It’s been over a week since the announcement of Zaha Hadid’s unexpected death and I wanted to take some time to share how Zaha’s work has inspired me, both as an architect and a designer. In 1997, I visited her first built work, Vitra Fire Station soon after it was built. Then in 2003, while I was living in New York, I made a special trip down to Cincinnati, my hometown (big) city, for the opening of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

As the first female architect to ever win the famed architectural award, Pritzker Architecture Prize as well as the RIBA Gold Medal earlier this year. Since it took 25 years since the inception of Pritzker Prize before a female was awarded, it shows how difficult it is to receive recognition as a female architect. I was always drawn to her visionary, painterly approach. And while there was criticism surrounding her work, she made a significant impact on architecture – in her built and unbuilt work – by creating striking new forms and pushing the boundaries of how we conceive of architecture.

Each art progresses at its own speed, and Hadid accelerated her development by taking architecture to what appeared to be unbuildable extremes in drawing and painting.

Joseph Giovanni on Zaha Hadid’s work in “In the Nature of Deign Materials: The Instruments of Zaha Hadid’s Vision”

Just two weeks ago, I shared one of my favorite books for design inspiration in my recent Intro to Photo Book Design Workshop: Zaha Hadid. This book features Zaha’s work in a compelling way. To mark Zaha Hadid’s legendary impact on creative thought, architecture and design, I wanted to share my insights on this book. While it doesn’t get into her work, the book design is a compelling nod to her work: simple, stark contrast and visionary.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this workshop, I’m educated and registered as an architect. So, I have lots of architecture books lying around the house.  As you can imagine, they are heavy on the photographs (and drawings), so their layouts can be easily applied to photo books as well.

I received the Zaha Hadid book as a Christmas gift one year.  It is a compilation of the work (built, drawings, models, etc.) of Zaha Hadid, a female architect based in London.  This is a beautiful book and one I want to feature to you because a) it is a square format and b) it features a black background.  I’m trying to cover all the bases with my photo book inspirations!

A simple cover conveys the form and heavy reliance on the black color throughout the book.  The cover is very indicative of the look and feel of the entire book.  The content of the book is organized into 3 basic parts: a text description of the firm and the project (printed on white paper), projects (black paper) and credits (back to white paper).

A unique feature of this book is that each page is actually a folded-over page, so there are no images on the backside of the paper.  Obviously this is a custom feature, but one I wanted to point out!

I love how the captions are handled in this book.  It may not be appropriate for your family book but it is a sophisticated way to give more information about the photos.  Each photograph is numbered 01, 02, etc., above, and at the bottom of the page is a more detailed explanation of the photo.

The specs:

• Square Size (9.5″w x 9.5″h)
• Soft cover
• 197 pages

The layouts below are inspired by a few of the layouts from this book. Even though this book is 9.5″ x 9.5″, I adjusted the layouts to fit a 12″x12″ square size book.

Want to get jpegs to help you re-create these layouts for your own photo book? I’ve got a great free download for you!