黑洞社区

The New York Review of Books has apologised for an 鈥渆rror鈥� it made about Zaha Hadid when its architecture critic criticised her attitude towards the plioght of construction workers in Qatar during a recent book review.

Hadid claimed critic Martin Filler falsely implied she was indifferent to the alleged difficult working conditions of migrant workers on high-profile construction projects in the Middle East, including her own.

She also claimed Filler used large portions of his June 5 review of Rowan Moore鈥檚 鈥淲hy We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture鈥� to question her success and fault her personality, although she was not a prominent character in the book.

In her complaint, Hadid pointed to a passage where Filler said she 鈥渦nashamedly disavowed any responsibility, let alone concern鈥� for an 鈥渆stimated one thousand laborers who have perished鈥� while building the Al Wakrah stadium she designed for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

But in a posted on the magazine鈥檚 website, Filler wrote: 鈥淚n my review of Rowan Moore鈥檚 Why We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture [NYR, June 5], I quoted comments by the architect Zaha Hadid, who designed the Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar, when she was asked in London in February 2014 about revelations a week earlier in the Guardian that hundreds of migrant laborers had died while working on construction projects in Qatar. I wrote that an 鈥渆stimated one thousand laborers鈥�have perished while constructing her project thus far.鈥�

鈥淗owever, work did not begin on the site for the Al Wakrah stadium until two months after Ms. Hadid made those comments; and construction is not scheduled to begin until 2015. There have been no worker deaths on the Al Wakrah project and Ms. Hadid鈥檚 comments about Qatar that I quoted in the review had nothing to do with the Al Wakrah site or any of her projects.

鈥淚 regret the error.鈥�

At the time, legal action was filed at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Oren Warshavsky, a partner at Baker & Hostetler, which is representing Hadid, said that Filler鈥檚 review was 鈥渁 personal attack disguised as a book review and has exposed Ms Hadid to public ridicule and contempt, depriving her of confidence and injuring her good name and reputation.鈥�

In a statement released after Filler鈥檚 apology, Warshavsky said: 鈥淲e are in receipt of Mr Filler鈥檚 retraction issued today and aware of the New York Review of Books鈥� plan to post it on their website. Ms Hadid together with counsel are reviewing it now and will respond after further careful consideration.鈥�

Magazine editor Robert Silvers told the Guardian that it had posted the statement on its website independently, not as a result of consultation with Hadid or her lawyers.

He added: 鈥淲e have done this entirely on our own. This letter contains the facts that should be made public and the regret that we thought was appropriate.鈥�