Zaha Hadid

What failed

She opened her practice in 1979, and for fourteen years not one of her buildings was built. The Peak, the Kurfürstendamm, Düsseldorf — drawn, published, admired, abandoned. Then Cardiff: she won it in 1994, was obliged to re-compete, won again, and lost it anyway when the Millennium Commission refused to fund it in December 1995.

What happened next

She was forty-two before a building of hers existed. She kept the office running on teaching and paintings, took the Cincinnati arts centre, and won the Pritzker at fifty-three — the first woman to take it.

The point

She was called a paper architect as an insult, and for a decade it was accurate. The drawings were not consolation for the buildings she could not get; they were how the ideas survived long enough to be built.