Zaha Hadid
Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough.Collection: Architecture
Women are always told, 'You're not going to make it, its too difficult, you can't do that, don't enter this competition, you'll never win it,' - they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on.Collection: Women
I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.Collection: Design
Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.Collection: Space
People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.Collection: Design
Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.Collection: Education
Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there's no reason for it to be. I don't want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the building industry is all male.Collection: Society
I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.Collection: Architecture
Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.Collection: Architecture
As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.Collection: Architecture
I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.Collection: Design
Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.Collection: Architecture
I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.Collection: Architecture
I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.Collection: Architecture
If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella.Collection: Design
I will never give myself the luxury of thinking, 'I've made it.'
What's nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished.
It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.
I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once you stand them up or wear them, they become something else.
People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.
When I taught, all my best students were women.
It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history.
Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated.
I really believe in the idea of the future.
I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.
You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.
Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.
Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.
I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it?
Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.
I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't.
I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all.
Men think a woman should not have an opinion.
If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.
I don't think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I've never had the desire I should have a kid.
I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.
Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn't say beautiful.
I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.
The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.
I'm a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them.
I like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical.
Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.
I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild.
I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'
What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.