140 Quotes by Zaha Hadid

For a woman to go out alone into architecture is still very, very hard. It’s still a man’s world.

I really love Miami, but I don’t think the architecture matches the city. It’s a bit too commercial.

I made a decision when I was in school that I’d have a lot of male friends.

No. I don’t have the patience, and I’m not very tactful. People say I can be frightening.

I will always have two regrets. I don’t have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.

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.

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.

The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it’s really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it’s nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.

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.