Zaha Hadid

Slate has a piece on English architect, Zaha Hadid (who was born in Iraq btw) winning the Pritzker. I have no idea what the Pritzker means within architectural circles, and I don't know how much it means outside architecture circles, but I've never heard of it before.

My brother, a civil engineer, had the mixed fortune of sitting in on a meeting where Hadid and his construction firm were discussing an entry for a ferry terminal somewhere in Scandinavia. Hadid was going on and on about how she wanted an all glass wall swooshing from the edge of the water up to the top of the building, symbolizing the crashing waves or something like that. My brother suggested focusing on making it easy for people to go from the ferry to the terminal, and back. They stared at him briefly, and then continued their discussion on the crashing waves.

Incidently, the "fire station" mentioned in the article never functioned as a fire station because, well, it was not functional. They turned it into a museum instead.

And people wonder why "it probably won an award" is an insult in usability circles.