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Grieving and Going Forward: How Zaha Hadid’s Firm Plans to Move On

Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects.Credit...David Azia for The New York Times

LONDON — White flowers fill the design gallery, with commemorative portraits placed amid undulating furniture of burnished polyurethane and marble. A condolence book rests on a stand, a construction of memories. In the main studios, nearly 400 employees labor away, deadlines pressing.

The people work quietly, still in shock. The woman who brought them here, the remarkable architect Zaha Hadid, born in Baghdad and famous worldwide, died suddenly on March 31 in Miami at the age of 65.

The sadness is strong; the star is gone. In a celebrity-driven culture, what happens to the corporation built around the star, even in essentially collaborative work like architecture?

At the Hadid firm, it is falling to Patrik Schumacher, the thoughtful German who worked alongside Ms. Hadid for 28 years and was her senior partner, to pick up the pieces: keep the staff together, the work flow strong and the clients happy. In a recent interview, he said the firm was moving forward with existing projects, including a stadium for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar; a tower in New York; a bridge in Taipei, Taiwan; and the Iraqi Parliament.

Even more, he must step forward to give the firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, a new identity while honoring and maintaining Ms. Hadid’s sinuous legacy.

“It’s tough,” Mr. Schumacher said, describing the loss of the ferocious, frank Ms. Hadid. “But any star in architecture has been born in the discipline itself, and emerges through schools, competitions and colleagues.”

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Portraits depicting Zaha Hadid inside the Zaha Hadid design gallery in her London firm.Credit...David Azia for The New York Times

Speaking in the Victorian school building in the Clerkenwell district of London, where the studio was founded in 1979, Mr. Schumacher said: “We want to tell the world that we’re still a viable, vibrant address for major work of cultural importance.”

Mr. Schumacher, 54, was the project architect on Ms. Hadid’s first important building, the extraordinary angular fire station, completed in 1993, for Vitra, a furniture company in Weil am Rhein, Germany. “We struggled with the design,” he said, but “we didn’t want to let go of it.” The building put her on the map, and Philip Johnson, the renowned American architect and one of her champions, came to the opening.

Mr. Schumacher has been the co-author of almost all of Ms. Hadid’s famous designs, and also has a significant reputation as a teacher, lecturer and author. He is a theorist for what he has called “parametricism,” which he sees as a successor to postmodernism: shaping architecture with algorithms, computer design and new materials.

But the company will need more, he said. “My ambition is to become more visible as a leader of the field to clients,” he said, while pushing internal research programs “to keep moving forward.”

Mr. Schumacher was wearing a white T-shirt and a black neoprene sport jacket of his own design, an indication of how much he and the studio see architecture as “a language of communication” within spaces, involving furnishings and even clothing, he said, and not just shapely physical shelter.

Clients have been sympathetic, understanding and encouraging since Ms. Hadid’s death, Mr. Schumacher said, and the company has years of work in hand on 36 projects that are already under construction or have design contracts.

The firm has just opened an office in New York and is looking to continue to do “major projects in key cities,” while keeping offices here, in Beijing and in Hong Kong; it plans offices in Dubai and Mexico City, Mr. Schumacher said.

Zaha Hadid Architects also hopes to push further into aviation, having won a contract for a new airport in Beijing.

The track record for firms surviving the death of signature architects, or “starchitects,” is mixed. Well known are the brands that died with them: Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe.

Asked if there were examples of firms thriving after the deaths of their celebrated founders, Mr. Schumacher said it was difficult to draw conclusions. “This star signature is a relatively new phenomenon,” he said, pointing out that the main examples of celebrity architects are still around, if aging, like Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster. Mr. Schumacher mentioned Enric Miralles, a famous Spanish architect who designed the Scottish Parliament building and died in 2000, at 45, but whose firm, he said, is still doing good work. The firm of Michael Graves, who died last year, is continuing to do projects he was working on.

After the shock of Ms. Hadid’s sudden death, there was a week of grieving, in accordance with Muslim traditions, Mr. Schumacher said. In the condolence book, people poured out their hearts. “Zaha, you changed our lives, our industry and the world,” one wrote. “We will miss you.” Another wrote: “Dear Zaha, Thank you for showing us what the future looks like.”

Mr. Foster, a close friend, said on his website, “It was Zaha’s triumph to go beyond the beautiful graphic visions of her sculptural approach to architecture” and turn them into reality “that so upset some of her critics. She was an individual of great courage, conviction and tenacity. It is rare to find these qualities tied to a free creative spirit.”

Mouzhan Majidi acknowledges that the company has a lot at stake, and so does he. He joined Ms. Hadid just 18 months ago as chief executive after 27 years with Mr. Foster and his firm, Foster&Partners, the last seven as chief executive.

Born in Tehran, Mr. Majidi, now 51, came to Britain with his parents in 1976 at the age of 12 and became a distinguished architect in his own right.

What has helped the staff since Ms. Hadid’s death is the crush of work, he said. “She left us at the busiest time ever,” Mr. Majidi said, adding that there was a “high level of determination in the firm” to see its projects through. “We feel very confident that we will carry on and go forward with her vision and her legacy and the experimental research she established in the office.”

Everyone there came “through the school of Zaha,” he said. But as you examine her legacy, he said: “It’s not the master architect who dictates and says, ‘Go and deliver it.’ It’s a collective, it’s a team.” Still, he conceded, she leaves an enormous hole. “We have to prove ourselves,” he said, “that we can go forward and have our own future.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: First a Loss, Then a Pivot to the Future. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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