them.
When I taught, all my best students were women.
I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place.
I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true.
What's nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished.
I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.
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.
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.
I don't think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I've never had the desire I should have a kid.
In hospital, people should be able to have time to themselves.
The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.
Men think a woman should not have an opinion.
Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.
I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they become something else.
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.
When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project.
What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.
The funkiest housing in Holland is for low-income, and I think that's very nice.
My friendships are very important to me.
I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn't say beautiful.
I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.
Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.
My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame.
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.
Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.
People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.
You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
As a woman, you're not accessible to every world.
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.
Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.
Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.
I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild.
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.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.
