London, 1979.

Until 2026 the practice carried its founder’s full name. The Guardian, reporting on 31 March 2016, said Zaha Hadid studied at the Architectural Association in London and that by 1979 she had established her own practice in the city, Zaha Hadid Architects. The same report listed theoretical projects from the 1980s, including the Peak in Hong Kong (1983) and Kurfürstendamm 70 in Berlin (1986), and a scheme for an opera house at Cardiff Bay in Wales (1994) that was not built.

Built work followed from the 1990s. The Guardian dated the Vitra fire station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, to 1993. Its list of later buildings, given as neutral dated facts, runs through the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2003), a building for BMW in Leipzig, the MAXXI museum in Rome (2009), the opera house in Guangzhou (2010), the Riverside Museum of transport in Glasgow (2011), the London Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 Olympic Games (2011) and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku (2013). The practice’s main office is in Clerkenwell, London, Wikipedia says.

Hadid died on 31 March 2016, The Guardian reported that day, quoting a statement issued by Zaha Hadid Architects confirming the news. Building, reporting in June 2026, said the practice had been run by Hadid’s long-time collaborator Patrik Schumacher since her death, and that it had continued to use her name under a licensing agreement with the Zaha Hadid Foundation. Dezeen reported on 2 March 2026 that Hadid had signed that licence in 2013.

Between 2016 and 2026 the name was used under that licence. Dezeen said in March 2026 that, following Hadid’s death, the licence income had gone to the foundation. The name on the practice’s website and project credits stayed the same through those years.

From a full name to three letters.

The licence came to an end in the courts. Dezeen reported on 2 March 2026 that the Court of Appeal had overruled a 2024 High Court judgement and found that the 2013 licence could be ended on reasonable notice, opening the way for the studio to change its name or renegotiate.

The practice chose a new name. Dezeen reported on 15 June 2026 that Schumacher had announced in an Instagram post that the studio would trade as ZHA, with a newly registered company named ZHA Architects Limited. “This is 10 years after Zaha’s passing,” he said, describing the change as a “natural brand evolution” and a move “to a more collective identity”. Building, reporting the same announcement in June 2026, said the practice’s post presented the change as coming “as the final projects led by our founder near completion”.

Both publications said a new website accompanied the name. Dezeen quoted its statement that “ZHA and ZHA Architects are trade marks of ZHA Architects Limited”, a company based in London and owned by its employees, and that the group had previously traded under a trade mark licence from the Zaha Hadid Foundation, which it said had ended in 2025. Wikipedia now gives the practice’s website as zha.com and lists its article under the title ZHA Architects.

The three letters are the initials of the three words in Zaha Hadid Architects. Schumacher described the practice in the announcement as “a collective of many talents, with a shared purpose, a shared set of values”, and said that was what the new name was meant to express. In the same announcement he said, “ZHA means a new stage, a new chapter”, Dezeen reported.

A founder, a licence and a new name.

An architecture practice’s identity usually begins with a name, and that name is often a list of founders’ surnames joined by commas and ampersands. Over time those lists tend to compress into initials or a single surname, and the shortened form becomes the working mark on letterheads, drawing sheets and websites. Other studios choose a single word or the name of one designer, which shifts the identity from a partnership to a studio.

Much of a practice’s visual identity lives on working documents rather than in advertising. Title blocks on drawings, the lettering on presentation boards, competition panels and the hoardings that wrap a construction site all carry the practice name, and each sets a typeface, a weight and a placement rule that repeats across projects. Monographs, exhibition catalogues and project books extend the same typography into print.

Physical spaces act as brand surfaces too. A studio’s own office, its reception and the model shop where physical models are built and photographed shape how clients and visitors meet the firm. For a design guide, the useful lesson is restraint: a short name, one typeface used with discipline, and a consistent way of presenting drawings, models and photographs.

Employee ownership and leadership.

The ownership of the practice changed before its name did. Building reported in June 2026 that the practice had been placed under the control of an employee-benefit trust in December 2021. Its employees have owned the business through that trust since then, and the website statement quoted by Dezeen in June 2026 describes ZHA Architects Limited as owned by its employees.

Leadership has run through Patrik Schumacher since 2016. In the June 2026 announcement he spoke of working with Hadid and the practice’s leadership “for many decades”, and said the studio had “a lot of new projects coming out”. He also linked the new name to the studio’s history, saying the historical significance of Hadid and “the firm we have built together” lay in a fluid and adaptive conception of architecture, and that the practice wanted to push that work to its next stage.

The Zaha Hadid Foundation remains a distinct body under Hadid’s name. Wikipedia says Hadid founded the foundation in 2013, the same year she signed the licence. Since June 2026 the practice’s own name has been ZHA, while Hadid’s full name stays with the foundation.

Buildings completed between 2016 and 2026 carried the earlier name. Wikipedia lists among them the Port Authority Building in Antwerp (2016), 520 West 28th Street in New York (2018), the terminal building at Beijing Daxing International Airport (2019), Leeza SOHO in Beijing (2019), the Sky Park Residence in Bratislava (2024) and The Henderson in Hong Kong (2024). Earlier entries on the same list include the Bergisel ski jump in Innsbruck (2002), the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg (2005) and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul (2014).

The changes to the practice came in stages, each reported at the time by the press: Hadid’s death in 2016, the move to an employee-benefit trust in 2021, the Court of Appeal ruling on the licence in early 2026 and the new name announced in June 2026.

For a design guide, Zaha Hadid Architects shows how a practice can move from a founder’s full name to three initials while keeping each letter traceable to the old name. Compare Foster + Partners, a London practice that kept its founder’s surname, and Bjarke Ingels Group, a practice known by its initials. For this guide we use pearl, charcoal and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Zaha Hadid Architects’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.