Archinect - News

The NYT picks up on the 'gender mainstreaming' movement in urban planning

2024-07-25T19:32:00-04:00

A new planned community is built on the urban design philosophy known as ‘gender mainstreaming.’ [...] Ms. Kail acknowledges that the parameters of gender mainstreaming are in flux. Where there used to be “a focus on the everyday life of white, middle-class women and their children,” she said, over the past decade or so, a new crop of urban planners has widened the lens, just as she’s stepping out of it.

Vienna (the city previously declared by the Times to be a "renters utopia") owes a tremendous thanks to Eva Kail for its apparent equity strides. Though recently retired, the urban planner touts the new Aspern Seestadt development and its "female face" as the embodiment of the movement to infuse gender-conscious urban design concepts to socially engineer cities and suburbs into places of empowerment for women and other traditionally marginalized groups and classes.

The leading cities to embrace the movement toward "gender mainstreaming" include Stockholm, Glasgow, and Barcelona. In line with this movement, the UN-Habtitat also quietly announced the launch of its 'Women-led Cities' initiative last June.

Sarah Akigbogun is uncovering the forgotten stories of female architects of color with XXAOC

2021-05-14T18:18:00-04:00

London-based architect, filmmaker, and educator Sarah Akigbogun is bringing to light the stories of female architects of color, a demographic that has lacked adequate representation and acknowledgment.

Akigbogun is the founding director at transdisciplinary practice Studio Aki, Vice Chair of Women In Architecture, and a newly elected London member of RIBA Council. In 2017, she directed the film She Draws: She Builds, a film that amplifies the voices and experiences of 15 female architects.

Sarah Akigbogun. Photo: Twitter

Her current project, the XXAOC Project, is an online, crowd-sourced initiative that serves as a platform to document female architects of color both currently and throughout history. The project started in early 2019 with a tweet by Akigbogun calling out to the internet in search of these women and their stories.

So, new project for 2019 ...I’m starting a project to collect the stories of female #ArchitectsofColour, past and present. Who should I be talking to? Abo...

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and A+D Museum unveil "Built by Women" exhibit in Los Angeles

2020-02-25T14:02:00-05:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) and the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles (A+D) have announced the latest iteration of the Built by Women exhibition, a program designed to celebrate "the breadth of achievement by women at the building industry’s highest levels in cities across the nation."

The exhibition, which features the work of 56 women-led architecture, landscape, engineering, and construction projects from the L.A. area, goes on view on May 15th at the A+D Museum and is timed to coincide with this summer's American Institute of Architects (AIA) Conference on Architecture, which is slated to take place in Los Angeles May 14-16th.

The Santa Monica Public Library by Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners. Photo by John Linden

The exhibition is curated BWAF's all-female jury, a group made up of: Carrie Byles, FAIA, LEED AP, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Andrea Cochran, FASLA, president of Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture; ErLeen Hatfi...

An engineer's comic addresses social equity in transportation planning and design

2018-07-23T15:40:00-04:00

Engineer Ryan Martinson uses his cartooning skills to explore why and how to better incorporate social equity goals into transportation planning Equity & Mobility, a 12-page comic article published in the Summer issue of Transportation Talk," the Canadian Institute of Transportation Engineer's quarterly newsletter.

The Canadian Institute for Transportation Engineers newsletter showcases a comic strip addressing social equity in transportation design. The article looks at how planning decisions can be affected by a biased user experience design process affecting who is included in our transportation systems.

Summer issue of Transportation Talk comic by Ryan Martinson. Image: Equity & Mobility.

Martinson's comic describes how faster transportation modes like automotive travel are often favored over more inclusive ones such as walking, biking, and public transportation.

Summer issue of Transportation Talk comic by Ryan Martinson. Image: Equity & Mobility.

While pointing out these design issues, he also offers specific solutions on how to design more inclusively and better impact people's economic and social opportunities. You can flip through the full article here.

Equity, Secrets and Relevancy of AIA; 1 Year After #NotMyAIA

2017-11-16T15:12:00-05:00

This week we're devoting our episode to the anniversary of the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump, the statement by the AIA CEO Robert Ivy, and the subsequent dissent born out of the hashtag #NotMyAIA. We look to what has changed, and what hasn't; as it relates to the profession, activism and education, and what does the future portend.

Joining Ken today are Katherine Darnstadt, founder and principal at Chicago-based Latent Design, V. Mitch McEwen, founder and principal at Brooklyn-based A(n) Office, principal of McEwen Studio, and assistant professor at Princeton School of Architecture, and Rosa T. Sheng, AIA LEED AP BD C, principal at SmithGroupJJR, AIASF President Elect - 2018 Board.

Listen to "Equity, Secrets and Relevancy of AIA":

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Editor's Picks #448

2016-06-20T09:50:00-04:00

Robert Urquhart visited BIG's 2016 Serpentine Pavilion and the new Summer Houses. Olaf Design Ninja_ approved "Adeyemi's is very architectural and tectonic. still modern while taking on that neo classical stuff. and Leibingers is nice too...."

Plus, Nicholas Korody published 'The Permanent Temporality of Refugee Camps: The Syrian Chapter' a Masters thesis project of Nikita Gyawali, a student at the Aarhus School of Architecture.

News
Orhan Ayyüce recommended reading Nick Currie in Art-agenda, in which the Scottish artist tears into the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, "vis a vis its older cousin, the art biennale." Currie also writes (about 'Fundamentals', Rem Koolhaas’s 2014 Biennale of Architecture) "Depending on your perspective the results were either Brechtian or resembled a severe case of Asperger syndrome" and makes reference to Max Weber’s Verstehen.

Oliver Wainwright reviews the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion (and new Summer Houses) offering(s). Will Galloway placed this year’s ...

Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan's first woman architect: "We need to democratize architecture"

2016-04-12T14:07:00-04:00

All of us, including myself have been engaged in catering to the 0.1 per cent through our work. Our training has always been in material and designing architecture for that one per cent. The kind of world we live in today, we need to democratise architecture. I know that it may give an impression that I am saying this only because I am retired now, but I have become deeply involved in how architecture can provide social justice and (grounds) for an equitable society.

Why International Women's Day matters (for architects)

2016-03-08T15:45:00-05:00

You’ve probably heard that today is International Women’s Day. But what exactly is it? And why is it important?

For many in the global West, the significance of March 8th is probably a lot less familiar than, say, Mother’s Day. In fact, the holidays originated around the same time, during the early 20th century, at the nascence of struggles for equal rights and suffrage. But unlike Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day has always been explicitly political: a day to both celebrate women and to fight for emancipation.

A first iteration of Women’s Day was organized by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, but its international observance began properly in 1911 with large protests throughout Europe, albeit on different days in the different cities. In 1914, International Women’s Day was held for the first time on March 8. Sylvia Plankhurst, the great British suffragette, was arrested in front of Charing Cross on her way to deliver a speech at Trafalgar Square.

Then, on March 8, 1917, R...

Editor's Picks #431

2015-10-09T10:37:00-04:00

Laura Amaya interviewed Giancarlo Mazzanti, founder and principal of El Equipo de Mazzanti. The two discussed "architecture for social inclusion...from a political point of view", play or leisure, and "an architecture made of parts...or open work".

Meanwhile the latest editions of Deans List: featured Kenneth Schwartz of Tulane School of Architecture and Amale Andraos of Columbia University's GSAPP. vado retro agreed that Tulane is a "great school in a great city. enjoy it while it is still above water."

News
In a collaboration with the Architecture Biennial, Archinect offered up an Chicago installment of Next Up, the live-podcasting event.

Patrik Schumacher shared some criticism of the event and participants "one still wonders whether these laudable concerns should usurp the space that was presumably meant to be allocated to contemporary architecture."

Herzog & de Meuron released the first look at their design for the new Vancouver Art Gallery, a significant update on the Gallery's ol...

Women at the pinchpoints of architecture

2015-06-19T17:57:00-04:00

All those things that people talk about but you don't realize it until you go through it yourself... not feeling adequate, feeling like a failure...

Rosa Sheng, founder of Equity by Design and architect at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in San Francisco, talks with KQED's Aarti Shahani about the hemorrhaging of women in architecture after graduation. Nowadays, about half of architecture graduates are women, but in the practicing workforce, that number drops to only 18%. Sheng is one of the architects leading the discussion around the so-called "missing 32%", referring to the percentage of women architects that decide to leave the profession before becoming licensed.

Sheng has previously lectured on this topic, and spoke at this past year's AIA National Convention in Atlanta on behalf of her Equity in Architecture resolution.

Listen to the full discussion on KQED's "Forum" below, originally broadcasted earlier today.

Why Women Leave Architecture