Zaha Hadid: Architecture's Rising Diva

Who's Calling Zaha Hadid A Diva?

It should be the perfect spot for an interview with Zaha Hadid, the famous architect and designer: in an atrium in Miami's Design District, beneath a three-story Hadid sculpture that looks like a spider web made from taffy, sitting on her favorite 1960s swoopy plastic chairs. But Hadid isn't happy. "It's freezing in here," she says as soon as she arrives, and has the chairs and the writer pushed out into the Florida heat.

"They always say I'm a diva--but they don't call the guys a diva. It's just because I'm a woman," says Hadid, maybe with good cause; the lady's allowed to feel cold, after all. Yet her presence is undeniably operatic. Hadid is a large 60-year-old who dares to dress in shiny black leggings and a Miyake top that looks like crumpled origami. A ring on one hand extends into a mane of gold tassels. "You can't eat with it," she says. Her eyes are hidden behind big Prada glasses, Liz Taylor style, and she talks with a Lauren Bacall growl.

To read more of Newsweek's interview with Zaha Hadid, visit The Daily Beast.

And to see Zaha Hadid give a tour of her Riverside Museum, watch this.

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