Zaha Hadid Architects’ £12m bill to use founder’s name

Zaha Hadid Architects paid £3.4m to use its founder’s name last year, new accounts reveal.

It brings the total bill for using the trademark over the last five years to £11.9m.

The latest fee is believed to be the biggest yet, up from around £2.8m in the previous two years, £780,000 in 2018 and £2.3m in 2017.

The practice, which pays the licensing fee to the Zaha Hadid Foundation, said the amount charged was linked to turnover and so “reflects our significant growth in recent years”. ZHA’s latest accounts show pre-tax profit almost tripled to £9m while turnover hit £60.9m in the year to April 2021.

A spokesman said there were “no plans” to drop Hadid’s name from the practice she founded in 1979, despiteHigh Court papers in 2019 revealing that such a move was agreedby both sides following a toxic dispute that broke out after her death in 2016.

The feud ended in the High Court amid amyriad of accusations双方都想控制她的遗产。

But documents lodged at Companies House over the past few weeks show the warring parties have now taken a series of steps to implement a new structure for the practice, as set out in the judge’s ruling in November 2020.

ZHL (the practice’s official name) was put into the control of a tax-efficient employee-benefit trust (EBT) in December. All profits will be reinvested for the benefit of the 500 staff, said the spokesman.

ZHL的前母公司扎哈·哈迪德控股(ZHH)在12月8日将“重大控制权”移交给新实体Studio 9 Employee Benefit Trust Ltd之前，为该公司注入了630万英镑的股本。Registered in 2018, this takes its name from ZHL’s historic Clerkenwell addresswhich it quit last year because of the pandemic. There had been speculation that Studio 9 could become the practice’s new name. Its directors are practice principal Patrik Schumacher and his fellow ZHA director Jim Heverin, associate director Johannes Schafelner, senior associate Aurora Santana and associate Ken Bostock, plus Sue Lawrence, a professional independent trustee who sits on 17 other boards around the country.

At about the same time last month Schumacher stepped down as a director of ZHH, leaving it in the hands of his three High Court opponents and fellow executors of Hadid’s £100m will: her friends the property developer Peter Palumbo and artist Brian Clarke and her niece Rana Hadid.

Schumacher remains one of five directors of ZHL, along with other senior figures at the practice. But a sixth, Charlotte Phillips, stepped down around the same time. She had already resigned from ZHH.

她于2018年被任命，这激怒了舒马赫，他在提交给高等法院的文件中声称，她是克拉克的朋友，而克拉克的到来削弱了他的权威。Inallegations accepted by the other side, he said ZHH made her chair of the ZHL board in 2018, whereupon she insisted that all ZHL contracts and salaries be pre-approved by ZHH.

菲利普斯并不是这场官司的当事人，他从未对舒马赫的指控发表评论，而帕兰博、克拉克和拉纳·哈迪德则对舒马赫的许多指控进行了激烈的反驳。他们也提出了自己的指控，包括舒马赫与下级员工有婚外情，以及“公司治理的失败”。这种做法认为这些都是未经证实和有争议的。

Much of the dispute was eventually agreed out of court – such as that the bulk of Hadid’s assets would go to the Zaha Hadid Foundation – but Schumacher’s demand that he be given power of veto over the board of the EBT ended up before a judge. In late 2020chief master Matthew Marsh rejected Schumacher’s request,saying a veto would put him in a “very difficult position with regard to conflicts of interest”. Thelegal costs are said to have hit £3.5m.

The Zaha Hadid Foundation, the beneficiary of the annual trademark licensing fee, was set up in 2013 to promote “useful knowledge relating to architecture” with particular aims of supporting young Arab women architects and establishing Zaha Hadid’s archive in the old Design Museum building at Shad Thames. The foundation’s directors are Palumbo, Clarke and Rana Hadid and it is ultimately controlled by her estate.

>> From the archive:Architects lead tributes to Zaha Hadid

>> Also read:Exclusive: Schumacher’s explosive allegations hit High Court

在一份宣布EBT的声明中，该事务所说:“扎哈对未来坚定不移的乐观态度和对发明力量的信念根植于她创立的建筑事务所的DNA中，并慷慨地赠给那些帮助她创造它的人——我们所有的员工。”

It said independent and transparent organisational systems and structures would “cultivate the skills and diversity that drives our decision-making and give every member of our team a voice in shaping our future”.

ZHA said it expected the move to generate new ideas and inspire greater use of technology, adding: “Younger generations of architects are demanding our profession to become more accessible and egalitarian.”