The World Is Not a Rectangle

A Portrait of
Architect Zaha Hadid

Beach Lane Books
(Simon and Schuster)

(pub. 8.22.2017)
56 pages

A True Tale with
A Cherry On Top   

A uthor and illustrator: Jeanette Winter

C haracter: Zaha Hadid

O verview from the jacket flap: 

     "A young girl in Iraq saw the wild beauty of the rivers and marshes and dunes and ancient ruins in her country and dreamed of designing wild and beautiful cities of her own.
     Her name was Zaha Hadid.
     When she grew up, she became one of the most irreverent, controversial, and celebrated architects in the world.
     This is her story."

T antalizing taste: 
      

     "Zaha's designs don't look like other designs.
      Her buildings swoosh and zoom and flow and fly.
     'The world is not a rectangle.'
     No one wants to build her unusual designs. They say they can't be built, but Zaha knows they can.
     So she enters competition after competition, hoping to win, hoping someone will be brave enough to build them.
     ...  Hadid means iron in Arabic, and Zaha is strong as iron.  She keeps on working - one plan after another.
    'I made a conscious decision not to stop.' 
     Zaha remembers the grasses in the marshes swaying and sees tall buildings dancing like grass...
     Zaha remembers the wind in the dunes and feels it blowing over and around and through her desert building"

 

and something more: Jeannette Winter's Author's Note explains her inspiration for creating this wonderful book, The World Is Not A Rectangle: "When I first saw photos of Zaha Hadid's architectural designs in 2010, the buildings seemed to fly. My spirit also took flight - to a place in my imagination that only landscape had taken me before. I had to find out more about her." And, of course, I wanted to learn more also after reading her book. This article from The Guardian shows and describes ten of her wildly creative designs that lifted Jeannette Winter's spirit.