If there's a starchitect who is still shining, it's the Baghdad-born, London-based Zaha Hadid, whose firm's profits were up 400% last year. Hadid, 59, who won the Pritz-ker Prize in 2004, has created astonishing projects around the globe -- from the BMW Central Building in Germany to the Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain. This year, she'll finish the dramatic CMA-CGM Tower, which will be the tallest building in Marseille, France. And she's working on the 17,500-seat Aquatics Center for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, a project that has raised hackles for its cost overruns. Hadid is unrepentant. "In these moments of recession, uplifting the spirit is even more important," she told Britain's Guardian newspaper. "We should learn from things that were done in the past that were done in a hurry." -- by Linda Tischler