<閱讀測驗>[題組:第36題到第39題]Often named as the most prominent contemporary female architect, Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-born British woman, is significant for her intellectual toughness and her refusal to compromise on her artistic ideas. For many years, her designs filled the pages of architecture journals but were dismissed as impractical or too radical. Also, being female in a male-dominated field didn’t help her succeed. Despite these setbacks, her star began to rise when her design for Cincinnati’s new Center for Contemporary Art was selected and built, earning her worldwide acclaim. The New York Times described the building as “the most important new building in America since the Cold War.” Once her talent was recognized, commissions started coming in to design a variety of projects, including public transportation, libraries, and opera houses. In 2004, Hadid became the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize. She also won the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011. Hadid’s interest in architecture had roots in a trip her family took to the ancient Sumer region in southern Iraq, the site of one of the world’s oldest civilizations, when she was a teenager. She recalled: “The beauty of the landscape-where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together-has never left me. I’m trying to discover-invent, I suppose-an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way.” Nature’s forms appear as a recurrent source of inspiration for Hadid’s architecture. Her designs are daring and visionary experiments with space and with the relationships of buildings to their urban surroundings. She consistently pushes the boundaries of architecture and urban design in the pursuit of a visionary aesthetic that expresses her ideals. 36. According to the passage, what is a major factor in Hadid’s success? (A) Her family support. (B) Her ethnic origin. (C) Her gender and education. (D) Her vision and talent.
