The Sinuous Vision of Architect Zaha Hadid

Vitra Fire Station, Weil Am Rein, Germany, 1994
One of Hadid's enduring inspirations has been the early 20th century Suprematist art of Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky, with its rejection of single-point perspective, airborne shards and multiple vanishing points, which she managed to translate into genuine architectural forms. You can find their influence — and maybe also a nod to the massive steel plate sculpture of Richard Serra — in the thrusting, angular planes of her first completed building, a firehouse on the manufacturing campus of Vitra, a furniture company known for commissioning buildings by significant architects like Hadid, Frank Gehry and Tadao Ando.

• 2010 TIME 100
• Thinker: Zaha Hadid