Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid was just five years out of architecture school in London when she stunned her peers with her 1982 winning design for The Peak, a leisure club on Victoria Peak overlooking the Hong Kong Harbor. With this project, described by Joseph Giovannini as "an explosion or a geode or some kind of rock crystal that had been expelled from a mountainside", she "invented a new form of beauty," and she went on to become one of the most sought-after architects in the world, and a role model to many, especially women. Giovannini and others discuss her legacy.