Archinect - News

RIBA will explore gender disparities in architecture in major new study

2024-11-01T17:17:00-04:00

This week, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced its participation with the nonprofit Fawcett Society in a new study of women architects who are either currently practicing or have left the profession. The study, which is due out next year, aims to establish a clearer picture of the scale and complexity of gender equity in the design field. It will inquire as to the reasons for a stalled rate of progress on the topic given the known barriers that exist and produce an assessment of "what works" and what further actions can be taken by different actors.

RIBA's Chief Executive Dr Valerie Vaughan-Dick states: "Following decades of research, the pace of change remains far too slow compared to other professions, and significant action is still needed. Understanding the barriers to making more rapid progress is critical."

The organization is asking those interested in receiving updates from the study to sign up by visiting this link.

HKS architect Meggie Meidlinger stars for USA women's baseball team

2024-08-30T08:30:00-04:00

[Meggie] Meidlinger has racked up accolades on the pitching mound, including a gold medal as a closer for Team USA. While women’s baseball isn’t a sport in the Olympic Games, she and her teammates added a silver medal to that collection Aug. 3 at the Women’s Baseball World Cup. When she’s not on the field, the 36-year-old helps design sports facilities as a project architect with Atlanta-based HKS.

The Virginia Tech graduate Meidlinger hasn't given up an earned run in two years as the closer for Team USA. Number 13 in your program and Number One in the hearts of her fellow HKS Atlanta office staffers says she wants to be a role model for girls participating in youth sports and the architectural profession. She and her baseball teammates also travel regularly to Uganda to promote the sport to women there as ambassadors.

Ellen van Loon departs OMA after 26 years

2024-07-26T19:10:00-04:00

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) announced the retirement of Partner Ellen van Loon from the firm after 26 years.

The announcement says: “Ellen has indicated that she wishes to enter a new phase in her life in which she will have more time to herself. It goes without saying that we deeply regret her decision. Ellen has been a trusted colleague and powerful force within our firm for decades. She also is, and will remain, a dear friend to all of us.”

Van Loon, who was born in the Netherlands and educated at TU Delft, joined the firm in 1998 after working at Foster + Partners. OMA is approaching its 50th year in 2025. Partners Shohei Shigematsu, Jason Long, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, David Gianotten, and Reinier de Graaf remain in charge along with founder Rem Koolhaas, who turns 80 in November.

Honoring the achievements of China’s first female architect one hundred years later

2024-06-24T17:38:00-04:00

On May 18, 2024, the University of Pennsylvania awarded Lin Huiyin (林徽因) with an architecture degree, exactly 100 years after they refused to admit her into their undergraduate program because she was a woman. [...] With the news of Lin’s belated degree quickly going viral on Chinese social media, her name is again in the public eye. It is therefore a good opportunity to revisit her legacy and correct the prejudice and stereotypes that have overshadowed Lin’s story.

Lin Huiyin’s story was included in the Weitzman School’s 2022 exhibition ‘Building in China: A Century of Dialogues on Modern Architecture,’ which examined her and her classmates' influence in China after 1920. Often detracting from it are accounts of her personal life and relationship with Liang Sicheng. Lin’s stellar academic coursework went unrewarded even after UPenn’s decision to grant credit to female Bachelor of Architecture students after 1934. Her granddaughter, Yu Kui, accepted the diploma on her behalf at the school's commencement ceremonies last month.

On the evening of May 18th, local time in the United States, at the graduation ceremony of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Lin Huiyin's granddaughter, Yu Kui, accepted the long-delayed degree certificate on behalf of Lin Huiyin from the dean of… pic.twitter.com/TZBPIsARUF
— Hola Fujian (@HolaFujian) May 19, 2024

AIA Houston President Melvalean McLemore on architecture's lack of Black women representation

2024-06-03T17:08:00-04:00

When Melvalean McLemore earned her license to practice architecture in 2016, she was only the 16th Black woman in Texas to do so. McLemore became the first Black woman president of the American Institute of Architects Houston chapter late last year [...]. While being first is exciting, McLemore said it was a bittersweet feeling. “It’s a little bit sad to hear that someone is the first of anything in 2023, 2024,” McLemore said.

Bisnow recently interviewed Melvalean McLemore, AIA Houston President, Moody Nolan Texas studio design leader, and a 2024 AIA Young Architects Award recipient; discussing her path to architecture and the lack of Black women in architecture.

"There are still less than three dozen Black female architects in Texas, and Texas is a huge state," McLemore told the outlet. "We produce a lot of architects, so you have to really think about how rare it is."

Lesley Lokko and Marina Tabassum named among TIME 100 Most Influential People of 2024

2024-04-17T17:16:00-04:00

TIME Magazine has named architects Lesley Lokko and Marina Tabassum to its list of the world’s '100 Most Influential People of 2024.'

The recent RIBA Gold Medalist (Lokko) and Soan Medal winner (Tabassum) were honored by the publication along with artists Jenny Holzer and LaToya Ruby Frazier and global figures such as the noted Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza and Russian political activist Yulia Navalnaya.

Brief profiles from Harvard GSD’s Dean Sarah M. Whiting and filmmaker/screenwriter Ava Marie DuVernay accompany Tabassum and Lokko, who join a list of other architects selected as TIME 100 honorees that includes SCAPE founder Kate Orff (2023), Kengo Kuma (2021), Jeanne Gang (2019, Bjarke Ingels (2016), and Wang Shu (2013).

The full list of honorees is available here.

Influential 1970s women architects exhibition revisited in new Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation series

2024-04-15T14:03:00-04:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) has launched a new audio documentary on an influential 1970s exhibition on women in architecture. Part of the BWAF series ‘New Angle: Voice,’ the episode will profile the Brooklyn Museum’s 1977 exhibition ‘Women in American Architecture.’

Curated by architect Susana Torre and sponsored by the Architectural League of New York, the exhibition received significant coverage across national and architectural media, including a review by Ada Louise Huxtable in The New York Times. The new audio episode, ‘Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture, Spring 1977,’ debuts the first program of New Angle: Voice’s third and conclusive season, with later episodes to continue exploring the influences of women in architecture.

Image courtesy: Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation

Last year, we reported on the series’ profiling of Huxtable, the New York Times’ first-ever architectural critic, and Amaza Lee Meredith, a Black woman born in 18...

Aki Ishida appointed director of the Sam Fox School College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design

2024-04-15T13:16:00-04:00

Washington University in St. Louis has announced the appointment of Aki Ishida as the next director of the Sam Fox School College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design. The current associate professor and interim associate director of Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture will take over duties effective July 1st. Her appointment follows the departure of Heather Woofter, who left St. Louis to become the new Dean at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture last summer.

"Aki is an accomplished architect and designer, a respected scholar and a dedicated teacher and mentor. She is fascinated by the ways social conditions can shape the built environment, and she has a long history of collaborating with artists, engineers and health-care professionals, among others. I am confident Aki will be an inspiring leader who will connect deeply with our community and advance the strategic goals of the school and university. We are proud to welcome her t...

Featured architecture job openings at 20 women-led firms across the country

2024-03-08T08:06:00-05:00

This week's edition of our curated jobs roundup features an assemblage of architecture and design career opportunities being offered by 20 women-led firms in Los Angeles, New York City/Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

To see and keep up with the range of roles at firms run by or founded/owned by women, use our Diverse Ownership filters or this direct link. And, make sure to visit Archinect Jobs for the complete list of positions.

To study up on specific job titles from the architectural profession, consult Archinect's Guide to Job Titles series. Also, follow our Archinect Tips series to improve your portfolio, resume, interviewing skills, and increase your overall chances of getting that next job.

Bestor Architecture seeks an Intermediate Designer in Los Angeles
"Bestor Architecture’s Intermediate Designer is part of a collaborative team of architects and designers. This person will provide expertise and design leadership in all phases of project development – schematic ...

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...

Fernanda Canales talks to the New York Times about designing better social opportunities in a challenged Mexico

2024-03-04T13:22:00-05:00

“Without opportunities for social interaction, places are more insecure, divided and isolated [...] How can you provide value to a landscape that is neglected? How do you provide an opportunity to see your town in a new way?”

Against a national backdrop poisoned by femicides, border politics, and the equally toxic influence of cartels, Fernanda Canales is making democratic life in underserved Mexican communities more feasible through her highly user-sensitive and socializing designs.

The Mexico City-based architect tells the New York Times' Sam Lubell of her contributions to the government’s $2 billion Programa de Mejoramiento Urbano (or P.M.U.) program, "They will survive local circumstances — issues of budgets, politics and vandalism," adding that "Over time, the public starts to make decisions and inject life. Things change and adapt. Time teaches us what prevails. Often it’s what we can’t imagine now."

Canales was also one of a century profiled in RIBA’s new 100 Women: Architects in Practice, which came out in January and has been reviewed favorably as an essential guide to future equality in the profession. She has been teaching at the UT Austin School of Architecture since the Fall after seeing ...

Tizziana Baldenebro will lead the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation as its next executive director

2024-02-29T17:35:00-05:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF)’s search for a new organizational leader has culminated in the appointment of Tizziana Baldenebro as its next executive director following a national search that began this fall.

Baldenebro, who replaces the long-tenured and well-admired Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, has past experience as the director of SPACES, a 45-year-old nonprofit that was founded to encourage community engagement with the arts in northeast Ohio.

Baldenebro was, along with other members of SPACES, most recently a co-curator of last year’s U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale and comes to the position informed by her childhood in Los Angeles and subsequent experiences in cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago.

"We are thrilled to welcome Tizziana to our organization as she takes the helm in guiding us through our next phase of growth and advancement in championing women in architecture, engineering, construction, and related fields," Angelica T. Ba...

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.

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation opens multi-use 'The Bev' HQ in Manhattan

2024-01-11T13:52:00-05:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) has opened a new headquarters space called The Bev in Manhattan it says will act as a “beacon for gender equity and innovation” just a few months removed from the passing of its trailblazing founder Beverly Willis at the age of 95.

The new, 2,000-square-foot multi-use space is meant to augment BWAF’s noted professional development, advocacy, and educational programs as well as provide space for its executive and support staff.

Located adjacent to the High Line and Hudson River Park in the SOM-designed Manhattan West development, the space was designed by SHoP Principal Angelica Baccon and overseen by Brookfield Properties Vice President of Design and Construction Sabrina Kanne. The space will also be used to host the BWAF's production of the award-winning New Angle: Voice podcast and special exhibitions, the first of which, the Yay Brigade-designed Pioneering Women of American Architecture, was launched recently.

Photo: Lucas Blair ...

Kimberly Dowdell is inaugurated as the AIA's first Black woman president

2023-12-18T14:20:00-05:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) celebrated a significant organizational milestone with the inauguration of Kimberly Dowdell as its AIA National President for 2024.

The AIA's 100th president overall is also the first-ever Black woman to head the post, following in the wake of 2023 President Emily Grandstaff-Rice.

At an inauguration ceremony last Friday, December 15th, the Cornell University and Harvard Kennedy School alumna who formerly headed the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) from 2019 to 2020, said: "Being elected as the 100th president of AIA is both an honor and responsibility that I embrace wholeheartedly.”

“My journey in architecture, from my roots in Detroit to this influential role, has deepened my conviction that design has the power to transform communities and elevate the human experience,” she continued. “This opportunity to serve my profession beautifully aligns with my overarching mission to improve people's lives through design, foster...

RIBA's '100 Women: Architects in Practice’ profiles the heroines of building change for a new generation

2023-12-10T09:00:00-05:00

Just in time for the holiday gift-giving season, a new survey of the 100 most influential women architects working in our time is set to hit the shelves courtesy of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The organization’s new title, 100 Women: Architects in Practice, intends to champion the cause of gender equity in architecture while promoting the contributions of often overlooked or unheralded women architects in more than 70 different countries.

“We wrote this book as a form of peaceful protest not a bloody revolution,” authors Harriet Harriss, Naomi House, Monika Parrinder, and Tom Ravenscroft detailed in the RIBA Journal. “It is the inequitable product of an inequitable profession, and all four authors eagerly await the day when the need for publications like this are rendered obsolete. When that day comes, it will mean that the perennial problem of gender-prejudice in architecture is a thing of the past.”

Related on Archinect: Overlooked; A Reflection on Progress and Equ...

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation searches for new Executive Director after Cynthia Phifer Kracauer steps down

2023-11-15T11:37:00-05:00

Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, the well-respected longtime head of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF), has announced she will be retiring from the organization at the end of December after serving as its executive director for more than seven years.

The announcement was made just a month after the passing of the organization’s pioneering namesake at the age of 95. Following this transition, the BWAF has initiated a search for a new Executive Director, a role that offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of architecture and design. Interested candidates can find more details and apply through Archinect Jobs.

Kracauer joined the organization in 2016 after serving as the Managing Director of AIA New York | Center for Architecture for ten years. There, she became a leader in many senses, helping to spearhead a number of award-winning initiatives while guiding the BWAF through the straits of the #MeToo movement and COVID-19. Kracauer has also taught at the University of ...

Trailblazing architect and inclusion advocate Beverly Willis passes away at 95

2023-10-02T20:16:00-04:00

Trailblazing architect, industrial designer, and inclusion advocate Beverly Willis passed away on October 1st in Connecticut from complications related to Parkinson’s disease, the New York Times reported on Monday. She was 95.

The founder of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation leaves behind a legacy of wide-reaching philanthropic efforts, espousing throughout her career the position of women in the architectural and engineering trades. She pursued a prescient design agenda and building activities that served as valuable early lessons in the development of accessibility concepts, adaptive reuse, historic preservation, and sustainable design.

Willis was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1928, coming of age in a post-war America defined by “self-made people” and influenced heavily by figures such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. She studied engineering at Oregon State University before transferring to the University of Hawaii to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and then ...

Maria Villalobos Hernandez to lead IIT’s Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism

2023-09-26T11:37:00-04:00

The Illinois Institute of Technology has appointed Maria A. Villalobos Hernandez as director of its Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism program. “Villalobos is the first woman of color and first Latinx person to be a director of a College of Architecture program, and she will bring a deep-rooted sense of equity and justice to the program,” the institute said announcing the news.

Originally hailing from Venezuela, Villalobos Hernandez has “witnessed first-hand the impacts of the oil industry on local communities,” bringing her to cultivate “an approach to landscape architecture that prioritizes environmental and social justice.” Having exercised this ethos through her practice, Botanical City, Villalobos Hernandez now hopes to infuse the MLA+U program with the same spirit.

“The weight of this appointment holds resonance beyond personal achievement, as it is a great responsibility to be the inaugural Latin American Director of a program in the College,” said Villalobos Herna...

The ASLA Fund selects ten women as 2023-2025 Women of Color Licensure Advancement Program recipients

2023-09-08T18:28:00-04:00

The Fund of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has just announced its second class of the Women of Color Licensure Advancement Program recipients for 2023-2025.

The program provides each with a $3,500 stipend to cover the costs related to the Landscape Architectural Registration Exam (LARE), along with exam prep, other resources, and 1-on-1 mentorship experience from a licensed professional landscape architect.

Cornell AAP Associate Professor Valerie Aymer, Curtis + Rogers Design Principal Aida Curtis, and Alexandra Mei of the St. Louis-based Christner Architects selected ten winners of the program’s second cycle, which is funded by a $100,000 donation from former ASLA President Wendy Miller and three others from the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB).

“[The] ASLA has steadfastly supported and defended licensure across the country, and the Woman of Color Licensure Advancement Program is a natural extension of this commitment,” CEO Torey C...

RIBA honors 2023 Royal Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari with short documentary

2023-06-20T11:47:00-04:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has released a new short documentary feature honoring 2023 Royal Gold Medalist Yasmeen Lari following her acceptance of the award at a special presentation held last week in London.

The Pakastani-born architect was named the Gold Medal's 174th recipient in April. RIBA recognized Lari, also the first female architect to practice in the country, over her groundbreaking humanitarian and climate-sensitive designs, which showcase “how architecture changes lives for the better,” according to a statement made by President Simon Allford at the announcement.

The 82-year-old detailed her approach to sustainable and seismic design, including her four ‘Zeros’ and refusal to work with cement, steel, and corporate handouts. She also discusses her work with renewable materials such as bamboo, earth, and lime, as well as the role of craft, women designers, and the democratization of the profession in her ongoing architectural aspirations.

Previously ...

Evelyn Lee is named 2025 AIA President

2023-06-09T15:47:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has formally announced AIA San Francisco and AIA California chapter member Evelyn Lee as its 2024 First VP President-Elect and 2025 President.

Lee is currently the Global Head of Workspace Strategy and Innovation at Slack in San Francisco and is also a member of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). She also served as the AIA National Treasurer from 2020 to 2021 and comes to the position with extensive experience within the organization, including a stint as the Past Chair of the Young Architect's Forum and National Associates Committee.

Lee has also contributed to the profession as a design strategist and writer, discussing with Archinect in a 2018 featured interview that she sees a need for manifold changes throughout the profession for architecture to maintain its relevance in society more broadly.

"Architects need to take hold of our identities as multi-faceted problem solvers, conveners, and human-centered design th...

Urban housing by women-led firms featured at the 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-06-08T11:01:00-04:00

As part of the 2023 Venice Biennale, an exhibition on the future of housing has opened feating the work of several women-led practices. Titled 'Reconceptualizing Urban Housing,' and organized by the European Cultural Centre, the exhibition centers on “unique perspectives on collective housing, primarily in or near urban areas.”

Reconceptualing Urban Housing Architects

Featured practices in the exhibition are Adengo Architecture (Uganda), Alison Brooks Architects (UK), Dubbeldam Architecture + Design (Canada), Eleena Jamil Architect (Malaysia), Fernanda Canales Arquitectura (Mexico), Manuelle Gautrand Architecture (France), Mecanoo (The Netherlands), Meyer-Grohbruegge (Germany), and Studio Gang (USA).

Mecanoo - Villa Industria Silos. Photo credit: Mecanoo architecten

“The global housing crisis has created an urgent need for housing worldwide, especially in urban centers where 80% of the world’s population is housed,” the organizers explained. “In the race to build more homes faster, ma...

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...

University of Pennsylvania appoints Rossana Hu as Architecture Chair

2023-04-12T17:13:00-04:00

The University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design has announced its appointment of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office co-founder Rossana Hu as the next chair of its Department of Architecture.

Hu, who is currently on the faculty of the College of Architecture & Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai, will take over chair duties effective January 1st of next year. Current associate professor and MArch program director Andrew Saunders will lead in an interim role beginning in the fall.

Hu will become the third woman to serve as the department’s chair and continues a relationship with China that has been long-established at the school since the beginning of the 1920s.

“We see ourselves as mediators: between past and present, individual and collective, public and private, rural and urban,” Hu said of her firm’s approach to design, before adding, “It’s clear that the faculty and students at Penn are equally committed to this vision.”

Related on Archinect: The Wei...

Women-led project team breaks ground on the Seattle Storm Center for Basketball Performance

2023-04-03T14:47:00-04:00

Seattle welcomes a new basketball performance center that won't just be a "world-class facility" but a space to support, foster, and train female professional athletes. Four-time WNBA champions, the Seattle Storm, celebrated an important milestone as their 50,000-square-foot Seattle Storm Center for Basketball Performance broke ground on Monday, March 27.

While it's said to "be the first facility of its kind in the United States," what makes this endeavor even more notable is that its project team is 85% female-led, across five firms and practices specializing in architecture, landscape architecture, construction, and real estate.

Female design and engineering team photographed at Seattle Storm Center for Basketball Performance's groundbreaking. Image courtesy of ZGF Architects/Shive-Hattery Architects

Participating design team ZGF Architects shared: "The goal was to build a world-class facility for world-class female athletes — with women-led teams who are experts in their field."...

Catherine Seavitt Nordenson to chair the Landscape Architecture Department at the Weitzman School of Design

2023-03-28T15:04:00-04:00

The Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania has announced that Catherine Seavitt Nordenson will be taking over as the next chair of its Department of Landscape Architecture, effective July 1st.

The current Spitzer School of Architecture professor and director of CCNY's Master of Landscape Architecture program will replace Richard Weller and will be the third woman ever to lead the department following Anne Whiston Spirn and professor Sonja Dümpelmann, who had been serving as its interim chair since last spring.

A press announcement from the university called Seavitt “one of the most admired scholar-practitioners of her generation.” Her career began as an Associate at New York’s Atelier Raimund Abraham in 1993 and has made stops at Pei Cobb Freed and Partners in addition to the academic appointments at Parsons, the University of Virginia, and two of her alma maters Princeton and the Cooper Union.

Seavitt, both a registered architect and landscape architect, also ...

Frida Escobedo speaks to Vogue on her plans for The Met expansion

2023-03-24T12:24:00-04:00

One year after acclaimed Mexican architect Frida Escobedo replaced David Chipperfield as the designer for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's $500 million modern and contemporary wing extension, Escobedo has spoken to Vogue about her vision fo the scheme. When completed, the project is expected to comprise 80,000 square feet of more accessible galleries and public spaces.

“My first thoughts were that this wing is quite isolated,” Escobedo told Vogue’s Dodie Kazanjian on a tour of the existing museum. “It feels like a separate part of the museum, and the question is, how can we integrate it more?”

While Escobedo is not due to present a design concept until June, she revealed to Vogue that her vision for the scheme will include some form of alteration to the building’s orientation. “Right now, the building is facing just one way, Fifth Avenue — the grand staircase, the Great Hall, and you can go in three directions to Egypt, to Greece, and to Europe,” Escobedo told the magazine....

Featured architecture, interiors, and landscape job openings at female-led firms in Chicago and the Midwest

2023-03-23T15:09:00-04:00

Following our recent curated employment highlights that focused specifically on current architectural job opportunities at women-led firms in New York City, Texas, Arizona, and California, we are setting our sights this week on Chicago and Missouri.

From Architectural Designers to Interiors Architects and Landscape Architects, take a look at these currently-available roles at design practices owned or run by women, and visit Archinect Jobs for the complete list of positions. To view only jobs at female-led firms, use our Diverse Ownership filters or this direct link.

Studio Gang seeks an Interiors Architect and Licensed Interior Designer in Chicago
"Studio Gang is actively seeking an Interiors Architect to collabor...

Featured architecture projects from female-led firms in the American Northeast

2023-03-23T13:23:00-04:00

In celebration of Women's History Month, we continue to highlight built work by female architects and female-led design practices.

After looking at some standout projects in the American West, New York, and globally in recent weeks, we head to the Northeast of the U.S. to showcase 11 firms that have posted projects to their Archinect Firm Profile.

Feeling inspired? Be sure to check out the job opportunities at female-lead firms in Archinect Jobs.

In the Dunes by Woodhull
The firm is led by directors Teresa Telander and Amy Kronenthal (CFO), along with founding principal Caleb Johnson and fellow directors in Portland, ME.

In the Dunes. Image courtesy of Woodhull. Learn more about the project here.

National Presbyterian Church - Addition and Renovation by Beyer Blinder Belle

The firm is led by partners Jil, S. Cavanaugh, Margaret Kittinger, and Elizabeth Leber (managing partner), principals Rayna Huber Erlich, Jennie Gwin, Elizabeth Kim, Carmen Menocal, and Cassie Walker, along with f...