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#ADayWithoutAWoman: Standing Up for the Women in Architecture

mcmansionhell

Dear Readers:

After a long and thoughtful internal debate, I have decided to stand in solidarity with the thousands of women striking on International Women’s Day.

I know a large percentage of my readership does not share my political views, which I have curtailed greatly in this blog for this reason. However, when I do make a political joke (even within a pop culture context a la late night TV), I always get a couple of emails that say: “Architecture is not political. Focus on humor, that’s why people read your blog.”

This, of course, is an absurd statement. Architecture - residential architecture especially, has always been political. There are many important political statements I can put in this box of text, but on this occasion, I choose this one: Architecture as a field still has a problem with women.

Those of you who are not heavily entrenched in architecture: name a female architect. Perhaps some of you thought of the late Zaha Hadid. Alright, name another.

The State of Women in Architecture:

I highly suggest reading this article from Metropolis Magazine for an in-depth overview of this issue.

If you prefer charts, check this out.

Source

Only 17% of architects are women. There are fewer women in architecture than there are in STEM.

It took 26 years for a woman, Zaha Hadid, to win the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize of Architecture founded in 1979. Over 10 years later, though there are two other female laureates, Hadid remains the only female solo winner.

Posthumously, in 2016, Zaha Hadid became the first woman to win the Royal Gold Medal, the highest award of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The award had been around since 1848. It took 168 years for a woman to win it, and to do so only after her death.

The American Institute of Architects awarded the first ever AIA Gold Medal to a woman, Julia Morgan in 2014. Morgan had been dead for 56 years. The AIA could have given the Gold Medal to a number of talented living female architects, but made instead the easy choice instead of, as architecture critic Alexandra Lange put it, “choosing a living, breathing, woman architect before her male peers.”

Denise Scott Brown in Las Vegas, during the trip that changed architecture.
Photo Source

In 1991, the architect Robert Venturi won the Pritzker Prize solo, the committee leaving out his wife and equal partner Denise Scott Brown, who, individually is one one the most important living architectural theorists in her own right. Despite a petition with thousands of signatures, including by architectural elites, the Pritzker Prize Committee refused in 2013 to add Denise Scott Brown’s name to the 1991 Pritzker Prize.

Fortunately, the AIA would award the medal in 2016 to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, but only after amending the rules so that there could be two winners. Venturi and Scott Brown were, above all, a united team and deserved to be recognized as one in 1991. Regardless, Denise Scott Brown was the first living woman to win an AIA Gold Medal in the prize’s 99 year history.

In the 1980s, Scott Brown was one of the first women to be outspoken about what it was like to be a woman in architecture. She cites many heartbreaking examples, including being accused of plagiarizing her own husband, in this interview with Architect magazine. This quote summarizes the story rather succinctly:

“Would the ladies please move out of the picture so we can have the architects?”
I would say, “I am an architect.” And they’d say, “Would you move out of the picture, please?”

I am a woman, an architecture writer, and the only female-identified individual in my degree program. When I was sixteen years old, I signed a petition for Denise Scott Brown to be included in the 1991 Pritzker Prize. The statement I wrote about it (for my Honor’s English class!) was my first ever essay about architecture. I haven’t stopped writing since. Except for today. Today, I am on strike.

Best wishes,
Kate Wagner
Author of McMansion Hell

P.S.

In order to keep up with the schedule for the 50 States of McMansion Hell, the Florida post will be published on Friday instead.