Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-born British architect known for her radical deconstructivist designs. She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, she received the UK's most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize twice, and she became the first and only woman to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects. She was described as the "Queen of the curve", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity".