Zaha Hadid Quotes

My studio's passion is improving the public experience of cities for everyone.

All architecture has a public nature, I believe, so I would like to make a public space.

I love cities, I spend most of my life talking about cities. And the design of cities does have an effect on your life. You're lucky if you can see trees out of your window and you have a square nearby, or a bar, a cornershop, a surgery. Then you're living well.

I'm particularly interested in the public role that all buildings play. I believe that we architects should try to go beyond our basic obligations to the public, and our opportunities to do so are many.

If I were mayor, I'd invite everyone to have free boat trips on the river and free balloon rides over the city. I'd let the elderly in residential homes wander free.

The Huashan project is a clear example of how an urban element, key to the successful growth of the city, can at the same time improve the quality of life for its citizens, thanks to an integration of all three bridges and the creation of boulevards on the banks of the canal.

That is what is so marvelous about Europe; the people long ago learned that space and beauty and quiet refuges in a great city, where children may play and old people sit in the sun, are of far more value to the inhabitants than real estate taxes and contractors' greed.

I think anything that gets people outside [is good] - I'm a big supporter of public parks and public spaces.

I firmly believe that everyone deserves to live within walking distance of either beauty or convenience, if not both.

Most of the job on DDP was already done by the time I became mayor. So was Gwanghwamun Square, described by many architects as the city's worst architectural creation, and the new city hall. I did not think that redoing them would be the right approach as that would only create new problems.

Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social.

Beautiful is difficult. I admire very much the courage of the people who have said, 'Let's do something different. Let's try to see if our environment will be more beautiful and our city will be more beautiful.'

Cities are complex and contain just about any thing or concept ever invented by humans. How the city is built, its topography, and how close you live to your work and a grocery store affects your mobility.

In 'Palaces for the People,' Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces.

If you can't educate your citizens and you can't keep them healthy, you can't begin to be a society.

Transit builds a city that people choose to live in.

I'm not even sure I like surgery, but I like what it does, I like the effects. I like to be able to give people longevity and quality of life, and I also think it's good for people to use the special gifts and talents that they have. And when I was in medical school, when I began to analyze the gifts and talents that I had, I realized that surgery would probably be a very good fit for me.

I think good theaters are really important. They allow you to exist in a space with other people.

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.

I think it would be fair and right to use some of my land and wealth for a drug-rehab center or an Indian school.

Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.

I think we should have more coffeehouses, more cafes, more "third places." More places where people can get together that's not work, not home, and where they can interact with people who are different from them.

I think America causes cancer, longevity is less important than fun, and young people should be discouraged from voting.