A cultural center or cultural centre is an organization, building or complex that promotes culture and arts. Cultural centers can be neighborhood community arts organizations, private facilities, government-sponsored, or activist-run. Examples include:

Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev (Azerbaijani: Heydər Əlirza oğlu Əliyev, Russian: Гейдар Алиевич Алиев; 10 May 1923^{[dead link]} – 12 December 2003), also spelled as Heidar Aliev, Geidar Aliev, Haydar Aliyev, Geydar Aliyev was the third President of Azerbaijan for the New Azerbaijan Party from October 1993 to October 2003, when his son Ilham Aliyev succeeded him.

From 1969 to 1982, Aliyev was also the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, practically dominating the political life of Azerbaijan for over many years. He was married to Zarifa Aliyeva, who died in 1985, and was survived by his son and daughter.

The details of much of Aliyev's early life remain obscure. According to his hagographical website he was born in Nakhchevan City. After the graduation from Nakhchivan Pedagogical School, from 1939 till 1941, Aliyev attended the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy) where he studied architecture. In 1949-50, he studied at the USSR MGB Officer Corps Qualifications-Raising School. Aliyev's official biography also claims that he studied at the Baku State University, graduating with a degree in history in 1957. However, it seems that he actually attended the Ministry of State Security Academy in Leningrad^{[citation needed]}.

Zaha Hadid, CBE (Arabic: زها حديد‎ Zahā Ḥadīd; born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect and winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004.

Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

After graduating she worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met the engineer Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed difficult to build. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught at the Architectural Association. She has also taught at prestigious institutions around the world; she held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, guest professorships at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, the Knowlton School of Architecture, at The Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.