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Buildings Speak: NPR special will explore the impacts of women on American architecture for International Women’s Day

2024-03-06T13:57:00-05:00

For this year's International Women’s Day on March 8, NPR is airing a special one-hour documentary produced with help from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF). The piece aims to shed light on the overlooked contributions of women in architecture to an American mass audience for the first time.

Narrated by the great Oscar-winning actor and producer Frances McDormand, ‘Buildings Speak: Stories of Pioneering Women Architects’ is a collaboration with producers The Kitchen Sisters. The special draws three of the figures (Julia Morgan, Amaza Lee Meredith, and Natalie de Blois) featured in the BWAF’s unmissable New Angle: Voice podcast series, the third season of which also premiers on International Women’s Day with a special focus on the architecture of the 1970s.

Tizziana Baldenebro, the new executive director of the BWAF, commented: “They are trailblazers, groundbreakers, skyscraper visionaries — women who changed the skyline and the built environment that surrounds us tod...

The BWAF's 'New Angle: Voice' audio series continues with a look at the lives of Ada Louise Huxtable and Amaza Lee Meredith

2023-04-28T18:37:00-04:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) is continuing its ‘New Angle: Voice’ audio documentary series with a look at two early female pioneers of architectural criticism and design education.

The new season premiered last week with an episode highlighting the late writer Ada Louise Huxtable, the New York Times’ first-ever architectural critic and important mentor to Paul Goldberger, Christopher Hawthorne, and other journalists who have shaped the landscape for architecture criticism as it embraces the new digital age.

The next episode, which is set to premiere in mid-May, will focus on the life of Amaza Lee Meredith, a Black woman born in 1895 and credited with establishing Virginia State’s School of Fine Arts Department. Meredith designed several structures in the state and Sag Harbor, New York (including historic Azurest South which she and her partner called home) after 1939, and enjoyed a dual career as an educator in addition to her pursuits as a painter, which are al...

New audio documentary on Ray Eames to launch on International Women’s Day

2023-02-27T11:46:00-05:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation is set to launch the second season of its award-winning audio documentary series New Angle: Voice. Debuting on March 8th to coincide with International Women’s Day, the first episode in the series will explore the story of Ray Eames (1912–1988), with future episodes exploring other influential female figures in design.

The introductory episode on Ray Eames will present a history of her contributions to the arts, architecture, graphic design, textile design, and furniture innovation. The narrative will also be informed by interviews with figures spanning art history, curation, design, the Eames Foundation, and the Library of Congress.

“Our original story about Ray Eames draws on new research of her years as a painter in New York, from archival footage and audio of her media appearances as well as interviews with Eames family members and employees of Eames Office, their design studio in Venice, California,” explained Cynthia Phifer Kracauer A...