Zaha Hadid's death today caught me off guard and effected me at a level I wasn't expecting.

Hadid's Computer generated image for Stadium,2022 World Cup in Qatar. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

There she was, out there in the world building buildings that I had dreamed of making reality when I was in school. And here I am still, a mere mortal woman, only a year and some younger than she - no longer daring to dream my dreams.

I would have never met Ms. Hadid but if I had, I would have thanked her for showing me that buildings can be built in ways that I imagined years ago. And would have told her that she made me feel strong by being brave for dreamers like me who reveled in the sight of her buildings as they came into reality in my lifetime.

Thank you Zaha Hadid.

This little piece by Ruskin, that I think of as almost a prayer, hung as a plaque on my locker throughout architecture school. It's not in fashion and full of romantic idealism and not a little ego. I thought it could be true then then and I still do.

"When we build, let us think that we are building forever. 

Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for.

And let us think, as we lay stone upon stone,

that a time is to come when those stones will be sacred

because our hands have touched them."