Zaha Hadid is one of an elite group of “starchitects” whose sometimes zany designs have won her the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s equivalent of a Nobel award.

But her avant-garde work and international reputation — her projects include the new aquatics centre for the London Olympics — left residents in one part of Seville unimpressed. When they saw her plans for a £4 million library that looks like a spaceship, they banded together and managed to get the project stopped.

The battle concerns the Iraqi-born British architect’s plans for a library for Seville University, described by Ms Hadid as “a sculpted bar of stone with a great contrast between solidity and transparency”.

Seville’s council had hoped that the space-age design might do for the sleepy Andalusian capital what Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum did for Bilbao — providing it with a new cultural icon and perhaps attracting a new kind of tourist.

Ms Hadid’s project is for a three-storey and basement building spread over 8,000sq m. Apart from the library there are reading rooms, cafés, auditoriums, computer rooms, research halls and parking.

The architect said: “This is the type of ambitious project which turns a city and a university into a reference point in terms of public spaces.” A neighbourhood association saw it differently.

It said that the library would encroach on the Prado de San Sebastián, a green area that gives many Sevillanos a chance to escape the summer heat, and swallow up 8 per cent of the area. The Andalusian high court agreed and ordered work to be halted. In a statement to the court the residents said: “The specifications regarding the new library clearly violate the protection measures derived from the fact that the Prado de San Sebastián is part of Seville’s historical city centre.”

To allow work to start on the library Seville council had changed the rules, turning zones in which building work was banned into permitted areas. Judges ruling on the case overturned these changes, saying: “This is the way we know the Prado and this is the way we recognise it.”

Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, head of urban planning, said that the council would appeal as the new library would be in the public’s interest. “Planning processes exist and it is up to the city council what gets changed,” he said.

Ms Hadid has nine current projects in Spain alone and last year built the Bridge Pavilion for Expo 2008 in Zaragoza. She made her name with daring projects such as the Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany, and the Cincinnati Art Centre in Ohio. Next year her biggest building yet, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, is due to be completed.

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