The Sinuous Vision of Architect Zaha Hadid

Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art,
Cincinnati, 2003
Hadid's first completed project in the U.S. was a contemporary-art museum that occupies its corner site like a locomotive in motion. Its longer façade is built from sweeping stacks of white and black concrete layered among strips of glass wall. On its narrow end, those interlocking volumes bolt forward to form a surface of irregular planes, bringing to mind the creative tensions of art, an image of explosive energies producing a new order.

• 2010 TIME 100
• Thinker: Zaha Hadid