Quotes from Zaha Hadid

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.

People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.

I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it?

Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.

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

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.

It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history.

You have to really believe not only in yourself; you have to believe that the world is actually worth your sacrifices.

You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.

Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.

There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?

It is insufficient for architecture today to directly implement an existing building typology; it instead requires architects to carefully examine the whole area with new interventions and programmatic typologies

I think that in life you don't need too much; you need friends, you need to do what you like doing.

I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality

I used to not like being called a 'woman architect': I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, 'You are okay for a girl.' But I see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don't mind that at all.

Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.

Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.

I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'

Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.

I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places.

It would be very interesting to design objects for everyday life, something where the ideas that are expressed can be launched into society.

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.