From Zaha Hadid Architects to ZHA

In the firm's announcement of the name change on social media over the weekend, the present point, ten years after Zaha Hadid's passing, is also a time when “the final projects led by our founder near completion.” As such, principal Patrik Schumacher feels “it is a very natural brand evolution to move to a more collective identity” for the 500-person, employee-owned firm. How did we arrive at this point, from a singular, towering figure in the architectural avant-garde to a firm working on more than a hundred projects on six continents, one eschewing its founder's name? Wondering that ourselves, we put together a timeline focused on Hadid and her eponymous practice:

• 1977: Zaha Hadid graduates from the Architectural Association in London.
• 1979: Hadid establishes Zaha Hadid Architects in London.
• 1988: Patrik Schumacher starts working with Hadid.
• 2003: Schumacher is made partner at Zaha Hadid Architects.
• 2004: Hadid wins the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the first woman to do so.
• 2014: Hadid establishes the Zaha Hadid Foundation as a means of preserving her legacy.
• 2016: Hadid dies from a heart attack on March 31 at the age of 65.
• 2020: A court rules Hadid's assets will go mostly to the charitable Zaha Hadid Foundation and her shares in the firm would be transferred to a tax-efficient employee benefit trust chaired by Schumacher.
• 2021: Zaha Hadid Architects transitions to employee ownership.
• 2026: In late February, an appeals court rules in favor of the firm being allowed to change its name and renegotiate a trademark license that required it to pay 6% of its revenue to the Zaha Hadid Foundation every year.

This gets us to today and the transition from Zaha Hadid Architects to ZHA. The announcement of the name change and new registered company name (ZHA Architects Limited) is accompanied by a new website, a new visual identity, a marketing push, and everything else one would expect under such professional circumstances. 

With the final projects Hadid was working on at the time of her death now “near completion,” with Hadid's name now removed from the firm's name, and with Schumacher the only apparent tie to her legacy, some big questions remain: Will architecture media continue to cover every new project and building completion coming out of ZHA? And will architecture students and other architects look to ZHA, as they did with Zaha Hadid Architects, for what is new and cutting-edge in architecture? Based on the recent announcement and the presentation of the office on its new website, Schumacher and company certainly think so.