Sending Hadid

Hadid, born in Iraq in 1950, is easily the most famous Iraqi architect in the world. She won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, as well as other prestigious awards in the ensuing years, and realized many distinctive, high profile buildings around the world, from the Vitra Fire Station in Germany to the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan. Although she had not completed a building in her country of birth before her unexpected death, her firm was commissioned for the Central Bank of Iraq in 2012, pictured below.

The Hadid 750 dinars (64 cents) stamp features a few illustrations of Hadid's work behind her portrait, including a drawing of the Heydar Aliyev Center and a rendering of her winning design for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Stadium in the bottom-right corner. The latter is unfortunate, since Japan shelved her design in 2015, three years after winning the competition, due to rising cost estimates and calls by Japanese architects to scrap the design. One of her many completed projects would have been more suitable here, instead of one that caused Hadid and her firm so much heartache.

Although Mohamed Makiya is not a household name like Hadid's, he is considered an important architect in Iraq. Per Archnet, a repository of information on architecture in the Muslim world, "Makiya’s contributions to the fields of architecture and urbanism and, in particular, his sophisticated incorporation of traditional forms into modern architecture, cannot be overstated.  His work embodies ideas of urban conservation, regionalism in form, and continuity of architectural heritage."