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Zaha Hadid, Groundbreaking Architect, Dies at 65 (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article on The New York Times about the death of Zaha Hadid: Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-British architect whose curving, elongated structures left a mark on skylines around the world, and who was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, her profession's highest honor, died on Thursday in Miami. She was 65. Ms. Hadid "contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital," her office, Zaha Hadid Architects in London, said in a statement. [...] She was also a role model and inspiration for generations of young architects, men and women, who wanted to become Ms. Hadid: an architect of boundless ambition, a celebrity, and an artist with big ideas who won commissions for some of the world's big, flashiest projects by the sheer force of her intelligence, creativity and personality. Ms. Hadid epitomized an era when architects became global brands. Her brand promised buildings of extravagant sculptural invention, spectacles of curving, swooping, unprecedented forms. She represented the epitome of the art of so-called parametric design, by which architects, aided by sophisticated computer programs, could animate buildings into new shapes. You will want to read her profile on The Guardian.
These Zaha works are just ugly and trying to be different... I don't think they are aesthetically pleasing.
Sorry, but all the good-looking designs have been taken. If you want to prove to the world that you're a brilliant artistic genius, which they make everyone swear an oath to do in architecture school, then you have to make something ugly, because that's all that's left.
You're probably just not smart enough to see the Emperor's clothes--er, I mean, the beauty.
Zaha Hadid (after receiving a secular upbringing and attending an American university) came to the UK for graduate studies. I don't see anyone complaining about people who do that: indeed, the UK has made such foreign students a major source of revenue for higher education. I don't think that Zaha Hadid's case says much about the desirability or not of asylum seekers.