Honestly, this is not the best of arguments. I see lots of things with holes in them and don’t think vagina: I see a donut and think “Oh, a donut”; I see a bucket and I think, “Hmm, a bucket.” When I see a structure with giant pink labia-like bits flanking an orifice, though, I think, “Oh, yes, there’s a vagina.”
Hadid (described by TIME as “the world’s best-known female architect”) believes that critics would not have drawn vulva-comparisons if a male architect had designed the building, which I don’t think is necessarily the case — because, again, the stadium looks so, so much like a giant vagina. I cannot reaffirm this enough.
The most important takeaway from this tale is that there’s no cause for embarrassment: as I’ve said before, male architects are constantly building things that look like enormous phalli. The yoni has a lot of catching up to do, and here we have a good, if accidental, starting point.
“Architect Zaha Hadid Fires Back at Critics of Her So-Called ‘Vagina Stadium'” [TIME]