Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid's architectural career has been neither traditional nor easy. She entered the field with illustrious credentials. Born in Baghdad, she studied at the prestigious Architectural Association in London, was a partner in the avant-garde Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Rem Koolhaas, and has held prestigious positions at one time or another at the world's top universities, including Harvard, Yale, and many others. Much admired by the younger generation of architects, her appearance on campuses is always a cause for enthusiasm and overflowing audiences.

Her path to global recognition has been a heroic struggle as she has risen inexorably to the highest echelons of the profession. Clients, journalists, colleagues are mesmerised by her dynamic forms and her strategies for achieving a truly distinctive approach to architecture and its environments. Each new project is bolder than the last and the sources of her originality seem endless.

Ms Hadid enjoys increasing recognition as she wins one competition after another, always striving to get her winning, highly original works built. Discouraged but undaunted, she has used the experiences of the competitions as a "laboratory" to further hone her exceptional talent in the creation of an unparalleled architectural language.

Not surprisingly, one of the architects whose work Ms. Hadid admires is another Pritzker Prize winner, the pre-eminent South American author of Brasilia and other great works: Oscar Niemeyer. Both share a certain fearlessness in their work and are not afraid of the risk that their respective vocabularies of bold and visionary forms inevitably entail.

The competition-winning phase of Ms Hadid's career gradually began to result in built works such as the Vitra Fire Station, the LFone in Weil am Rhein, the Mind Zone at the Millennium Dome and reached its climax recently with the opening of the acclaimed Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Ms Hadid's prodigious artistic output manifests itself to the fullest extent not only in architecture, but also in exhibition designs, set designs, furniture, paintings and drawings.

The Jury is delighted to recognise one of the great architects of the dawn of the 21st century by awarding the 2004 Pritzker Architecture Prize to Zaha Hadid. We commend her extraordinary achievements and wish her continued success.