Architect Zaha Hadid's distinctive style a hit in China, Hong Kong
The Iraqi-born, London-trained architect's distinctive neo-futuristic style has brought her worldwide fame and is helping shape the future of China, writes Jing Zhang
Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid is an anomaly in her field and a force in the design world, not least because her fluid designs consistently push boundaries.
"One thing which has always interested me is the idea of the public domain, and I think in a way that is a political space - an open space for anybody to use," she says.
Her architectural practice has tried to incorporate that notion into all its projects from the start.
I think China right now will go down in history as an amazing moment, the same way they built America
In 1983, she developed a design for a leisure club on The Peak in Hong Kong, but what could have been a major tourist attraction was never built.
"It was such a seminal project," she says, describing the vision as "floating horizontal layers and floating voids".
Three decades later, however, one of those visions was realised at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where the Innovation Tower was completed in September to much fanfare.
Hadid's concept of a deconstructed tower takes on her signature flowing curves and makes an attention-grabbing new landmark against the skyline of Kowloon.