I have never known anyone whose reputation provoked more terror yet whose actual presence was more fun than Dame Zaha Hadid’s. There have always been difficult personalities in architecture. The profession itself seems calculated to make one egotistical and intractable. But it always amazed me that Hadid had somehow attracted a singular reputation for being difficult to deal with. Compared with other prominent architects, no one was more down to earth, more exuberantly real, than her.
