Archinect - News

Activists claim censorship as Mexico City plans to replace feminist 'anti-monument'

2022-08-22T14:16:00-04:00

Residents of Mexico City are decrying a decision by officials to remove a statue protesting gender violence that had been mounted by activists last year. El Universal reported that Claudia Sheinbaum, who serves as Head of Government in Mexico City (a position akin to a state governor), had made the call to remove the feminist “anti-monument.” The statue currently appears in a roundabout in the city, and will soon be replaced by another monument

Sheinbaum has previously announced the commission of artist Pedro Reyes to replace a colonial-era sculpture by Frenchman Charles Cordier that depicted Christopher Columbus in light of the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples protest last summer.

Previously on Archinect: Christopher Columbus statue to be replaced by a monument to Indigenous People in Mexico City

Reyes’ commission was quickly scrapped in favor of an “anti-monument” that debuted in its place on the roundabout in September, prompting officials to almost immediately announce it would be supplanted by a recently-discovered pre-Hispanic relic titled The Young Woman of Amajac. Now the non-hierarchical group behind the protest piece says Sheinbaum is dishonoring what has become a symbolic site for feminist causes nationwide.

“The government trying to take back anti-monument spaces is another way of them trying to silence us,” Ceci Flores, founder of the group Searching Mothers of Sonora, recently told Courtho...

Mimi Zeiger combs SCI-Arc media archive to create lecture playlist highlighting feminist thought in design

2020-03-09T18:02:00-04:00

Los Angeles-based critic and curator Mimi Zeiger has developed Feminisms: 1974 to Now, a curated video playlist of lectures that have taken place at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) over the decades highlighting "feminist thought and dialogue" at the institution.

The playlist, dubbed a "Collection," is hosted on the newly-launched SCI-Arc Channel website, a dedicated online space that makes available videos created over the last 30 or so years from the school's lecture series, collected via the SCI-Arc Media Archive. Zeiger's Collection includes contributions from Design, Bitches, Penelope Spheeris, Dolores Hayden, Phyllis Birkby, Beatriz Colomina, Sheila da Brettaville, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Keller Easterling, Esther Choi, Izasjun Chinchilla, and Cecilia Fajardo-Hill.

The lectures focus on a variety of topics that stake a claim the for "feminist outlooks [that] shape our work and our world," Zeiger writes in an introduction for the collection. Ze...

Screening of "100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright" on June 28th

2017-06-22T20:03:00-04:00

Featuring a talk by Dr. Ann Rubbo on the artist and architect Marion Mahony Griffin, this screening of "A Girl is a Fellow Here: 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright" at the Center for Architecture in New York on June 28th at 6 p.m. investigates Wright's history of working with women, focusing on six ladies who worked with the architect, including Marion Mahony Griffin, Isabel Roberts, Lois Gottlieb, Jane Duncombe, Eleanore Pettersen, and Read Weber. Here's a trailer for the film:

Federica Buzzi's critique on the Le Corbusier Modulor

2017-05-31T14:20:00-04:00

The Modulor Man is a healthy white male enhanced by mathematical proportional gimmicks ‘of nature’, such as golden ratio and Fibonacci series. He represents the normative and normalised body around which Le Corbusier conceived his designs. As a result, most modern architectural forms are all tellingly calibrated on a similar standard, the healthy white male body.

"Given the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s groundbreaking research regarding medicalisation in architecture and its extensive Le Corbusier collection," the author Federica Buzzi writes, "I think it is time to address the role of norm and standard in Le Corbusier’s work and its legacy."

What is feminism's role in contemporary architecture?

2017-03-07T13:30:00-05:00

In this interview with PSMag, ArchiteXX co-founder and Syracuse University School of Architecture professor Lori Brown talks about the difficulties and rewards of attempting to design while female. She's specifically asked about how an architect attempts to integrate feminist notions of design in a political climate that would prefer women's structural contributions remain limited to conducting barefoot and pregnant installations in the kitchen. Here's a sampling:

What might be different about a feminist design versus a design that doesn’t take feminism into account?

The goal is to consider and incorporate where we are socially, politically, environmentally, and even economically [into designs]. We operate from the position that everyone is valued and everyone should be considered, which requires different ways of operating as a designer [and] thinking about the types of spaces you design, the types of users that would be needing these spaces. It’s not to create autonomous and separat...

SCI-Arc can't seem to find a single female architect to include in its Spring 2017 lecture series

2017-01-11T17:28:00-05:00

SCI-Arc has announced its Spring 2017 lecture series. And not a single female architect was included in the list. Really, SCI-Arc?

Granted, the roster includes historian and theorist Sylvia Lavin as well as the artist Amalia Ulman—but the lack of a single practicing female architect is pretty striking. In recent years, criticism has been waged at institutions for privileging men when it comes to lecture series, as well as panels, faculty, exhibitions, firms, commissions, wages, and interpersonal relations.

It’s not exactly like there’s a paucity of exceptionally talented women in the field. The Feminist Wall of Shame also took note and posted on the omission.

How sexist is architecture? Female architects share their experiences

2016-04-13T12:54:00-04:00

After Ms. Hadid died on March 31 at 65, The New York Times, in an informal online questionnaire, asked female architects among its readers to talk candidly about their experiences in the profession: the progress they’ve made and the obstacles they still face on construction sites and in client meetings. Below are edited excerpts from a few of some 200 responses we received.

Architecture, already a tough field, can be even more challenging if you happen to be female. As Christine Matheu from Bloomington, Indiana recalls in this article, “There was a time when women were not allowed to be members of the Century Club. About that same time, as a young architect trying to survive, I was doing exhibition design and had been hired by an N.Y.C. art collector to do an installation of Piranesi prints for the Century Club. When the club learned that I was a woman architect, I was not allowed to install the exhibit. I, like many other women architects, found it much easier and less humiliating to just strike out on my own. I have been in my own practice now for 20 years.”

Also, a lifetime pro tip: STOP CALLING WOMEN OVER 18 GIRLS. Thanks!

Despina Stratigakos on the emerging "third wave of feminism" in architecture

2016-03-17T18:21:00-04:00

In 2000, women represented 13 percent of registered architects; today, that number stands at 19 percent. If this rate of progress holds, we’ll have to wait until 2093 before we reach a 50-50 gender split...Yet numbers alone won’t ensure retention if architecture’s gender-biased professional culture remains unchanged. Ten or 20 years from now, we may still be asking ourselves, 'Where are the women architects?'

Despina Stratigakos — whose Architect Barbie collaboration sparked heated debate a few years ago — reflects on architecture's glacial progress toward gender equity as well as the profession's emerging "third wave of feminism".

More related to equity in architecture:

Why International Women's Day matters (for architects)

AIA's Diversity Survey shows some progress, but still skewed perceptions

Latent Complexity: Denise Scott Brown and Katherine Darnstadt (Latent Design) on Archinect Sessions #39

Being an architect is sexy, according to modern society

Why International Women's Day matters (for architects)

2016-03-08T15:45:00-05:00

You’ve probably heard that today is International Women’s Day. But what exactly is it? And why is it important?

For many in the global West, the significance of March 8th is probably a lot less familiar than, say, Mother’s Day. In fact, the holidays originated around the same time, during the early 20th century, at the nascence of struggles for equal rights and suffrage. But unlike Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day has always been explicitly political: a day to both celebrate women and to fight for emancipation.

A first iteration of Women’s Day was organized by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, but its international observance began properly in 1911 with large protests throughout Europe, albeit on different days in the different cities. In 1914, International Women’s Day was held for the first time on March 8. Sylvia Plankhurst, the great British suffragette, was arrested in front of Charing Cross on her way to deliver a speech at Trafalgar Square.

Then, on March 8, 1917, R...

The uphill climb to gender equity continues...

2014-08-26T17:39:00-04:00

Women are architecture's original rebels. Over 120 years ago, they insisted that architecture schools and professional organisations open their doors to women, arguing that the field would thrive (or wither) according to the diversity of its students and practitioners...And yet despite this long history of challenging architecture to be inclusive, women have been given little credit for their contributions.

Despina Stratigakos, historian and University at Buffalo architecture professor highlights in her Opinion article how women in architecture have challenged and continue to challenge the deep-rooted patriarchy in the field of architecture throughout the past century. Although there is a growing number of women who are studying architecture, holding leadership roles in schools and firms, and forming organizations, the same problems of gender inequality still exist to this day. From that, another question remains: Is anyone even paying attention?

In Architecture, a Glass Ceiling

Phyllis Lambert named as 2014 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement recipient

Mecanoo’s Francine Houben named AJ Woman Architect of the Year 2014

Arab Women in Architecture Film

feminist wall of shame

2013-11-15T12:44:00-05:00

New tumblr blog that looks at "outrageously gender-imbalanced lecture series, etc." send observed inequalities to feministwall at gmail dot com.

Denise Scott Brown and the myth of individual creativity

2013-10-17T21:43:00-04:00

Modern architecture, despite breaking with the past stylistically, nonetheless maintains this image of the gifted architect as a lone autonomous genius who overcomes gravity and prevails over his client [...] Rather than an inner activity done in solitude, it has been found that people often discover their thoughts and ideas through interactions with others [...] The centrality of collaboration in architecture is often overlooked in a culture celebrating and branding “starchitects.”

Referring to recent statistics concerning women in architectural practice and the Denise Scott Brown Pritzker controversy, architect Esther Sperber calls for an overhaul of how we think about creativity and authorship in architecture. Her piece for Lilith, "Revising Our Ideas about Collective Inspiration", argues that what is perceived as "creative genius" relies on cultural and social affirmation, and is therefore a necessarily collective act.

Endorsing D.S.B.'s demand that the architecture community "salute the notion of joint creativity", Sperber's piece recognizes issues of gender inequality within the practice, but is more concerned with the whole notion of individual intellectual ownership -- creativity just doesn't work this way, and prestigious awards shouldn't either.

As creative industries adapt "orchestrated serendipity" strategies to capitalize on collaborative processes, the presumption that intellectual production belongs to any one individual dissolves. Sperber'...

Women in American Architecture: 1977 and Today

2013-09-04T10:04:00-04:00

I think the development of design and planning ideas over the past three decades is where feminism has actually been most effective but least acknowledged...Architecture and planning have been reshaped by these feminist agendas in many areas...but I don’t believe academic culture acknowledges explicitly the influence of feminist ideas on the architectural and urban design practices and projects of the past three decades. - Torre

The Architectural League has published some of the content (the introductory essay) of Susan Torres's 1977 exhibition/book Women in American Architecture. They also released an interview with Susana Torre conducted earlier this year, by Rosalie Genevro and Anne Rieselbach.

h/t @amlblog here

Beyond the Pritzker: What's Next for Women in Architecture?

2013-07-30T20:07:00-04:00

My own conviction is that the most meaningful prolonged response to the Pritzker — but much more, to the entrenched discrimination it both reflects and reinforces — will involve political action directed toward measureable change. It will involve ramping up the current professional and cultural conversation — now focused on sharing experiences, promoting awareness, influencing leaders in the field — and articulating specific goals, definable outcomes.

Lately the subject of women's status in architecture — long dismissed as essentialist and unnecessary — has bounded back onto the agenda. As recent articles, books, exhibitions, online discussions and petition campaigns all attest, the full integration of the profession remains a fraught and unfinished business. Nancy Levinson, editor of Places Journal, argues that it's time to engage the larger sphere of political activism — to translate the widespread awareness of tenacious inequality into an ongoing campaign with concrete goals.

Unforgetting Women Architects

2013-06-03T17:15:00-04:00

A historian might spend decades undertaking research in archives and writing up discoveries in scholarly journals, but if the work does not have a presence online — and, specifically, a presence that is not behind a paywall — it is all but invisible outside academia. As Ridge states, “If it’s not Googleable, it doesn’t exist.”

Over the decades women architects have received scant attention from historians and prize juries. On Places, Despina Stratigakos writes, "The painful cancellation of Denise Scott Brown in the awarding of the Pritzker Prize solely to her husband and collaborator, Robert Venturi, is an important but hardly exceptional example of how female partners are written out of history by a profession suffering from Star Architect Disorder, or SAD." Stratigakos argues that it's time to write women back into history — and that the place to start is Wikipedia.

Why Architects Need Feminism

2012-09-12T12:42:00-04:00

For those of us who have long fought for greater diversity in architecture, the slow pace of change is less alarming than the emergence of cynical voices that dismiss the viability of architecture as a profession. At the final Van Alen roundtable, Dagmar Richter relayed the opinion, expressed by some in the field, that the declining status of the discipline is reflected in the growing presence of women in architecture schools — in other words, women are making headway because men are bailing.

Are we really ready to be post-feminist? Inspired by a series of Van Alen Institute roundtables held this spring — and by the alarming attrition rate of women practitioners — Despina Stratigakos advocates for an expanded role for next-wave feminism in architecture and design. Understanding feminism "as a matrix of politically conscious social, spatial and environmental strategies," she argues, could spur us to experiment with new models for a "more sustainable and inclusive architecture culture."

The Incredible True Adventures of the Architectress in America

2012-09-10T13:47:00-04:00

Let’s mentor a new generation of architects who are as proud to be women as they are proud to be designers. And let’s start by taking back the “architectress,” by infusing that cringe-inducing, condescending, mid-century term of opprobrium with some born-this-way, kick-ass, grrrl-power, retro cool. Imagine Architectress t-shirts and Architectress tattoos, Architectress blogs and Architectress fansites, Architectress flash mobs and Architectress meetups. Imagine Architectress going viral.

Back in the '70s, second-wave feminists were organizing and agitating, forming alternative communities, creating new spatial practices and attempting to pry open what a contemporary reporter called the "exclusively male preserve" of the American architecture profession. Gabrielle Esperdy revisits their "amazing adventures fighting for gender equality" and measures the distance we've traveled since. It's pretty far, she concludes — but not far enough.