Zaha Hadid.

Though Zaha Hadid had the distinction last year of becoming the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, she is perhaps more notable as the only woman ever to have designed a major American museum. This striking achievement for the Iraqi-born, British architect--and what should also be considered a record of equally stunning failure for American architecture--has warranted the first monographic study of her oeuvre. This "exploded" four-volume set, complete with its own claret-hued puzzle slipcase, comprises individual books of varying size that cover every aspect of Hadid's practice--documentation, texts, drawings, sketches, paintings, plans, and models, not to mention generous photographs of built projects. Her architectural experiments certainly run the gamut: a ski jump on the Bergisel Mountain in Innsbruck; stage design for the Pet Shop Boys 1999 world tour; snow and ice "landscape formations" in Finland (realized in collaboration with Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang); a tilting glass showroom for Citroen on the Champs-Elysees; a proposal for New York City's 2012 Olympic Village. Hadid's interest in reimagining the urban environment, her bold angularity and projective vision, may be indebted to the Suprematist program, but her silver coffee services make teatime far more revolutionary than Malevich's exquisite and very decorative porcelain set ever did. Like the designs of the Russian master, though, Hadid's works can remain strangely aloof from the urban chaos they seek to engage. Witness a sign adjacent to the curvilinear outer walls of Cincinnati's Center for Contemporary Art: "Skateboards, bicycles, or climbing not permitted on premises."--ED.

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EDITED BY GORDANA FONTANA GIUSTI AND PATRICK SCHUMACHER