Architect Zaha Hadid has been appointed to design a new headquarters for the Central Bank in Baghdad, two months after an assault on the existing building left at least 15 people dead.
This past week, the AK Files of ARTKABINETT collectors social network has focused on the contributions of the fine arts in soothing pain and vilence. We have seen a Jeff Koons medical CT scanner and the new Mumbai Oberoi art exhibition.
Baghdad-born Hadid, 59, was approached by the Iraqi authorities earlier this year, before the attack, said Roger Howie, a spokesman for Zaha Hadid Architects.
Initial talks about the project were held in Istanbul on Aug. 14 in the presence of Central Bank Governor Sinan Al-Shabibi, he said.
Her practice has now been asked for “a feasibility study, brief development and concept design,” a statement from Zaha Hadid Architects said.
Hadid, who in 2004 became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, was born and raised in Baghdad.
Her father was a U.K.-educated industrialist who served briefly as minister of finance and industry before managing a series of household-goods factories.
A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid's winning designs were initially never built.
They are notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong (1983) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore's one-north masterplan.
In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded a CBE for services to architecture.
She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was honored with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.
Zaha Hadid's architectural design firm - Zaha Hadid Architects - is over 350 people strong, headquartered in London. She has even delved into non-architectural projects including furniture and fashion footwear design, like a boot for Lacoste.
The architect last visited Iraq in 1980, and has been based in the U.K. since the early 1970s.
She is a nominee for the 2010 RIBA Stirling Prize, the profession’s highest U.K. distinction, for her MAXXI contemporary-art museum in Rome; the prize will be awarded on Oct. 2.
The Iraqi central-bank building (shown here) was attacked on June 13, 2010 by suicide bombers and gunmen in military uniform, just as staff members were leaving work.
The bombers blew themselves up while gunmen clashed for hours with bank security. Al- Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, the Islamic State of Iraq, later claimed responsibility.
Insurgents wearing military uniforms stormed Iraq's central bank on a Sunday during an apparent robbery attempt, battling security forces in a three-hour standoff after bombs exploded nearby in a coordinated daylight attack that left as many as 26 people dead.
Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi blamed the attack on al-Qaida in Iraq but said no money had been stolen from the bank, which holds gold deposits as well as U.S. and Iraqi currency.
The violence began with the bombings – which sent plumes of smoke over the city skyline – although there were conflicting reports about the number and nature of the blasts.
The first bomb went off on the road near an electrical generator, al-Moussawi said.
Insurgents wearing army uniforms then tried to enter the bank through two entrances, exchanging gunfire with the guards.
He said three suicide bombers detonated their explosives vests at the main entrance of the bank, while two other militants were killed by security forces at the second gate.
Iraqi security forces then stormed the building, prompting a standoff that lasted at least three hours, according to al-Moussawi's account.
An unknown number of attackers managed to get to a higher floor and set a fire to burn some documents and may have escaped by blending in with the bank employees, he added, saying the motive appeared to be to steal the bank's deposits, then blow up the building.
