Zaha Hadid: The Complete Buildings and Projects
Rizzoli, 1998
Paperback, 176 pages

The Complete Zaha Hadid, Expanded and Updated
Thames & Hudson, 2017
Hardcover, 320 pages

Back in 1998, six years before she would win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Rizzoli published The Complete Buildings and Projects of Zaha Hadid, featuring an introductory essay by Aaron Betsky, over sixty buildings and projects, and one spread of furniture and objects. At only 176 pages, it is a slim volume, about half as big as the latest expanded and updated Complete Zaha Hadid, published recently by Thames & Hudson. Between the first edition and latest update there were a few more: in 2009, 2013, and 2016, when I wrote about it briefly.
The number and frequency of the updates testify to the increasing output of Hadid's eponymous firm after her Pritzker Prize win, but the latest comes so soon after the previous due in part to Hadid's unexpected death last year. One need only read the first sentence of Betsky's introduction to realize this: "Zaha Hadid was a great cinematographer"; this sentence is the same in all previous editions with the obvious difference of "is" versus "was." Nevertheless, this will not be the last update, considering how many buildings of hers are being completed posthumously.

In last year's Book Brief I wrote that "thankfully Hadid's beautiful paintings from The Peak and other early projects are still an important part of ...