Archinect - News

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...

Julia Morgan's YWCA building in Los Angeles to become affordable housing

2019-04-23T16:44:00-04:00

A YWCA building in San Pedro has been sold to a non-profit housing developer and is expected to provide 35 homes and on-site daycare for single women with children, all of which will be affordable.

The organization, which is one of the oldest and most active chapters helping women and families, will be given a low-income housing addition. The new complex will sit adjacent to their landmarked recreation center built in 1918 and designed by Julia Morgan, California's first licensed woman architect who is most notably known for designing Hearst Castle at San Simeon.

YWCA of San Pedro, Historic Julia Morgan Building. Courtesy of SPF:a

YWCA of San Pedro, Julia Morgan house. Courtesy of SPF:a

The Los Angeles-based firm SPF:a has been selected for the task of adding onto Morgan's board-and-batten structure. Speaking of her work, Zoltan Pali, a founder and design principal at the firm, noted the prolific range in Morgan's portfolio. "If you look at Julia Morgan’s work, you’ll see she wasn’t ...

Moving day a success for UC Berkeley's Julia Morgan building

2014-01-13T20:17:00-05:00

Though Morgan assisted campus architect John Galen Howard with the master plan, Girton Hall is the only building to be designed specifically for the campus by Morgan.

LA's Mike the Poet looks back on San Diego's "Spanish Magic" architecture

2014-01-02T12:50:00-05:00

Associated with both wedding cakes and McMansions, the Spanish Colonial Revival movement that took hold of California's early 20th century architecture left behind many civic structures that have since become classically Californian. Mixing elements from the colonial Spanish missions, the American Craftsmen style and the Arts and Crafts movement, architects like Bertram Goodhue set out to establish the metropolises of California as romantic bastions of "Spanish Magic". The style crystallized in San Diego's Balboa Park during the Panama California Exposition of 1915, celebrating the Panama Canal's opening and honoring San Diego's role as the first port north of the canal's westward opening.

3rd generation Los Angeles native Mike Sonksen -- perhaps far better known as "Mike the Poet", an impassioned flâneur and urban hiker famous for his city tours punctuated by poetic outbursts -- has been a mouthpiece for Los Angeles architecture and urbanism through his work as a tour guide, jo...

Editor's Picks #346

2013-12-17T12:24:00-05:00

Responding to some critical commentators Donna Sink pointed out "you realize she was one of the first architects to use reinforced concrete, right? The first woman admitted to the Ecole? Working in one of the most revered styles in our history when it was brand new?".

Steven Ward admitted feeling ambivalent "Could they not find a living woman architect worthy of the honor - they had to comb through the history books?...I can see the flip side. If they had created a different award, they would have gotten criticism for that…Ah, well. Progress nonetheless!". Responding to some critical commentators Donna Sink pointed out "you realize she was one of the first architects to use reinforced concrete, right? The first woman admitted to the Ecole? Working in one of the most revered styles in our history when it was brand new?".

Erin Lani continued in this vein "the work of Julia Morgan stands as one thorough exercise of an Architect's thesis, regardless of gender. She gat...

2014 AIA Gold Medal posthumously awarded to Julia Morgan, FAIA - the first female recipient

2013-12-12T19:42:00-05:00

Fifty-six years after her death, the Board of Directors of the AIA voted today to honor the AIA Gold Medal to Julia Morgan, FAIA (1872-1957) — the first woman to ever receive the award. Morgan will be honored at the AIA 2014 National Convention and Design Exposition in Chicago.

Considered as the AIA's highest honor, the Gold Medal recognizes an individual's work that has majorly influenced the theory and practice of architecture. Morgan's most famous works include Hearst Castle; Asilomar YWCA in Pacific Grove, CA; and St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA.

Here are more details about Julia Morgan:

"Morgan won a litany of firsts she used to establish a new precedent for greatness. A building technology expert that was professionally adopted by some of the most powerful post-Gilded age patrons imaginable, Morgan practiced for nearly 50 years and designed more than 700 buildings of almost every type. The first woman admitted to the prestigious architecture school at the E...