Architecture Exhibition, London

Acclaimed for daredevil buildings in a style that can only be described as Opulent Futurism, architect Dame Zaha Hadid, who died in March at 65, pushed her profession’s envelope with head-swiveling, technologically groundbreaking aplomb. “Zaha’s philosophy was never about straight lines, ” AD100 decorator and David Gill Gallery CEO Francis Sultana, a longtime friend of the British-Iraqi provocateuse, told me. “She always said, ‘Why have one degree when there are 360?’”

That sense of exploration and challenges met suffuses “The Zaha Hadid Contemporary Salon, ” a powerful exhibition that Sultana created for the Masterpiece London design fair (through July 6) with members of Hadid’s office. As befits individuals who knew the architect on a profoundly personal level, the installation emphasizes intimacy and immediacy, bringing together designs for fashion, interiors, and architecture, as well as photographs, sketches, and paintings, which Sultana calls “pieces that give a glimpse into her journey within a life devoted to her work with creativity, femininity, and strength.” An Icone handbag that Hadid conjured up for Louis Vuitton joins edgy jewelry, including a ring that the architect designed and wore. Pages from her sketchbooks face stunning canvases painted early in her career; across the way, waterlike acrylic tables she created for David Gill Gallery stand watch as an audio recording of the Baghdad-born Hadid’s mellifluous voice wafts through the air.