Oliver Wainwright on RIBA's '100 Women: Architects in Practice,' a new primer for industry-wide change

2024-02-29T13:40:00-05:00

We’re not there yet. In an industry where the gender pay gap has widened in recent years, where all-male panels at conferences are not unusual, and where macho culture still prevails on building sites, a book like this, sadly, still has a place.

Writing for The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright says he hopes RIBA’s new publication 100 Women: Architects in Practice, which we previewed in December, will encourage competition judges, academic panels, awards juries, exhibitions organizers, and rebuke “the headhunters who claim women never apply, [...] the clients who say they just can’t find women with the right experience.”

Many of the architects included in the book, namely Mariam Kamara, Suhailey Farzana, and others, are women whose practices are informed by and in service to decolonization in the developing world à la the 2023 RIBA Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari and 2021 Soane Medalist Marina Tabassum. (The profiles are divided into 18 geographical "sub-regions" based on the UN's geoscheme.)

The 320-page book was written by Harriet Harriss, Naomi House, Monika Parrinder, and Tom Ravenscroft, with Alison Brooks responsible for the foreword.

Albany's 'Million Dollar Staircase' to add permanent bust of late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, its first woman

2023-03-14T15:52:00-04:00

Even then, the gender imbalance was glaring. The so-called Million Dollar Staircase, spanning 444 steps and four floors of the New York State Capitol, memorialized the faces of dozens of distinguished figures in delicate carvings, but not one was a woman. Scrutiny prompted a state official to hastily authorize the addition of several women to the staircase’s lower level. The year was 1898.

After 125 years, New York State will make its first new addition, Brooklyn native and late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The carving will be formed from the same Scotland-sourced Corsehill sandstone used for the original stairs. It is expected to cost around $150,000 and complete sometime this spring. The piece will be sculpted by artist Meredith Bergmann.

The Million Dollar Staircase, also officially known as the Great Western Staircase, was carved in place from large blocks of sandstone from 1884 to 1898. It was designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and features 78 carvings of distinguished figures from that time. The few faces of women that are present on the staircase seem to serve a more decorative purpose, including babies, goddesses, and the architect’s granddaughter. The six proposed female additions include Susan B. Anthony, novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Civil War nurses.

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Oliver Wainwright on RIBA's '100 Women: Architects in Practice,' a new primer for industry-wide change

Albany's 'Million Dollar Staircase' to add permanent bust of late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, its first woman