GGA Architecture May 2016 5 Zaha Hadid, the 21st Century’s most influential architect, embodied the philosophy of Philip Johnson, one of the 20th Century’s greatest architects, through designs that spoke truth to his observation that “[a]ll architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.” In reality, especially in America, pu blic places built over the past few decades like the New Museum, LA Live, or Penn Station are mostly unpleasant places that are there to be endured rather than enjoyed. The lesson Hadid taught us was that it doesn’t have to be that way. Her greatest proje cts, freed from orthogonal oppression, achieved what all public architecture should aspire to in being massive, fully functioning gathering places that also gracefully invite us to pause, look around, and marvel at what is physically possible. Last year, Hadid was poised to build upon her stunning London Aquatic Centre and do for stadiums what she’s done in transforming the way we think of railway stations, museums, and libraries by starting work on Tokyo Olympic project. But, quietly last December, the Ja panese government plucked Kengo Kuma out of architectural obscurity to replace Hadid to design the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Stadium. In choosing Kuma’s s o - called “hamburger” design, Japan’s Olympic overseers showed their lack of appetite for anything bold, daring, or inspiring. With Hadid’s untimely passing, her firm’s involvement in the project is moot. But she leaves us with another important lesson, on e that applies to architects and to all those whose livelihoods rely on the purses of capricious men, and it dates back to the very land that birthed the Olympics. In An cient Greece , on the island of Crete, King Minos’ wayward wife had a bizarre affair with a raging bull. When she then gave birth to a terrifying half - man half - bull Minotaur, King Minos faced an unappealing dilemma many fathers will sympathize with - where to house this ravenous stepson? So he commissioned the famed Athenian architect Daedalus and his son Icarus to design an elaborate maze, called labyrinthos , to imprison the beast. GGA Architecture May 2016 6 But Daedalus suffered a fate far worse than an unpaid invoice when an enrag ed King Minos threw father and son into their very own labyrinth for daring to help his daughter’s lover both escape and slay the Minotaur. From here the story becomes more familiar as Icarus infamously flew too close to the sun during their escape. This G reek myth is the O.G. lesson about hubris, but for architects and all those who are self - employed, the message is far different - beware of kings and powerful people bearing grand commissions, for they are fickle and cruel. Unfortunately Hadid learned the hard way that nothing is different in modern Japan. In 1994, Haruki Murakami published his masterpiece, The Wind - Up Bird Chronicle , where, as one New York Times cr itic proclaimed, “East meets West.” Yet Murakami’s Japan is still being run by powerful men, and men only, who, while modern in appearance, don’t behave all that differently than good ol’ King Minos. Similarities to ancient Crete abound. Dark, inescapable wells have replaced labyrinths. Even one of the heroines, Creta Kano, “the prostitute of the mind,” is named after Daedalus’ island of doom. In 2012, Hadid won the fiercely fought design competition for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Stadium. Her stadium would have been a sinuous voluptuous beauty. It would easily have been one of the most dynamic and triumphant stadiums in an Olympic lin eage that too often has veered to retrograde and utilitarian bowls like Kuma’s low - energy “winner.” Her selection was stunning for such a conservative country and offered hope that its establishment was indeed changing. But, suddenly last summer, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe smugly announced that he was scrapping Zaha Hadid’s design because of its su pposed high price tag. Under any other circumstance this would have been a reasonable and sincere concern - if Hadid had been told first and given a chance to address the cost. Sadly, few rallied around Hadid - a woman who has done so much for the profess ion through her designs, her teaching, and through her 400 - person strong firm. On the contrary, high - profile politicians, architects, and designers - all men - rushed to form a pig - pile of scorn and snobbery. Arata Isozaki, the prominent Japanese architect , in a poor attempt at humor, likened her design to “...a turtle waiting for Japan to sink so that it can swim away.” Pritzker Prize - winning Fumihiko Maki organized a group of fellow small - minded architects and designers to decry Hadid’s plan and even held a symposium called “Re - thinking the New National Olympic Stadium.” Even the head of the committee that originally chose Hadid’s design, fo rmer Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, joined the conga line of contempt by saying “It looks like an oyster. I’ve always hated it.” It’s apparent that the “Japanese Architects Club For Men,” along with the nation’s political elite, so well understood by Murakami, achieved what they had set out to do in their feudal misogyny and killed two wind - up birds at the same time, an architect who was both a foreigner and a woman. But then again, this would come as no surprise to Murakami’s Creta Kano. GGA Architecture May 2016 7 And so, one of Hadid’s most daring designs will never come to fruition. It’s Japan’s loss, and the stale retread Tokyo Olympic Stadium will join the ranks of other munda ne modern sports arenas like New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium, Paris’ Stade de France, and London’s lame trifecta of Wembley Stadium, Emirates Stadium, and Olympic Stadium. But ultimately, Hadid will be validated as the way our ci ties look will increasingly reflect her designs. And hopefully her difficult Japanese experience will show other architects how much harder they have to work to make beautiful visions come to fruition. Walter Gropius. IM Pei. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Philip Johnson. Le Corbusier. César Pelli. Frank Lloyd Wright. Buckminster Fuller. Antoni Gaudí. Norman Foster. Oscar Niemayer. Eero Saarinen. Frank Gehry. The 20th Century’s most influential architects were all men. But the 21st Century’s most infl uential architect is a woman, the late Dame Zaha Hadid. While she never wanted to be pigeon - holed as “just” a female architect, we must recognize and remember how she reduced the sexist barriers put in her way by a patriarchal profession to rubble. “It is a very tough industry and it is male - dominated, not just in architectural practices, but the developers and the builders too,” Hadid said in a 2013 Observer interview . Early on she was pushed toward interior design, but fighting against a male - chauvinist mentality was but one of many battles in her remarkable career. Born in a briefly secular Baghdad in 1950, she attended the Berkhamsted School in England before studying mathematics at the American University of Beirut. London was always calling, so she then enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture where she could hone her progressive nature in the shadow of the British Museum. GGA Architecture May 2016 8 Despite her prestigious educational pedigree, acceptance into the British establishment for an Iraqi - born Muslim woman wasn’t easy. As the Guardian noted , “Hadid was commissioned more abroad than in the UK.” This past February, Hadid told the BBC that “I don’t really feel I’m part of the establishment, I’m not the outside, I’m on the kind of edge, I’m dangling there. I quite like it.” Of course, that brash and brassy attitude helped her deal with all that was thrown in her way. Up until the very end she had to overcome tremendous ignorance, fear, and plain old male chauvinism. As discussed here on the Huffington Post , late last year the Japanese government replaced Hadid’s stunning Tokyo 2020 Olympic Stadium design with Kengo Kuma’s pedestrian bowl. Implicit in the rejection was a fear of forward - thinking design and a desire to pr eserve the Japanese Architect’s Club for Men. As Frank Gehry told Time , “She was undaunted by all the stuff that would be against a woman coming into a field at that level. She didn’t pay attention to it ... She was very confident.” She needed every last ounce of that confidence as British indifference toward her work forced her to seek paying projects in far - flung corners of the globe. When she f inally had the freedom to breathe life into her abstract dreams there came a seemingly unprecedented architecture. The last time such an aesthetic revolution occurred was when the first Bauhaus buildings began appearing in the West in the 1920s. Contrary to common belief that particular revolution, like Hadid’s at the end of the 20th Century, didn’t happen overnight. Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, whose Vers une Architecture gave the movement its philosophical foundation, were very well aware that they were merely the inheritors of Western Civilization’s foundational epochs: the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Hadid, in turn, inherited their legacy of synthesizing history’s lessons with futurist visions to shape the modern, and incidentally, her Mesopotamian birthplace was where Western civilization began. Her vision is defined by the fluid and sinuous designs that shattered our sense of what is physically possible. Her buildings took the 20th Century mainstays of concrete, glass, and steel and sent them soaring across great expanses of space. Freed from orthogonal oppression her avant - garde dreams in turn free d us from brutalist - inspired public spaces that were there to be endured rather than enjoyed. Decades of hack architects who’ve misinterpreted Bauhaus combined with parsimonious politicians have produced inhumane, dank and dour public places. Think of Bos ton’s City Hall , Montreal’s Place Bonaventu re , London’s Barbican Centre and Euston Station , New York’s Jacob Javitz Center and Penn Station. In Hadid’s greatest works, the London Aquatics Centre , the Hungerburg station , the Guangzhou Opera House , Glasgow’s Riverside Museum , Beijing’s Galaxy Soho, she somehow created massive structures that are at once ephemeral. Despite their scale they are warm and inviting places. GGA Architecture May 2016 9 It is the kind o f architecture that is now being replicated in cities around the world in rapid recognition of her foresight. Architecture, like society at large, is adjusting as the world spins ever further away from 19th century British Imperialism and 20th Century Amer ican dynamism. Hadid was at the forefront of that change. She made distant corners architectural destinations. She was among the first to realize the potential of using modern computing power to break the bounds of traditional structural engineering, whic h in turn allowed her to break the bounds of an über - traditional profession. This opened the doors to structures that will shape the way our cities look for decades to come while opening the doors to those traditionally barred from the profession’s upper echelons. Historically, she is likely the most important female architect of all time. But thanks to her work there will be far more competitors for that title in the years to come. “Your success will not be determined by your gender or your ethnicity,” said Hadid in a letter written to her younger se lf in a feature for the BBC this past March, “but only on the scope of your dreams and your hard work to achieve them.” Follow Garo Gumusyan, AIA on Twitter: www.twitter.com/garogumusyan