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Architect Zaha Hadid Leaves £67 Million Fortune | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, seen in this 2014 file photo. AP


London – Architects Journal (AJ) magazine published Zaha Hadid’s will revealing that the late architect left a fortune of £70 million, and after debts, the estate’s total value stands at £67 million.

Hadid left a sum of £500,000 to her business partner Patrik Schumacher, the only non-family beneficiary named in her will.

The £70 million figure is the gross value of all Hadid’s assets in the UK, including Zaha Hadid Association, for which she was the sole shareholder, her other companies, plus her own private wealth, including her penthouse apartment in Clerkenwell, London.

Hadid gave her trustees power to distribute all or some of the income from her several businesses to a wide range of parties, including “past, current, and future employees and office holders of the companies,” and the Zaha Hadid Foundation, reported the magazine. Others who could benefit are family members and charities.

Hadid instructed that if the executors fail to reach an agreement, or take no action within 125 years, the estate will be transferred to the Zaha Hadid Foundation. Executors, however, may face a legal challenge if they do not distribute the estate in the beneficiaries’ best interests.

The architect’s will executors include: Hadid’s niece, architect Rana Hadid, and two close friends, artist Brian Clarke and property developer Peter Palumbo, in addition to Schumacher.

Hadid named Rana Hadid, Clarke and Schumacher as executors on April 2, 2015, and added Palumbo later on April 14.

According to experts, Hadid’s will was likely to have been accompanied by a non-legally binding private letter of wishes, setting out her intentions for the estate in greater detail to the executors.

Ceris Gardner, partner at private wealth law firm Maurice Turnor Gardner, told AJ: “The only guidance is likely to be in that letter of wishes, which almost certainly will have accompanied this will. But it is not a public document.”

He explained that the executors have the power to split it up as they want to; whether give it all to charity or family or Patrik. It depends on what they choose to do and how they are guided by the letter of wishes.

Hadid was born in Baghdad in 1950 and was made a dame in 2012.

She became the first female recipient of the Pritzker architecture prize in 2004 and twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling prize.