... I think I've found one on a certain someone's shoulder..

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/zaha-hadid-hits-out-prejudice-2996109

The complaints were not that she was a woman, or that she was a foreigner or non-white. That is fundamentally offensive to the people who opposed the project.

The complaints were that a multi-million pound opera house was elitist; that the design was insufficiently flexible and didn't provide other facilities; and that the design was insufficiently 'Welsh' (the fact that basically the same design ended up in China shows that it was very 'internationalist' and not particularly context-dependent).

Now I think the design was beautiful, but that the project was a bit ill-conceived. Wales did not want an Opera House. It wanted a multi-purpose national concert and performing arts venue. It's got that with the Millennium Centre, although I'm not a massive fan of the design (to some extent it seems to be too self-consciously Welsh - slate, copper, etc).

Surely Zaha should move on after 20 years. It just gives metropolitan snobs in London (a fair few of them originally from Wales) a chance to go over old ground on the parochial Cardiff of yore, and the "disaster" of Cardiff Bay.

reminds me of blackadder II

'you woman, if indeed you are a woman'


time to move on, let it go and accept that what you designed, whilst stunning, was not what was required

Surely they have better things to do than drudge up all this again?

As for the design not being "Welsh" enough, then perhaps we could paint EVERY square inch red, white and green?

She's a bit of a minger as well in fairness, really hurt my eyes looking at that picture of the whinging cow earlier. She's been successful since but clearly still has a great big chip on her shoulder, she needs to get over herself.

As Jantra said above, it wasn't right for the city, at least not back then. I love the WMC because it has a little bit of Welshness about it with the slate. It may be in a false way, but being the capital city it's a little bit of another part of the country being used down there and I like that about it. Being a multi-purpose venue has also worked very well. It's firmly a part of the city for me now and we'd have a much worse place without it.