Zaha Hadid may have passed away in 2016 at 65, but her architectural spirit continues to shape the Middle East with grace, innovation, and a reverence for heritage. Her UK-based firm carries her legacy of bold Middle Eastern sensuality. She wasn’t shy to dominate an all-male world of starchitects becoming one herself. She even designed refugee shelter with her own brand of culture and grace.
The latest project carrying her name—the Asaan, Misk Heritage Museum in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia—is more than just a cultural institution. It is a homecoming for Muslim and Arabian influence on design and architecture.
Hadad was the first female and first Muslim to win the coveted Pritzker prize.
She was known as “The Lady Gaga of Architecture” but her work was not sustainable by design.
Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) which continues her legacy, and supported by the Misk Foundation, the new museum blends low-carbon adobe construction, according to press materials with bold contemporary design, becoming ZHA’s first earthen building globally. Yet despite its forward-thinking form, the Asaan Museum is built literally and metaphorically from the soil of Saudi heritage.
Related: Zaha Hadid dead at 65
“Asaan” means “inheritance passed down through generations,” and that inheritance is being reimagined in the heart of the Najdi world. The museum will rise in Diriyah’s historic At-Turaif district—a UNESCO World Heritage site where 600 years of mud-brick architecture tell the story of the first Saudi state.
This is not another glass monolith. The Asaan is made of locally produced clay mud-bricks, shaped into thick, cooling adobe walls that honor the vernacular of Najdi architecture and reduce energy consumption in the blistering desert heat. The structure is organized around three shaded courtyards, anchoring programs in education, the arts, and administration, just as the heart of old Najdi homes once revolved around their shaded interior courtyards.
Related: what is Najdi architecture?
Zaha Hadid, born in Baghdad, Iraq was always drawn to the cultural topography of the Middle East. Her projects across the region have been provocative, poetic, and deeply aware of place. From the Bee’ah Headquarters in Sharjah—a Green Prophet favorite for its net-zero ambitions—to the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) in Riyadh, her buildings dance between the sensuousness in math and the mystical.
Related: Saudi opera house modeled after Saudi mud palaces
But, as our resident ports architect wrote, Zaha was in no way an environmentalist, even though we wanted her to be one: “in her penchant for novel building materials, and the result was difficult-to-construct projects that often dramatically blew budgets. She showed a chronic aversion to local context, and no moral conscience when it came to environmental issues, or the health and safety protection for people who brought her designs to reality. Apparently her clients did not find this problematic.”
The Asaan Museum takes that ethos even deeper—into the very earth of Diriyah. The Asaan Museum is part of the ambitious Diriyah Gate masterplan, which aims to transform the ancient city into a 100% walkable, climate-resilient cultural capital. Public plazas, rooftop promenades, conservation labs, and interactive exhibits will bring Saudis and international visitors alike into intimate contact with the country’s layered history.
Related: Catch a glimpse of the House of Saudi’s past, in these incredible mud palaces
The museum is not merely a place to view the past—it is designed to engage, educate, and empower. In a region where cultural erasure often moves faster than preservation, the museum offers a new model: a living heritage center designed by a woman who understood the language of permanence and transformation.
In 2012, Green Prophet wrote about how Zaha Hadid’s work in the Middle East was “a contradiction—extravagant yet humble, futuristic but rooted.” Today, Asaan fulfills that paradox perfectly. It is at once timeless and timely, emerging from the earth to remind us that the future is not built only from new materials—but from memory, identity, and ancestral wisdom. Let’s hope they lose local builders, pay them a fair wage, and that materials are made from local, sustainable sources.
