“I know people are scared of me.” Zaha Hadid leans forward and avoids eye contact. “But I don’t want them to be. No one is ever going to come to me and say ‘I don’t like you’ or ‘We are scared of you because of x, y or z.’ I have asked people so many times what it is about me and they won’t say. But I think it is because they are scared they can’t control me. Developers can deal with a man like me, but not a woman. If you are a woman and you are strong, you are difficult. And men don’t listen to me. It’s genetic.”
So how does Hadid get over this problem? She breaks into a rare smile and her eyes brighten for a second: “I shout at them. I give them hell.”
Of course she does. Intelligent, ruthlessly honest and direct, the 64-year-old Iraqi-born architect is not afraid to give one-word answers. She smiles sparingly and laughs only when she is really amused.
Her sense of humour is desert dry and her own jokes so deadpan it is almost impossible to tell her putdowns from her punchlines.
Last month the design legend revealed plans for 520 West 28th – a new housing scheme over the New York High Line and her first residential project in the city. The 39-flat block is classic Hadid; weird, wonderful and futuristic. But it is a significant departure for her in terms of the building use – and proof there is more to her than a portfolio of cultural and sporting projects.
Here the first lady of architecture reveals why the time is right to make her NYC resi debut and talks trains, texting and telephones.
Simple complexity
“The design is actually very simple,” says Hadid of developer Related Companies’ 135 ft, 11-storey chevron-inspired residential scheme set to be built in the city’s West Chelsea arts district. Perhaps to a trained eye. But the twists and curves of the design suggest something more complicated, mathematical almost, than she is letting on. But then this is her speciality. The project is Hadid through and through. Which, of course, is where so much of the value stems from – there
could be little doubt that this scheme has been designed by anyone but her.
But with prices starting at $2m buyers are likely to want more than just the Hadid-touch on the design front. Lucky then that the scheme is bursting with extras. From the on-site gallery, automated underground parking and robot-operated storage facility to the 75ft pool and gym, entertainment lounge and a private 12-seat IMAX screening room, there is plenty packed in to ensure the residents get decent bang for their buck.
But why, after all these years, has Hadid finally decided to make her mark on the New York residential scene? “It is such a great city to be in now,” she says. “I like the challenge of the density there. It is a very different density to most other cities. You get a similar feel in Shanghai but it is still not quite the same.
“New York is one of the directions we are looking to move towards more generally as a practice. We are looking to open an office there. But we are also looking at Miami, Chicago… the States in general is very much on our radar at the moment.
And the fact that the scheme is positioned along the High Line – an old train track now used as a linear park – makes it so much the better. “I love trains,” she says. “I love watching them. I had a friend in London who lived in a flat which overlooked the tracks into London Bridge station. It was so close the whole place would shake. And I would watch for hours. There is just something about them.”
Spiritual home
Plus, she adds, New York has always been one of her spiritual homes. Somewhere she has roots. And friends.
Hadid once famously recounted how she would spend her days “in the office drinking cappuccinos and smoking all night long” before “calling all my friends in New York and when they went to sleep calling all my friends in California”.
Does she ever still do this? “No,” she smiles. “I haven’t done that for a very long time. I don’t really phone anyone now. I text message. Phone calls are in the past.”
What about struggling to get men to listen to her? Is that also firmly in the past? Sadly not, she says. But there is no way she is going to let that get in her way.
“I want to be seen as an architect – hopefully a good one – rather than a woman. If people say to me ‘you’re OK for a girl’, I reply with something rude. Always.”
Zaha on Zaha
My most prized possession is… I have no idea. Maybe all my drawings
My last meal would be… Peking duck in Beijing
I love… beauty
I hate… lazy people, hypocrites and opportunists
I will always regret… not driving. It would have liberated me. People say: “But you would have such bad road rage you would be killed.”
Favourite film… Blade Runner
I wish I had invented… something. Anything. Something useful so I could retire.
