Zaha Hadid, the world's most famous female architect who attracted plaudits for works of sweeping curves and controversy for huge cost overruns, diedtoday at the age of 65, her company said.
The award-winning Iraqi-British architect was best known for her designs for the Guangzhou Opera House in China and the aquatics centre used in the 2012 London Olympics.
But she faced criticism last year after her futuristic USD 2 billion (1.7 billion euro) design for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic stadium was scrapped amid spiralling costs and complaints over the design.
Born in Baghdad in 1950, where her father was a politician, Hadid forged a career in the male-dominated world of architecture bringing her curvaceous, radical designs to life in glass, steel and concrete.
"It is with great sadness that Zaha Hadid Architects have confirmed that Dame Zaha Hadid died suddenly in Miami in the early hours of this morning," her firm said in a statement, adding that she suffered a heart attack after contracting bronchitis this week.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi paid tribute to Hadid describing her death as a loss for the "whole world".
She had "served the world through her creativity, and in losing her, the whole world has lost one of the great energies that served the community", Abadi said in a statement.
Hadid's other notable works included the Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati and the Guangzhou Opera House in China.
"I believe that the complexities and dynamism of contemporary life cannot be cast into the simple platonic forms provided by the classical canon," she said in her speech accepting the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious in architecture, in 2004.
"The initial sense of abstractness and strangeness is unavoidable and not a sign of personal wilfulness."
Hadid studied maths at the American University of Beirut before going on to study at the prestigious Architecture Association in London, where her professors included leading Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.
