"This image of the demanding dragon is becoming old-fashioned"

Stories about Zaha Hadid's unyielding personality persist a decade on from her death. It's time to lay the stereotypes about powerful women to rest, writes Ingrid Schroder.

Ten years after her death, Zaha Hadid remains as prominent as ever. Her work, both built and unbuilt, continues to speak for itself. But, as with any major figure, a clear picture of her character and the reality of her as an individual has become diluted by the mythology of her image.

There are countless stories from every stage of Zaha's life. Most of what you have read or heard creates a patchy, exaggerated and often contradictory picture of the complex figure who changed so much for women in architecture, and carries a forceful legacy at the Architectural Association. Certainly, for me, as custodian of the school that shaped the early part of her career, the explosive trajectory of her life and work is a reminder of how tangled and challenging success can be.

She was well known for having little interest in being celebrated as a woman, an Arab, or being the first of anything in either category

By the end of her life, Zaha had been made a Dame and was the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. I cannot recall her commenting on her recognition by the Queen, but she was well known for having little interest in being celebrated as a woman, an Arab, or being the first of anything in either category. Such designations qualified her success and defined the character of her work clumsily.

Yet, despite this understandable reluctance, Zaha's gender and nationality have had immense impact on how young women, and young women of colour, understand the limitlessness of own their ambition. She made it inevitable that others might follow.

Zaha's notoriety is useful when I need to explain that the AA is not yet another regulatory body, but rather a school of outliers. Most people have some idea of who she was, even if they have little or no knowledge of her architecture.

She was a public figure, and controversies over her work were public matters reported in the mainstream press. She dressed beautifully and extravagantly, she said uncompromising things, and the work was entirely original. The term "starchitect" suited no-one better.

But that term has since lost its lustre, and as a profession we are creeping quietly away from everything associated with it, bolstered by critical commentary including Edwin Heathcote's recent articles for Dezeen and Reinier de Graaf's latest publication Architecture Against Architecture.

Fame and notoriety, and the projects they enable, currently face harsh scrutiny. The Pritzker prize itself has been tarnished, and what it stands for called into question.

She was clearly a diva surrounded by drama

We can't be certain how this may affect Zaha's own legacy, but her prominence has certainly left her vulnerable to an unending stream of sensational stories. Everyone has one, and while some recount a lesser-seen sweetness and vulnerability, most revolve around her being terrifying, outrageous and unreasonable.

She was clearly a diva surrounded by drama, and it is not my role to soften her character posthumously; I can't imagine she would thank me for it. Many of her male counterparts still show those same qualities and seem to hold fast to Zaha's own premise that nice people make bad designers.

But this image of the demanding dragon is becoming old-fashioned. It has survived through generations of unfortunate mimicry and has had its day.

I'd like to see it lose its grip on the reputations of powerful women in particular – women who rule the office, who tend to be isolated without an obvious set of peers, women who demand a lot, give everything, and occasionally destabilise junior staff by uncharacteristically over-sharing. We still are a profession that tends to see strong women as "crazy".

This may be one of the many reasons why Zaha was loath to be labelled a "woman architect". After all, her gender did not define her originality, just as the strength of her character didn't make her impervious to criticism or exempt from difficulty. What she gave us was a new way of seeing the world, capturing its dynamism, ambiguity and unfathomable complexity without trying to fix it.

Beyond all the stories you have already read, and the critiques of her many projects, I have one last story to tell: one that goes back to the beginning. Our archivist at the AA, Ed Bottoms, pulled out Zaha's academic record for me last week.

Zaha was a student under immense personal pressure, like many of our current cohort

Her story as an AA student is one of struggle and initial failure, with one year described by her tutors as a "wash-out" from which she gradually found a voice and was encouraged to shout loud. She struggled through her first few years of study, in second year wrangling with an "obsession with octagonal geometry", and in third year with what her then-tutor Leon Krier called "an initially over-complicated and somehow confused poetic vision".

What sits behind this slow start is the story of a young Arab woman studying in London and facing exceptional challenges. She struggled to get money for her tuition fees out of Iraq. Two of her essay submissions got stuck in Lebanon during the civil war of 1976. The result was a student under immense personal pressure, like many of our current cohort in remarkably parallel circumstances.

In a note from the AA archives regarding her situation, Elia Zenghelis stressed that "it is also evident that [those circumstances] are on her mind continuously and that the psychological effect is very detrimental to her progress". She was "distracted" and suffering from "almost chronic bronchitis" – perhaps the same bronchitis she was being treated for when she died 40 years later in Miami.

Zaha's time at the AA had its exuberant next chapter with the Tektonik diploma project and The Peak competition not long after. But while many will be familiar with Rem Koolhaas's comments about her being "a planet in her own orbit'" the actual report from the end of her fifth year at the AA goes on to warn "that status has its own rewards and difficulties: due to the flamboyance and intensity of her work, it will be impossible to have a conventional career…".

Out of all this difficulty came a star, a personality and, dare I say, a strong Arab woman.

Ingrid Schroder is the director of the Architectural Association.

The photo, showing Zaha Hadid during her time as a student, is courtesy of the AA Archives.

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