Archinect - News

Trans and non-binary architects discuss their challenges within the industry

2023-06-16T15:55:00-04:00

So, yes, architecture has a diversity problem, but the tide is beginning to change. Thanks to out-and-proud architects like [Julia] Oderda, emerging trans designers now have possibility models to look to when navigating situations like coming out or transitioning on the job. Some firms are also taking steps to make their workplace more welcoming to trans people, often in collaboration with trans people who already work there.

Architect Julia Oderda, who came out as a transgender woman professionally in 2018, also provided some insights into her struggle in an interview with the NCARB recently, saying, “A lot of what I did to help pave the way for me — and hopefully for others behind me — but also just to address my own anxieties about the process was a lot of overpreparation.”

The narrative that the existence of trans and non-binary people in an office setting is always contentious ought to be challenged, but their lack of visibility and support from colleagues is troubling, spurring the VCBO Architecture principal towards even more action. “That's one of the reasons I've been as open and vocal as I have been,” she says. “I think we need more people who can be found online to help the next generation.”

Architect, organizer, and facilitator A.L. Hu, who teaches at the Columbia GSAPP as an adjunct assistant professor and is the design initiatives manager at Ascendant Neighborhood Development, shared their...

The Crumple and the Scrape: Two Archi-Textures in the Mode of Queer Gender

2020-03-05T20:59:00-05:00

Texture is the condition of possibility through which our bodies meet environments; like gender in its relationality, texture is palpable only in becoming. So did the blue carpet in my childhood bedroom enmesh gender between my toes? And if we alter texture — including how we talk about it — might we transform gender in both minute and brash ways?

Whether or not they realize it, architecture critics generally build a body into their writings. And we must allow ourselves, and others, to write bodies other than cis, straight, white, able ones into the affect of our analyses. Changing words — say, crafting new architectural metaphors for trans and queer embodiments — can alter our perceptions of bodies and buildings alike.

Lucas Crawford, the latest recipient of the Arcus/Places Prize for innovative public scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the built environment, explores how the language of architectural criticism influences the ways that we discuss the design of built space.

The Arcus/Places Prize is an ongoing collaboration between Places Journal and the Diversity Platforms Committee of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley.

How lighting design in hotels is becoming less gender binary

2019-12-23T15:17:00-05:00

Brian Orter has always understood the importance of setting the mood and the power of lighting to transform a space or a moment. [...] Today, Mr. Orter runs Bold LLC, a company that provides architectural lighting design for private homes, restaurants, bars and hotels. With a team of 30 people split between New York City and Los Angeles, Mr. Orter has worked with architecture and design firms [...].

The New York Times in conversation with Brian Orter of NYC/LA-based architectural lighting design firm BOLD. The short interview covers the many ways to do it wrong (and the few to do it right) and how hotels are slowly ditching masculine and feminine design for a less binary experience.

Rowan Moore on the added significance of Grafton Architects' RIBA Royal Gold Medal win

2019-10-07T18:36:00-04:00

It is built into the value system of architecture – the ways in which it is taught, published, recognised and awarded – that the most desirable possible outcome of a career is to be a celebrated maker of singular objects, of buildings that can be admired as you would a painting or a symphony. [...] It’s a start that the prize is to Grafton Architects – that is to say, a whole practice – rather than its two principals alone.

Rowan Moore, the Observer’s architecture correspondent, applauds in his recent commentary the decision to award the next RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture to Irish practice Grafton Architects, a deserving team with female principals at the helm, rather than further perpetuating the glorified idol of the lone (overwhelmingly male) genius.

Grafton Architects team © Grafton

"[...] it would be no bad thing if the RIBA followed up on this year’s tap on its (doubtless beautifully designed) glass ceiling by honouring more architects who are both female and not wannabe Howard Roarks," Moore writes. "There is quite a queue of under-recognised women they could choose from."

Berkeley bans natural gas in new homes (and makes city code language gender-neutral)

2019-07-18T15:02:00-04:00

The city of Berkeley will no longer allow natural gas pipes in many new buildings starting Jan. 1, 2020. It’s the first city in California to pass such a law, officials said. [...] Public support was also unanimous during 45 minutes of comment from community members and representatives of the University of California’s Office of the President (UCOP), energy giant PG&E and the Sierra Club, among others who spoke.

According to the council report on the ordinance, "the effect of this legislation will be that builders will be prohibited from applying for entitlements that include gas infrastructure — gas piping to heat water, space, food, etc. — except for specific building systems that have not yet been modeled for all-electric design" by the state, reports Emilie Raguso for Berkeleyside.

"We have to take more drastic action," said Berkeley Councilwoman Kate Harrison who had initiated the legislation.

Berkeley's direction could soon be replicated by other municipalities nationwide. In 1977, it became the first U.S. city to ban smoking in restaurants and bars and later spearheaded now widely applied environmental regulations.

The Berkeley City Council this week also approved an ordinance that eliminates masculine and feminine pronouns from its municipal code to introduce a gender-neutral language: "he" and "she" will switch to "they" and "them." Certain other terminology will get a makeover as ...

Yale student-led exhibition “A Seat at the Table” wants to spark more nuanced discussion on gender disparity in architecture

2018-10-22T18:56:00-04:00

But instead of shying away from some of the challenges this type of work poses, the students decided to publish the results of the survey as-is, and highlight its flaws. They decided not to draw any particular conclusions from the data, and instead hope to use the exhibit as a conversation starter. “A large part of the exhibit was trying to get a more nuanced idea of sexism. Not just sexual harassment, but other sorts of derailing that occurs within architecture schools.”

The Flexible Heart of the Home

2018-05-31T12:44:00-04:00

For too long, the issues of gender, disability, and user-centeredness have been relegated to the far margins of architectural history.

Places columnist Barbara Penner uncovers a parallel narrative to the rise of flexible home design — often attributed to a handful of progressive postwar designers — in the history of home economics. She explores the flexible domestic spaces created by designers such as Lillian Moller Gilbreth to accommodate what we now call "non-conforming" bodies, and shows how their work laid the foundations for the Independent Living and universal design movements.

Queer Spaces, Intersections, LGBT Historic Sites: Urban Omnibus launches new series

2018-02-22T14:32:00-05:00

As designers and urbanists engage with LGBTQ+ identity, what role do gender and sexuality play in the preservation, design, and management of urban space today? [...] Marginalization means invisibility, both in history and space. New efforts seek to reclaim and preserve queer histories inscribed in sites across the city.

Urban Omnibus, a publication of the Architectural League of New York, recently launched its new series Intersections: Surfacing (guest-edited by Jacob R. Moore), allowing a more informed look at issues of gender and sexuality in the context of design & urban history.

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...

Following criticism of the lack of women speakers at the 2017 AIA Conference, Elizabeth Diller added to roster

2017-03-06T19:50:00-05:00

Elizabeth Diller, the founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will now deliver a keynote address at this year’s AIA Conference on Architecture. The announcement follows intense criticism lodged at the AIA last month following an initial announcement of a lineup without any women.

Many architects voiced criticism and some signed an open letter calling for the AIA to take more meaningful action to address gender inequity in the profession. Subsequently, the AIA added a panel with Nóra Demeter, Michael Ford, and Cheryl McAfee, moderated by Frances Anderton.

Diller will be sharing a stage with last year’s Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Aravena, as well as Francis Kéré, who will be designing the Serpentine Pavilion this summer. The inclusion of several significant architects follows criticism of last year's lineup, which favored non-architect celebrities over practitioners.

This year the AIA Conference on Architecture will be held on Orlando and will revolve around the theme ‘Antic...

Archinect presents Next Up: Floating Worlds at the Neutra VDL on Saturday, March 4!

2017-02-16T12:15:00-05:00

We don’t draft designs in a void and cities don’t spring straight from our imaginations. Architecture is itself a designed object, circumscribed and delimited by the social, political, and economic conditions of the era. But, likewise, these conditions aren’t exactly natural—they’re designed by a host of actors and forces. For a new generation of architects, the most-pressing design challenge of the twentieth century isn’t to create new forms, but to re-design the architecture of architecture, itself. And, the first step in this process, like with any project, is visualization.

For the fourth iteration of Archinect’s live podcasting series Next Up, we’re taking a look at potential roles for architecture in the contemporary neoliberal political economy, with a focus on issues pertaining to gender and identity. In a sense, what we’re looking at is how architecture is itself designed—and, specifically, how we can redesign the systems in which it is enmeshed. In what ways are people cha...

Blair Kamin's standout Chicago architects of 2016 are all female, "but that's incidental"

2016-12-22T12:36:00-05:00

Jeanne Gang completed three exceptional projects, including the dramatic Writers Theatre in Glencoe, and saw construction begin on her 98-story Vista Tower [...] Carol Ross Barney finished the latest extension of Chicago's downtown Riverwalk [...] Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks, led the successful fight against George Lucas' planned narrative art museum [...] What unites these achievements? Probably the fact that gender, in the end, had little to do with them.

Struggles persist for women in the architectural workforce

2016-09-15T18:49:00-04:00

The undergraduate major at Yale is made up of 28 students, just 12 of whom are male. The Yale School of Architecture, with over 200 graduate students, is 42 percent female [...] But despite the near gender parity in the classroom, discrepancies persist in the professional field, with very few women serving as partners or leaders of firms. According to a 2012 American Institute of Architects survey of 2,805 member firms, only 17 percent of firm partners and principals are women.

UT Austin's architecture school begins new initiative focused on "race, gender, and the American built environment"

2016-09-09T18:06:00-04:00

The effort aims to facilitate diversity among design and planning professionals and students, and foster innovation in teaching and research on race, gender and inequality in American cities. Partially funded by the university’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, the initiative will ensure that the School of Architecture is on the leading edge of scholarship and practice regarding these important issues.

More on race and gender in architecture:

The enduring significance of gay bars in American cities

2016-06-16T15:09:00-04:00

The moment a space like [a gay bar] disappears, a sense of identity goes with it. “When you don’t have those spaces, you lose the ability to see yourself," [...] "...we also need to continue to modify it in a way so everybody has access, so we’re not doing the same thing that the mainstream population is doing to us and isolating ourselves in certain spaces due to access.”

Related on Archinect:

Editor's Picks #447

2016-06-05T16:03:00-04:00

Julia Ingalls wrote about architectural solutions, four major U.S. cities have used, to address homelessness. no_form quipped "Giving homeless people housing solves homelessness. Wow, fucking brilliant. Took long enough to recognize the obvious."

Plus, Nicholas Korody previewed Anupama Kundoo's "Building Knowledge" and examined "Sarajevo Now" as part of Archinect’s 2016 Venice Biennale coverage.

News
The Guardian provided a First look: inside the Switch House. The new "arresting brick ziggurat" for Tate Modern's. jla-x, commented "Those stairs are beautiful."

The news that Swiss architect Simon Kretz is the lucky protégé who will get to work with David Chipperfield in a year-long architecture mentorship (from the 2016-17 Rolex Arts Initiative), kickstarted a discussion about diversity, "white male shit...." and mentoring vs patronage. Marc Miller paused to put things in perspective, via an amazing podcast with Mabel Wilson from Columbia. "The were some crazy points brought up, like the...

Kickstart this! Façadomy: a new journal that looks at gender and identity through architecture

2016-05-05T20:41:00-04:00

Façadomy is new publication that looks at contemporary identity through the lenses of art and architecture. Façadomy's inaugural issue, Gender Talents explores the landscape of self-determined gender. It builds off the work of progressive sexologist Esben Esther P. Benestad, who has observed seven distinct genders in their practice as a therapist in Norway. Three prominent voices in contemporary art and architecture reflect on these seven themes...

Conversations around gender and identity – long excluded from the "gentleman's profession" of architecture – are seeping more and more into architectural discourse.

For example, the AIA announced recently that they would cancel their conference in North Carolina because of the passage of HB2, a bill widely described as transphobic, exclusionary, and bigoted. And, while the number of women in architecture remains low (with a high dropout rate post-college), and the way female architects are treated remains poor (if not violent and illegal), at least the conversation seems to have picked up in recent years.

But there's so much more to be said about the relationship between architecture and identity-formation than can fit into a crisis management-oriented footnote. The built environment both mirrors societal norms about identity and reinforces them. It's the ground on which we learn, perform, enforce, resist, or trouble gender norms.

Enter Façadomy, a new publication that looks squarely a...

North Carolina loses AIA conference due to anti-LGBT HB2 bill passage

2016-05-04T13:51:00-04:00

Wilmington officials say the cancellation of an architect business conference due to HB2 will cost the city nearly $1 million. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced Monday it will nix its three-day conference scheduled for later this fall at the Wilmington Convention Center. AIA officials cited the passage of HB2 as the reason for the cancellation.

Being a bigot isn't just ridiculous—it's costly! Supposedly pro-business Republican senators in North Carolina have managed to drive away Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and now the AIA thanks to their passage of HB2, which Towelroad describes as a bill that "bans all local LGBT rights ordinances in the state" while introducing "some of the most draconian anti-trans 'bathroom regulations' in the U.S." Talk about pissing it all away...

For more on the fight for equality:

Why Zaha Hadid's gender and ethnicity mattered so much

2016-04-05T13:29:00-04:00

"It's a triple whammy," [Hadid] told the BBC Radio 4 in February. "I'm a woman, which is a problem to many people. I'm a foreigner — another problem. And I do work which is not normative, which is not what they expect. Together, it becomes difficult." Like any high-profile architect, Hadid was expected to produce strong, functional designs. But as a woman, she also faced the added pressure of having her work interpreted as some sort of gender statement.

"Women in architecture" vs. "now in architecture": Mimi Zeiger on gender and architecture today

2016-03-01T15:56:00-05:00

For a while I’ve held the belief that identifying oneself as an architect is a kind of drag, a mannered persona donned for effect. How else to describe the clichéd sartorial signifiers: extreme eyewear, black daywear and designer footwear? As the education of an architect is so historically weighted to a canon of male practitioners, theorists and educators, a woman entering the field often operates as a kind of architectural androgyne...

"...we are trained to see world of design through black-framed, male-coloured glasses. Gender differentiation, then, comes with a thorny rhetorical question: ‘What’s the difference?’ If the goal is to recognise talent, experimentation and innovation, there seems no reason to create a binary in the field."

For more articles on issues related to gender-parity and -visibility in architecture, take a look at these links:

Results from The Architectural Review's 2016 Women in Architecture Survey are... not heartening

2016-03-01T13:21:00-05:00

One in five women worldwide say they would not encourage a woman to start a career in architecture [...] dissatisfaction among women is lower in practices where a significant proportion of management are women, and in practices with regular career development reviews and/or mentoring schemes, with mentoring the better of the two. [...] Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of women worldwide say they have experienced sexual discrimination, harassment or victimisation during their career

Sigh. For more data on women in architecture, check out Archinect's Salary Poll.

Other related news:

Single women emerge as second-strongest group of homebuyers

2016-02-24T13:48:00-05:00

It's hard to remember that just a few decades ago it was difficult, if not impossible, for a woman alone to take out a mortgage. Federal legislation changed that. And yet, it's still surprising to learn how dominant single women have become in the housing market today: Their share is second only to married couples, and twice that of single men.

Editor's Picks #434

2015-11-06T11:22:00-05:00

Julia Ingalls highlighted the work of Design Build Research (DBR), based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Currently a non-profit institute led by architect Michael Green and creative entrepreneur Scott Hawthorn, one of the earliest projects was building a theater when TED headquarters’ moved from Long Beach, California to Vancouver.

zenza commented "I was a part of the TED Talk stage design/build (I`m in the last photo actually!). It was a fantastic experience and I learned a lot...Having learned extremely little about construction and the act of assembling things in school, this program offered an awesome addition to my design education."

Meanwhile the latest edition of Screen/Print: featured the October 2015 issue of the Journal of Architectural Education , volume 69: "S,M,L,XL ".

News
Belmont Freeman (principal of Belmont Freeman Architects, an award-winning design firm in New York City) penned an essay questioning whether preservation has become too conservative and elitist? What Eva...

Sign the petition to revise unisex bathroom code by July 17

2015-07-16T12:48:00-04:00

Many people have been in the frustrating position of waiting in line for a single-stall restroom while the restroom designated for the other gender sits empty. In establishments that have two single-user restrooms, making those restrooms inclusive of all genders will double the options for everyone.

The Transgender Law Center, along with numerous educational institutions, lawyers, architects, and building code experts, are petitioning the International Building Code to make all single-occupancy restrooms unisex. The petition will be submitted to the International Code Council by noon PDT this Friday, July 17th. Several cities, including Seattle, Santa Fe, and Washington, D.C., have already changed their building codes to allow single-occupancy bathrooms to be designated gender neutral. Those who wish to join the petition should email their name, the title of their organization and/or affiliation, and their geographical location to: info@designinpublic.org. Their names will be added to the full petition with a pre-formulated comment and then submitted to the ICC as a collective document.

As petition-supporter Susan Surface of Design in Public notes, "Current building codes typically require facilities to maintain separate Men's and Women's restrooms, including restrooms that are...

Being an architect is sexy, according to modern society

2015-02-25T23:08:00-05:00

Nothing screams commitment like something that is built on a concrete foundation and set in stone: literally. Go ahead, then. Design something that will last forever.

While people working in architecture, whether through practice or academia, can give insight into the reality of the field, how does broader modern society perceive architects and architecture as a career?

In one of the more amusing approaches to that topic, sexy has stood as one assumption, especially when it comes to dating or looking for an ideal partner. According to one cringe-worthy heteronormative list aptly titled "Top 10 Sexiest Jobs for Men" by higher-education online database CollegeAtlas.org, Architect ranked as number 1 -- accompanied by some oh-so-thoughtful commentary that is just comical gold (but not really). There's a list for women too, but Architect or anything closely related to the field didn't make the cut. Big surprise.

Quite similarly, Mary Balfour of a dating agency called Drawing Down the Moon conducted a survey in 2012/13 that asked men and women what jobs they considered the most attractive. Those results showed that men working as an Architect or Designer...

What would our cities be like if they were designed by women?

2014-12-05T17:13:00-05:00

Nowhere in the world has a city yet been conceived and constructed along the lines that these women planners would like. Nowhere in the world do women, and others who share the inclusive goals of gender planning, have the political power or access to capital that such an urban renewal project would require.

Archinect remains committed to addressing the gender gap in architecture. If you haven't already, listen to our first podcast, which was devoted to the subject.

U of M architecture dean encourages minority high school students to storm barriers in a field dominated by white males

2014-11-17T13:29:00-05:00

Monica Ponce de Leon, a leading American architect proud of being a Hispanic woman in a field long dominated by white men, wants to change the face of her profession. [...] agreed to conduct a class earlier that day for juniors from John Hay High School - the vast majority of whom were black. Ponce de Leon, dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Planning [...], wanted to inspire the students to enter a field in which the vast majority of practitioners don't look like them.

An architecture of exclusion?

2014-04-02T14:01:00-04:00

Last fall, a group of transgender students at Wesleyan University tore down gendered bathroom signs and replaced them with ones that read, “All Gender Restroom.” [...] On college campuses across the country, student activists are dismantling what Sheila Cavanagh dubs an “architecture of exclusion,” more commonly known as gendered bathrooms. [...] To this day, plumbing regulations in Massachusetts limit the number of gender-neutral bathrooms a building can have.

Arab Women in Architecture Film

2014-02-06T12:53:00-05:00

This 56-minute documentary film features interviews with nineteen Arab architects from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia. It explores the subject of the practice of architecture by Arab women architects and features stories on their experiences, challenges, and achievements. In order to facilitate viewing, the film is divided into six sequels.

The film was first screened during the Award's sixth cycle ceremony, which took place on January 7, 2014 at the German Jordanian University's Othman Bdeir House for Architecture and Design in Amman, Jordan.

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.