A live BBC radio interview on Thursday ended abruptly when Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid walked out on presenter Sarah Montague over a series of questions. With the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects' Royal Gold Medal awarded to her just this week, Hadid angrily warded off Montague's prickly probes into her latest projects of the Qatar World Cup Stadium and the Tokyo Olympic Stadium.

To Montague's comment that there have been construction worker deaths connected to the stadium being built for the 2022 football World Cup, Hadid responded that "it is absolutely untrue." Adding, "...there are no deaths on our site whatsoever." She then told Montague to check her facts. (Hadid sued The New York Review of Books over similar comments in August 2014.)

When the interviewer pressed Hadid to respond to allegations that the Japanese prime minister ended her 2020 Tokyo Olympics project over ballooning costs, the architect began a defense and then walked out.

London-based Hadid, 64, is the first woman ever to be awarded in her right Riba's Gold Medal for Architecture. Her neofuturistic style has been both celebrated and derided in projects that have spanned the globe from the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics to the Guangzhou Opera House.