Newspaper withdraws book review after threat of legal action

By Jonathan Stempel 

Architect Zaha Hadid poses for photographs with her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire …

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A well-known architecture critic has retracted a portion of a recent book review that Pritzker prize-winning-architect Zaha Hadid claimed in a lawsuit had defamed her.

Hadid sued Martin Filler and the New York Review of Books last Thursday in New York state court, claiming that Filler's June 5 review improperly called her reputation into question and falsely implied her indifference to alleged difficult working conditions of migrant workers on big Middle East construction projects.

The Iraqi-born Hadid, who is a British citizen, objected in particular to a passage that she said was taken out of context, in which Filler said she showed no concern for an "estimated one thousand laborers who have perished" while building the Al Wakrah stadium she designed for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

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