Sharing valuable insight with Archinect were (top row, from left) Peggy Deamer, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Marta Gutman, Catherine Chattergoon, Rychiee Espinosa, Lori Brown, Angela Lufkin, Samantha Agostinelli, (bottom row) Eva Franch i Gilabert, Miray Celikkol, Gabrielle Esperdy, Tanvi Singh, Catherine Moreno, Erin Kasimow, Kriti Malik, and Anne Nixon.

The tides are changing for women in architecture schools in surprising ways. Female deans currently lead Harvard, Yale, Princeton, NJIT, Cornell, Syracuse, NYIT, CCNY, Cooper Union, and Boston Architectural College, among others. Despite the difficulties some of them have faced, no doubt, their impact has been felt in architectural education across the U.S. and around the world. 

Jamie Chan asks, what has changed for women in the last few years? And what still needs to change?

For women, architecture remains a difficult profession. In a 2020 ACSA report titled, Where are the Women? Measuring Progress on Gender in Architecture, the number of women decreases drastically as they move up the professional ladder. This is also true for architecture academia. While females made up just over half of the students enrolled in NAAB-accredited architecture programs, that figure drops among educators. Of the more than 5,000 design faculty counted in the report, only 38% of them identify as women. Tenure is also disproportionate, with 40% of women in the study having obtained tenure compared to 55% of men. At the top levels of academia, the number of female deans has increased significantly over the last five years, but females only comprise 31% of deans at U.S. and Canadian ASCA member schools.

The interviewees of this article, who advocate for the advancement of women in the field, say that there is much work to be done. 

I spoke with a total of six students, one recent master’s graduate, six professors, and three deans or former deans. What did they feel were the most pressing issues regarding gender and equity in architecture academia? What did they see as unique to the female experience of architecture school? Below are snippets from our conversations, loosely categorized.

On Studio Culture

Studio is where architecture students spend the majority of their time. Lately, more architecture school deans have been questioning the long hours spent slaving over studio projects and whether students are habitually overworking past their state of productivity. The GSD and Spitzer College at CCNY, for example, are addressing the well-being of students by closing the studios for several hours at night. This was a concern echoed by Gabrielle Esperdy, Interim Dean at NJIT’s Hillier College: "For years, it’s been known that ours was the only building that was open for 24 hours a day. Is that really a good thing?"

Charettes are also expensive, and they raise a larger question about whether studio culture is productive, efficient, or fair. At Hillier College at NJIT, many students work full-time jobs on top of their schoolwork. According to Esperdy, "[One] challenge that we have is that because our students can’t afford to buy multiple computers, they buy a desktop because you can get more power for less money than what you can get on a laptop and that limits where they can be. And some of them prefer to be working at home. If that’s what they’re doing, the studio is no longer [their] site of production."

While many female professors feel more comfortable at work, citing parental leave and increased efforts toward equitable hiring practices, they also have unique concerns: Male studio critics still far outnumber females, and females are often rated lower than their male peers in student evaluations, a phenomenon that has been studied extensively.

How does the studio environment compare with several years ago? And what have you experienced as a woman in the studio?

Overall, things have changed for the better since I was a student. Our current dean — the first woman in the position in the history of the institution — has made it clear that studio culture needs to change. That matters, and people listen. My generational cohort is full of wonderful collaborators and respectful colleagues across genders, and we are evenly balanced in numbers between male and female faculty. But there is still work to be done. I am often the only woman on juries. And research by others backs up my personal experience that course evaluations are influenced by gender.


Elizabeth Christoforetti
Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture, Harvard GSD

Some of my most memorable reviews while teaching have been with all-women panels for juries and critics. I’ve had female students remark in front of the jury, ‘This is the first time I’ve presented in front of all women,’ almost in awe or disbelief. Whereas an all-male jury used to not be anything unusual, there have definitely been major shifts towards improving the inclusivity and make-up of review panels. It matters to the students, and they are vocal about it.


Erin Kasimow
Adjunct Assistant Professor, USC

There has been pushback from male students [questioning the importance of a women’s group]…a lot of our male counterparts don’t see the inherent boys’ club in architecture. Many of us have encountered that in different scenarios.


Miray Celikkol
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

We had a pinup between two studios, and I think the ratio was 70% women and 30% men. One of the male guest critics asked why there were so many women here. And someone made a witty remark saying, ‘It’s because it’s a female-dominated industry now.’ That seemed to offend the critic and he asked us to name any important female architect besides Zaha. So we did.


Tanvi Singh
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

I had a lot of anxiety that there would be an overcompensation [of gender recognition]. I wanted my professors to be critical and sought out those who were the most intense. It was my own anxiety that the discourse of architecture was getting softer. I hoped that being more inclusive of women could mean being more respectful and not being less critical. I still want[ed] professors to push me.


Angela Lufkin
Recent Yale School of Architecture graduate

Labor and Inequity

In an educational model where many architecture professors are also busy with their own design practices, low pay combined with the high demands of university-level teaching has led to burnout and exhaustion. The recent labor disputes at the New School and Parsons are relevant to architecture programs because they also rely on visiting and adjunct faculty to teach studios, often without the promise of job stability or re-hiring. 

"Women are like canaries in the mines," says Peggy Deamer, Professor Emerita at Yale and founding member of the Architecture Lobby, a grassroots organization that advocates for just labor practices. "They feel the bad labor practices first and most strongly." As Deamer explains, the profession of architecture undervalues itself — an opinion widely shared by others interviewed for this article — and though this has created systemic problems, women are among the first to feel the consequences.

While interviewees were not asked specifically about labor, it came up in conversation, especially in relation to motherhood.

We are disrespecting ourselves by training our emerging professionals to work more rather than better hours from the time they enter our institutions; this translates into long hours for underpaid work in practice. It’s a time-value problem for sure, and especially for people — of any gender — who are filling the traditionally female role of caregiver. In teaching, if you have a childcare pick-up at 5:30 or 6:00, you cannot let desk crits run until 7:00. This leads to a perception problem that some faculty care more than others. The pressure is especially significant for faculty who are running a practice while teaching, which is essential to succeed at a certain level [...] holding three jobs is challenging.


Elizabeth Christoforetti
Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture, Harvard GSD

At some point, I know I might have to make a choice because it's difficult to have a family and practice and teach in any combination of the three. It’s not sustainable for a lot of people. You want to excel at your work and are trying to keep it together. I’ve been open with my students about being a parent and how that’s an extra job, where projects you might want to stay up all night working on will later give way to a different kind of sleep deprivation. It wasn’t really something that was on my horizon at all while I was in school nor should it be necessarily. I just want them to appreciate the freedom they have to make their work and their schedule as they want while they can.


Erin Kasimow
Adjunct Assistant Professor, USC

Between School and the Workplace

Architecture school graduates often face a disconnect when transitioning to the working world. That is, an architectural education may not always prepare the student for the reality of contractors and construction documents. There are a myriad of explanations as to why so many women choose to exit the profession after receiving an architecture degree — many cite the lack of female leadership, misogynistic work environments, and the fact that women tend to seek other related fields. Case in point: Of the six undergraduate women interviewed for this article, only two hadn’t ruled out the traditional path of becoming an architect.

What obstacles are facing women after graduation, and what might encourage women to stay in the profession?

The thing that I’m having to bridge right now, especially early in my career, is that I’m going to job sites. Architecture is not only the intellectual aspects but it’s also blue-collar work and construction work. Even if the profession becomes more equitable, the field of construction is even more male-dominated than architecture. [I want] to be a female going into that space feeling empowered and confident. It’s not just the office. It's that I have to interface with guys in hard hats holding hammers.


Angela Lufkin
Recent Yale School of Architecture graduate

To help architecture students navigate the bridge between school and the workplace, we need to follow students into the workplace and help them get licensed, at least the ones who want to. Spitzer is benefiting from a grant that CCNY received from the Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program at the U.S. Department of Education to advance mentoring, job placement, and counseling. The program is called CAPACity, and in the architecture school, it will fund a peer-to-peer mentorship program within the school and with recent graduates. The new program manager, Hassanah Smith, brings life experiences and aspirations that speak to the students she'll be working with. That's so important. There's that connection. Is that something that women think about more? Probably.


Marta Gutman
Dean and Professor, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York | CUNY

The presidents of NOMA (Pascale Sablan), AIA (Kimberly Dowdell), and APA (Angela Brooks) are all Black women. Black women executive directors are also at AIA (Lakisha Ann Woods) and NOMA (Tiffany Brown). Evelyn Lee, an Asian woman, is also AIA’s president-elect for next year. This has been inspiring to see as someone preparing to enter the field... [it] makes change feel possible [...] as if we can move forward into a world that celebrates the multiplicity of our voices and identities and is designed better because of our diversity.


Catherine Chattergoon
Student, Pratt Institute

After the Pandemic

Shuttered studios, halted travel, and remote schooling temporarily altered the traditional building blocks of an architectural education, as field trips, collaboration, and face time with classmates and professors had to be adapted to an online format. The pandemic was not something that I asked about specifically, but it came up in conversation. Both Hillier College at NJIT and Spitzer College at CCNY are public schools with large commuter populations, and many of their students live in neighborhoods that were deeply affected by COVID.

The pandemic also ushered in a transformation of spatial practices and new standards of health and care at both the personal and societal level. Eva Franch i Gilabert pointed out how social movements during the pandemic, such as Black Lives Matter, have helped push architectural education away from the status quo. She recognizes the potential for education to move architecture back into a position of social relevance, importance, and necessity.

Spitzer is a commuter school [...] The students and many staff live in neighborhoods that were devastated by the pandemic. Our community includes people with family members who were sick, who passed away, who still may be sick, traumatized [...] Just yesterday, I was walking through Spitzer and said to the chair, Sean Weiss, 'Really great work is happening here. You can see the studios are full. The desks are messy. There’s graffiti. Models are everywhere.' And I just have to say, the spirit is back. Students are back. They are using the building. It took two years. I’m very, very pleased that we've been able to help students find that balance again. I don't know if being a woman [leader] made this kind of thinking possible, but I do know that I decided to create magnets that would draw students (and staff and faculty) to work in-person at the architecture school. These magnets, you could call them small moves, add up — like making sure the café is open, putting tables and chairs on the terrace so students can sit outside and enjoy the sun, installing bike racks, screening movies, sponsoring design competitions — they may seem like they are incidental but together they have made Spitzer a better place for students, for everyone.


Marta Gutman
Dean and Professor, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York | CUNY

After returning [to studio] from the pandemic after being remote for so long, it was nice to see the conversations that were emerging about health, well-being, and care. That was the first time I started to see people say, ‘It’s okay to take care of yourselves.’ That the same care that we give to ourselves and our work is the same care that we need to have to give to the built environment, so it’s something that we should prioritize.


Catherine Chattergoon
Student, Pratt Institute

We have been witnessing an ideological and generational shift, but it is still very small and very painful. There are many universities and schools of architecture across the planet that have not yet seen any of those transformations happen. Around the world, conversations are taking place at very different velocities and with very different intensities but with equal forms of resistance from the establishment and by those who have been occupying positions of power that do not want to be displaced. Despite superficial embraces of systemic change, they want to continue to perpetuate their ideas and their protagonism in the history in which they have been writing themselves down. That is what needs to change — history should be expanded to include a broader, richer, and more active way to think about the means in which architecture contributes to society. We need to teach, think, and practice in relation to what architecture does, not only in relation to what architecture has been or is. We have to shift our focus towards architecture’s agency in terms of sustainability, care, justice, and equality instead of only maintaining its status in relation to canons or self-proclaimed forms of experimentation that are unable to contribute to any of the important questions affecting the planet, society or humankind.


Eva Franch i Gilabert
Professor, UMPRUM the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design

Pedagogy

Architecture is a gendered discipline at its very foundations. First-year students learn about the Vitruvian Man and Corbusier’s Modular Man, which was based on a six-foot-tall, handsome English policeman. Some of the great architects collaborated with women — for example, Anne Tyng with Louis Kahn or Marion Mahoney Griffin with Frank Lloyd Wright; others like Lina Bo Bardi, Minnette de Silva, and Norma Merrick Sklarek established their own offices but are often overlooked in the architecture curriculum. The public’s fixation with starchitects overlaps with the Roarkian image of the lone genius and his masculine ego. In architecture school, students idolize starchitects and want to work for them.

In recent years, many architecture schools have sought to increase the number of female voices in their lecture series, faculty, and departmental leadership. For example, in 2020, Pratt Institute also launched the Mistresses of Pratt dinner party to recognize the work of female-identifying educators at the school. The initiative, which began under former Dean Harriet Harriss, honored educators like Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Mimi Lobell, and Cynthia Davidson with a place setting to acknowledge their contributions as part of the strong tradition of women at Pratt. Guests were invited to discuss their own place at the table and reflect on the role that gender has played in the field.

How have female professors brought countercultural teaching philosophies into the studio?

Context is important. In my view, an architect is always dealing with context; whether it’s a location, an economic or political condition. As an educator — and I don’t think it’s necessarily a gendered thing — life is part of what we deal with, not just the background. That along with our curiosity is what brings a different lens. I love modernism, form, and making. But there are other factors that come into [design], and that is what makes it interesting. I think that is something that's more open than more traditional, conventional ideas and that’s where [I am as an educator]: I'm more open to how you define things, because I [myself] don’t want to be defined in those structured terms.


Anne Nixon
Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

I had a child in 2020 during the pandemic, essentially in the middle of my eight years of teaching. A colleague once asked me, does becoming a mother change how you teach? I didn't have a clear answer at the time, however, now experiencing life with a brand-new human being, I’ve come to observe how they learn to interact with the world and cultivate curiosity. Out of curiosity, novel ideas emerge and ignite joy — a quality we strive to foster in our students through making and exploration.


Rychiee Espinosa
Visiting Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute

When I was teaching a seminar called Potential Pedagogies at Princeton, we went with students on an incredible journey to recognize the limitations not only of the content of the curriculum but to [examine] the architectures of the system itself. We started from this question of how could we imagine an architectural education with different entry requirements, questioning current human edifices with no teachers or admin, questioning evaluation systems from grades to teaching evaluations. We asked ourselves, where do these structures come from? What does society need from architects today? [...] I always start every seminar or studio I teach by making a blackboard of conflicts, and so I ask everyone to reflect what are the conflicts within society and the world today? [...] Of course, inequality and gender discrimination are always present because we are, unfortunately, still there.


Eva Franch i Gilabert
Professor, UMPRUM the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design

On the Importance of the Collective

Women’s networks can offer more than camaraderie; they can advocate for an alternate discourse in our understanding of what architecture is and should be. I spoke with leaders of two women’s groups. Lori Brown, co-founder of ArchiteXX, a gender equity organization that bridges between the university and practice, discussed her organization’s unique position as one that offers programs for women who are mid-career, among other things.

On the younger end are Samantha Agostinelli, Miray Celikkol, Kriti Malik, Catherine Moreno, and Tanvi Singh, undergraduate leaders of Femmes of the Future, a student-run group at Pratt Institute. Bolstered by strong faculty support, they have brought together NYC students, academics and practitioners with more exhibitions, along with workshops and panel discussions that have been so successful that the group has been expanding by word of mouth beyond Pratt into other schools.

What makes an effective women’s group, and what are issues important to them?

You need to come with a collective behind your back when you when you ask for change. Of course we can discuss other kind of political strategies, which is to how to have conversations that aren't confrontational or how to indicate to [the other party] that your requests are win-win [...], but as long as [an issue is] seen as your own individual burden, you’re working off your left foot.


Peggy Deamer
Professor Emerita, Yale School of Architecture

[According to the book The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions], you need 60% or greater women as members of a body for their voices to both be heard and to significantly contribute to policy changes. That was depressing to read, but [helped me] to understand how, as a collective, the group can impact the direction. So although it's great that many women were appointed as Deans, it won’t be just one person that's going to be able to do this. You need a collective, invested body that's more representative of our demographics in order to make significant changes.


Lori Brown
Distinguished Professor of Architecture, Syracuse University

For female architects, there are preconceived notions that they might not be as good as men. [The Femmes of the Future] mission is to push design that’s women-led — for women, by women, of women.


Kriti Malik
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

Even though Pratt tends to be a school that is inclusive for women, there was definitely a reason to create a forum. We are unfortunately experiencing the same things [that others have experienced for generations]. Being able to come together allows us to share our feelings and do something about it.


Samantha Agostinelli
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

[As a young woman], a critic might talk about you rather than the project. Your clothes. They might make a comment about your looks. This is one of the reasons why [Femmes] is important. I will say though that half of the members are men, which speaks to the importance of allyship. Which unfortunately is necessary because people will listen to men. If men are saying this is an issue, then people will listen.


Catherine Moreno
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

It is important to have spaces where women can voice their experiences but also to create an opportunity for significant change. We've always done both at Architexx. We're very action-oriented and want to create opportunities for education, mentoring, and taking action. [For example], we were working with schools of architecture across New York State to create a lecture series [as an alternative to] the primary lecture series at the schools where invited lecturers have remained predominantly male and white. This was how we brought in other voices from the ground up by asking students who they like to hear from. We facilitate and teach writing so that there are more female writers and critics. We also host workshops on negotiating salaries, and workshops for women who are interested in a mid-career pivot. Our efforts are a space for women to gather, but also to educate and empower to make change. You can't ignore or silence a woman's experiences, but it's important to channel ways forward so that it becomes less about negative experiences and more about forging different ways forward into the future.


Lori Brown
Distinguished Professor of Architecture, Syracuse University

We had a lot of support from our faculty advisor Sara Jazayeri. It meant a lot to us to have a professor, who has her own practice, telling us to go for it. Carisima Koenig got us our first networking opportunities going to WIA events [to introduce our group]. We had support from Dean Quilian Riano as well.


Miray Celikkol
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

When Femmes [of the Future] was starting up, everyone wanted to talk. Once it came together, it was amazing. I can’t describe the energy. Everyone came up to us and told us that this is what was needed. They were trying to connect us to everyone. So many male professors were offering their help as well.


Catherine Moreno
Undergraduate student organizer, Pratt Institute

Rethinking the Architectural Education

Systemic change is larger than any school or group or advocates can tackle. Women’s issues are part of the greater need to broaden academic scholarship and make architecture school more affordable and accessible to everyone. From a high-level perspective, Peggy Deamer, Gabrielle Esperdy, and Eva Franch i Gilabert point to the need to change architectural education at its roots while also recognizing that it cannot be overhauled overnight.

I just finished writing a book with six other women about the need to change architecture education and put organizing at the center of it. We absolutely need to change education but not just for the sake of women; for the sake of all who want to enter the profession. And it's not that I don't believe that we should change education so it reflects the reality of the profession; I think we need to change education so that the profession itself changes.


Peggy Deamer
Professor Emerita, Yale School of Architecture

I don’t think the current architecture educational model — this notion that you have to be at the studio for hour after hour — reflects the reality of any student’s life in 2024 and certainly doesn’t reflect the life of our students, who as first-generation college students and first-generation Americans might work 20–30 hours a week in addition to going to school full time. It’s a struggle and it’s ripe for change.


Gabrielle Esperdy
Interim Dean, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Architectural history, practice, literature, and discourse was always — with a few exceptions — focused on hetero-patriarchal epistemologies and materials. To change this will take more than having women in the classroom or in positions of leadership. It takes a lot of people — of all genders, class, race, and ability — who are interested, from a feminist perspective, in rewriting history from very different points of view. I think perhaps one of the most difficult things [that must be done] is to construct an academic backbone, a historical and theoretical background. That takes not only innovative research and brave PhDs but also intrepid scholars, critics, practitioners, and new opportunities for those historically excluded through the form of scholarships.


Eva Franch i Gilabert
Professor, UMPRUM the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design

How quickly architecture schools will continue to transform and rethink pedagogy, curriculum, and methods of evaluation in ways that are more inclusive of women depends on the collective efforts of students, professors, the leadership, and many others outside the school realm. 

What is clear is that we are in the midst of a generational shift, with more people paying attention to female leaders in the field. Therein lies the opportunity to foster a more collaborative and empathetic learning environment that will benefit all who take part.