One of Britain's most innovative architects, Zaha Hadid, has died at age 65.
Hadid's firm says she died Thursday at a hospital in Miami, Florida, where she was being treated for bronchitis.
In 2004, Hadid became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award for architecture.
The American philanthropist Thomas Pritzker, presenting the award, said Hadid's work "organizes land, space, structure and person so that each is inseparable from the other, and each calls to the other."
Born in Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics at the American University in Beirut. She completed her architectural studies in Britain, where she continued to live and work.
She designed projects around the world including the glass, granite and steel Guangzhou Opera House in China, the London Aquatics Center, built for the 2012 Olympics, and the Sheikh Zayed bridge in Abu Dhabi, a curved design meant to "evoke the undulating sand dunes of the desert."
At the time of her death, Hadid was working on stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and a new Iraqi parliament building in Baghdad.
Earlier this year, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Hadid its Gold Medal, honoring her as "a formidable and globally influential force in architecture."
"Part of architecture’s job is to make people feel good," Hadid said in her remarks to the RIBA, "in the spaces where we live, go to school or where we work - so we must be committed to raising standards."
(Photo: Zaha Hadid in 2011, from the Knight Foundation)
