I was always interested in making space that's what I was interested in

I was always interested in making space, that's what I was interested in. The idea is that you're making an environment - some form of enclosure, which has an impact on external life. I mean it has two worlds..." And suddenly we're orbiting two worlds with Space Cadet Hadid, having blasted off with the best inquisitorial intentions.Not that she's unprepared to talk about her family or upbringing; it's just that the more personal her observations became, the more prosaic they were. Her parents were members of the Iraqi intelligentsia - her father was at the LSE in the Thirties.

It was a close family, but not overly religious: "They've given me my space." Hadid was educated at the Catholic lycee in Baghdad She has two brothers Her mother died 10 years ago. She believes in enduring friendships, but finds herself closer to the students she had when she was teaching at the AA than to her own peers. She's one of those people who professes that emotionally queasy oxymoron: "I have many close friends." I asked her if she's ever wanted children and she shrugged: "It's never come up I think it's something which should come up naturally. You need the right person - and I never found them." Did she regret this? Hadid gave a negative shrug.Surprisingly, although she seemed unwilling to translate her gift for external visualisation into one for psychological introspection, when I asked Hadid if she could imagine being anything other than an architect she replied "a shrink". But when I pressed her on this it emerged that what she meant was: "When you have a philosophy, or a position, you can develop a technique and that can be applied to lots of things, you could be a choreographer ... or whatever." Clearly it was the "analysis" part of psychoanalysis which made her seize on it as an alternative career."Technique" is Hadid's byword; so much so that she denied to me that her talent for design was inbuilt: "You are not born with this metier," she pronounced.

Yet, even if she feels that architects are made rather than born, what is it that gave her in particular such enormous confidence in her work? Certainly this confidence was evident in her response to the hysteria which greeted her design for the Cardiff Opera House. "One journalist said there would be a fatwa put out because the building resembled the Ka'ba; well, this is absurd of course He said it because I am from Iraq ... but I mean there is a Jewish community there, a Christian community - it doesn't preclude other religions Cardiff is still an enigma to me. I mean, I'm not running for president; I didn't choose to be in the public eye."This is, I believe, the truth. Rampaging egotist Hadid may well be, but hers is an ego that's content to rampage in the forest without anyone observing it - it's the buildings she wants us to see. She told me that after she lost Cardiff it was the dedication of those who worked with her that made it possible for her to rally: "I thought I must carry on, because why else should these people have this belief in what we're doing?" And what she believes she's doing is "making cities much better".

Better aesthetically, better functionally, better all round.Hadid wouldn't comment on the "physical structure" of the Millennium Dome, for which she is responsible for designing the "Mind Zone", but waxed enthusiastically about the opportunity it provided her with to have a curatorial role. She predictably blanked my query about "ideological" objections to the project, and cantered on to say that "it will give an opportunity, I think, for people to live in these areas .. for you and I to see these areas .. Bermondsey, Southwark and so on ... which otherwise we wouldn't." Speak for yourself, Zaha, I thought, speak for yourself.As to the knotty question of why it was that, as yet, she herself is the sole internationally known woman architect, she was only partially enlightening: "I don't understand why there aren't more women architects," she said. "It's not because of inability - my best students have been women It's not because of having children - doctors have children.

I think it's not so much that the industry is male-dominated, as male-occupied ... building, engineering - they're all full." Nevertheless she felt that the situation was, at last, changing: "I've been at the end of being patronised, marginalised, but things are much better in America. There is a future."Then, to complete our two hours of conversation, she took me in detail over her plans for the new Contemporary Arts Centre in Rome. This enormous structure embodies all of Hadid's adventurous feel for spatial dynamics and flows. The drawings themselves were marvellously clear and articulate - until Hadid began to explain them, that is; for, like the rest of her dialogue, her exposition was freighted with technical terms.I won't say that I came away from the Cromwell Road liking Zaha Hadid, but I certainly respected her. I'm also not certain that her abrasiveness isn't simply a combination of shyness on her part, and cultural confusion on ours.