Thomas Heatherwick pays tribute to 'visionary' architect Dame Zaha Hadid

Thomas Heatherwick has paid tribute to “visionary” architect Dame Zaha Hadid, declaring her death “an utter tragedy”.

Dame Zaha, who designed the Olympic Aquatic Centre for London 2012, died yesterday in Miami at the age of 65 after suffering a heart attack. She was in hospital with bronchitis.

Designer Heatherwick, who produced the Olympic cauldron for the Games, said: “Losing Zaha is an utter tragedy.

"It took so many years for her to find a way to build her visionary ideas — and then finally, once she began, she became so prolific.

“Creating entirely new visual languages and relentlessly pushing forward the way we think about designing buildings, she made us other designers re-evaluate what we were doing, again and again.” He added: “She was also generous and reached out to give encouragement to us and many others to keep working experimentally.

Science Museum director Roger Highfield said its mathematics gallery, which she designed and is set to open this year, would be a memorial to Dame Zaha, the first woman to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal.