"but men may have a lot to learn from women about being diplomatic and subtle and not shooting off at the mouth. can be a benefit in terms of client retention."
well that's what you wanted, right? you've been asking for it since the first post. it's been fun 'reading' your increasingly incendiary comments be ignored, but we can move on now and actually discuss this issue.
strawbeary, i say ask whenever you damn well please. if you don't know, ask. if you aren't sure, ask. who cares if someone else hates your question. it's their problem that they fear looking stupid. and if they are making up an answer, call them on that shit. they should check their ego at the door. asking questions should never be discouraged. the consequence of not asking is that you'll grow up to be just as ill-informed as the guy sitting next to you.
"Specifically insecure, sexually repressed, video game geeks. When these people get threatened by things like critical theory (which brings in academic culture which is much more diverse) or discourses about the body or even materiality or perception this gets declared “over†or “irrelevant†and replaced with MathCAD and “surfacesâ€Â. "
Ouch. Talk about prejudice.
BUT YOU WIN THE PRIZE! Sort of...
I was STOKED when the new GTA came out (SAN ANDREAS, BABY)... not insecure (damn, I hope not anyway... maybe you can point out how I'm obviously insecure based on my posts somehow)... or sexually repressed (just trust me on that one).
Big Micheal Hayes fan, are you? Not that into Mr. P. Scott Cohen?
Well... lets see... sounds like someone doesn't get along with the computer, but likes to read a LOT. Case in point. See above posts.
I should stop now before I get fired by my female boss FOR NOT DOING A DAMN THING TODAY.
dude, I think you have me confused with someone else. check your thread. personally, I get along quite well with the computer and fielded several Revit questions from 2 male colleagues just today...oh wait, here's another one, gotta go.
"I get along quite well with the computer and fielded several Revit questions from 2 male colleagues just today...oh wait, here's another one, gotta go."
There are several women posting here. Why or what MAY sway you to remove yourself from the architecture career path? I'll start.
Glass ceiling, aka the good ol boys club aka I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine. Statistics show women making 70 cents on the dollar in architecture. It is real, and it is lame.
Family - We desire a one person income household and one stay at home parent. He can't be the stay at home cause one architecture career cannot sutain a family. Given the choice between letting my kid grow up in daycare and this career, I pick my kid. We feel this is our duty to society to raise good kids.
Too high of standards, expectations. Emotional strain, frustration.
Lack of real role models, mentors, confidants to relate to.
Linear path of gaining experience, becoming a respected architect doesn't allow for any wandering or exploring.
"Glass ceiling, aka the good ol boys club aka I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine."
Sorry, you wanted women's responses... but I have an honest question. I hear about the "goodolboys club" a lot... but I have NEVER actually seen it in action... and by the schools I've gone to and the office I work for God knows I should have seen it by now.
Am I in it and don't know it? Am I too dumb to see it? When does the "club" convene, and what do they do that serves to push the men onward and upward and leave women behind? These are not rhetorical questions, I really want to know.
I will admit, its easier to see the barriers if you are behind one... harder when you're on the other side of it.
I, for one, see the "good ol boys club" as a $$$ thing rather than as a gender thing... and it AIN'T just boys that belong (Williams and Tsien, boutique firms up the wazoo, etc...) And I see the $$$ club in action EVERY day, beleive me.
Again, really just an honest question... not looking for an argument.
i'll take 1 and 2. i didn't believe the glass ceiling existed until i saw the unbelieving eyes of a colleague with similar education when i told him what his firm was offering me. he was embarrased.
family: i'm not there yet but it will eventually come. it does seem that in the states it is harder to manage. in south america there is no such thing as parental leave [that how it's called?] but things are looser, somehow easier to manage... easier and harder i guess. let me think about that one.
i'm not sure about the standards because i think guys can argue the exact same thing...
i like kazujo sejima [sp?] as a role model, heard her talk once and she seemed just like her buildings: quiet, elegant, smart.
i'd say the linear path argument is not gender specific.
strwabearys last point resonates with me even though i'm not a woman. i worked in architecture for about 10 years at a variety of places. i started to get bored. i started to wonder what's next. i started to admire ray and charles eames and i read a book by olt aicher "the world as design." i was inspired to try something different. i left architecture for a graphic design position which lead to an industrial design position. while doing id, i also did a good bit of application design, interaction design and web design. i now work for myself doing mostly print and digital design.
when i left architecture, i noticed that my femaie friends reacted differently than my male friend to the change. the ladies said, "wow, that's great. how wonderful. i'm so happy for you" the men said, " really. why? why do you want to give up?" who said anything about giving up? i want to wander and explore as strawbeary said. my conclusion what that men view success in a very linear way. intern leads to designer leads to project head lead to studio head lead to the big cheese. climb the mountain boys. women see success as the cumulation of experiences and events. it not the path but the journey that is important. i'm still overwhelmed by the success of ray and charles eames. their breadth is so inspiring and impressive.
i don't think that is nessecarily a male/female way of looking at life or time. working your way up the ladder can be a culmination of experiences and events as well. it just happens to be the more acceptable route of growing professionally.
glass ceiling fucking blows.
good old boys definately do exist. and i am going out on a limb and saying, especially in less metropolitain areas.
i do not desire to have children for many career related reasons.
hey hey stephanie, settle down there. you have to wait till your mid 30's and really show us that you are committed to THE PROFESSION[and your not going to quickly run out to follow your biological clock...]. else clearly you only having fun at this point in time.
oo thats a thread killer if i ever saw one as you will get this long silence........if the practice is 20/80 women to men it appears archinect is 5/95....... i remeber a discussion on archinect v1. but cant say i remember anyone here ....maybe mum?
little boys and girls go make sure you have wads of money if you want to move up in architecture.
shanec seems to be one of the few people that are able to drill down to the core of the argument: its not about being black/ green/ a chick/ a dude/ straight/ gay/ bi/ membership in the good ol boys club or not...
Architecture is a rich people's club! its the williams and tsien/ thompson rose/ maya lin/ Laurinda Spear, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Marilyn Taylor, Zaha Hadid, Toshiko Mori... I am not discounting their talents but the reality is that they have the cash to be able to do what they want.
Like i said a few post back, in the picture in the opening post, David Adjaye may be a black man but he is for sure NOT a broke black man. Gender, etnicity and economic (dis)advantage are not related. Until people realize this critical distinction we will be wasting efforts going after the wrong problem.
its not a glass ceiling holding people back. its their empty wallets and broke bank accounts that keep them back.
HE apartment had all the flourishes you would expect from a young and prolific architect: the vintage modernist furniture (a little Mies, some Florence Knoll, a chair by Bruno Mathsson); the muted palette of gray, black and brown; the gallery-quality black-and-white photographs (mostly Wayne Maser and the haunting botanical portraits of Don Freeman). It's all very precise, and it's all in the details.
But the architect, Stephan Jaklitsch, 37, whose extreme good taste has shaped all the Marc Jacobs stores worldwide (that's nearly 50, and still counting) and who has been running his own 17-person firm for six and a half years, has amped the aesthetic volume up so high in his Horatio Street one-bedroom that only the most educated ears can pick up the frequency. For instance, on the coffee table, sitting casually at magazine level (not that there were any unsightly magazines) was a tiny celadon bowl the color of a grasshopper's wing. It turned out to be about a century or two older than most objects in the room.
Mr. Jaklitsch took about 15 seconds to find the bowl's pedigree papers - it's Chinese, from the Qianlong Dynasty (1736-95) - which were filed neatly in a Florence Knoll credenza nearby. Nearly as quickly, he offered a delicate Chinese terra cotta vessel weighing no more than a sheet of paper, its clay skin imprinted by a faint basket-weave pattern. Its papers declared that its year of birth was somewhere between 475 B.C. and 221 B.C.
Slightly built and with a husky voice and impish smile, Mr. Jaklitsch looked considerably younger than his age. An hour or so later, shrugging on his Marc Jacobs peacoat, he in fact looked much like a graduating senior from a prep school in the Northeast - Andover, maybe, or St. Paul's. Except that his peacoat was lined in sable, and his dorm room gewgaws have been bought on the Hollywood Road in Hong Kong.
"I've had friends walk in and say: 'What is the story in this room? How does the Asian stuff work with the modern? I don't get it!" Mr. Jaklitsch said. "The story is just that I respond to anything that is rigorously designed."
Which explains why this lover of Mies is living in an archetypal prewar apartment building - one of five Emery Roth buildings designed for the real estate developers Bing & Bing in Greenwich Village just before the Depression (and the only one that's a co-op; the other four, at 59, 299 and 302 West 12th Street and 45 Christopher Street, are condos). It's sort of a joke, Mr. Jaklitsch said, but kind of true that when he learned that Mies van der Rohe had, in fact, lived in a prewar building himself, Mr. Jaklitsch thought he "could cope with this one."
Also, as he pointed out, it's rigorously designed; its gracious proportions are an Emery Roth signature. R. A. Sassone, a vice president at the Corcoran Group who handles sales in many of the five Bing & Bing buildings, said it's a truism among fans of the Village quintet that if you are blindfolded and led into one, "you can't tell which building you're in." All have the same low and lovely beamed ceilings, brick fireplaces and cloistered bedrooms. Mr. Jaklitsch said he loved the proportions of his 800-square-foot home, bought in early 2002 for $441,000. (At an open house for the apartment, which had been on the market for just four days, Mr. Jaklitsch was one of 90 people sidling through its rooms. He found the owner, shook his hand and said, "Here's the asking price and here's my phone number.")
For a guy who spends four days each week traveling, it was imperative he find a quiet sanctuary for the few hours he has to himself. (Last year, Marc Jacobs stores opened in Boston, Beijing, Shanghai and Los Angeles; including the Marc Jacobs stores on deck for this year and beyond, Mr. Jaklitsch's firm right now has 45 projects on its drafting tables.) "The pace of work is relentless," he said happily.
Mr. Jaklitsch resurfaced the apartment's walls and replaced moldings long since vanished to restore it to a crisp 1929 state. He didn't touch its closet-sized kitchen and funky tiled bathroom. Set at the back of the building, the apartment is as quiet as a house on a suburban cul-de-sac. Mr. Jacklitsch has no television set, and the cellphone reception is lousy. "And since I'm never here to return calls on the land line," he said, "people have learned not to use that number."
Since moving to New York City in 1994, Mr. Jaklitsch, who grew up in Maryland and took his architecture degree at Princeton, has lived in the same four-block section of the West Village. "I hate the grid," he said, "and I love the trees."
Like many architects, Mr. Jaklitsch calls himself a generalist and does not stamp his clients' spaces in his own image. A West Village town house is all steel and hearty rough-hewn beams; another town house a few blocks away is a 19th-century paneled homage to itself. Five years ago, a contractor recommended Mr. Jaklitsch to Robert Duffy, Marc Jacobs's business partner, when Mr. Duffy wanted to renovate his own Fifth Avenue apartment.
Mr. Jaklitsch has since completed a town house for Mr. Duffy and designed every Marc Jacobs store, in collaboration with the French furniture designer Christian Liaigre, beginning with the company's second, in San Francisco, in August 2000.
"He is demanding as hell," Mr. Jaklitsch said of Mr. Duffy. It was clearly a compliment.
Mr. Duffy later doffed his own hat to Mr. Jaklitsch. "He has incredibly good taste - and he would hate for me to say that," Mr. Duffy said. "I love watching him on these safaris through the antiques stores in Hong Kong, evaluating and choosing and falling in love with a perfect bowl. I like that his apartment is so orderly and so neat, and that maybe there is this one perfect object on display that I know - because I've seen him do it - he's agonized over. And in our work together, I need the integrity of what he does to make what I want be good."
Mr. Jaklitsch is indeed so in love with good design he's arrayed silver-framed photographs of great buildings on a mantel and a side table like family portraits. You'll peer into them expecting to see the grinning faces of small children (Mr. Jaklitsch has 24 nieces and nephews). Instead, you'll see a snapshot of the Japanese Imperial Palace, or the Parthenon, his favorite building.
His second favorite is the Resurrection Chapel in Stockholm - a riot of classical details. He'll eagerly point out its intricacies, and the fact that its architect, Sigurd Lewerentz, designed it with two proportional systems, one for the inside and one for the exterior.
"No one could know that just by looking," he said, lauding Lewerentz's obsessiveness. "But he knew, and it mattered to him. I love that."
So, a visitor wondered, taking in the pristine space around her, did Mr. Jaklitsch consider himself to be in any way obsessive?
"Completely," he said. "Have you ever met an architect who wasn't?"
maybe the stress of the profession is too much for women...just a thought.
i did 2 architectural degrees, and let me tell you my observations (not a generalization, and actual true account):
women cried on a regular basis. they had all of the nervous breakdowns. they took out their frustration on their bodies (in an unhealthy way). the ones i knew were all on perscription drugs. the scene/culture bred unhealthy women. this is not to say that the guys weren't messed up...but somehow, they (we) hid it. it's probably why we're ego-maniacle cheaters in the later years.
I have the amazing good fortune to work in a firm with 1 female partner – that’s 25% of the partners, which is pretty high in architecture. She has been an incredible role model and inspiration for me, as she has kids and a full life outside of the firm, but is also an enormously influential force within the office. Our office is very family friendly. The men in our firm don’t have to worry about being seen as “weak” or not dedicated if they take an early afternoon every now and then to go see their son’s soccer game, or whatever. Our firm also offers a great benefits package, which is critical to families. Having to pay daycare cost plus healthcare costs can just make working unaffordable.
Warning! This post from here gets slightly graphic regarding pregnancy and breastfeeding, so if that stuff freaks you out skip it…
If not for the example of my female boss, I could easily have been derailed by having a child. Pregnancy while practicing is NOT easy – your body is demanding so much energy to make a child, and by the time I got pregnant (mid-30s) my body was well over being able to pull all-nighters without being wrecked for a week after. Nonetheless, while pregnant I also taught a design studio, took on two freelance jobs, and worked on renovating my house. I think architecture school charettes prepared me – all of us - to work harder than many people think they are capable of. So working my butt off through morning sickness then while hauling around 30+ pounds on my belly didn’t seem all that demanding – although it was definitely not a cakewalk. The hardest part is before you can tell anyone you’re pregnant, when you feel so nauseous and weak and miserable from morning sickness but can’t explain to your colleagues why you are working slowly and might break down in hormonal exhausted tears at any moment.
My boss, the female partner, had gone through breastfeeding while back at work, and I was also fortunate that one other woman in the office gave birth three months before I did – so we actually commandeered the carpet/fabric sample closet as a pumping room. Other women architects I know had to pump in the bathroom – not nice – so I was incredibly fortunate to have an understanding firm in this regard. I feel confident that had I not been at this firm, I would have not been able to go back to work at three months as I did. I am also blessed to have a wonderful daycare that I think is doing a better job of teaching my child than I could have, anyway. We all make choices, and though daycare is often seen as being a poor second choice to a stay-at-home mom, I disagree. But I also found a really, really good daycare.
A new-mother friend who is also an architect changed jobs to a firm where she could work part time two months after going back to work – the original firm’s policy on working hours was unacceptable for a new parent, of either gender. They famously do not have many women working there, blow through handfuls of interns every year because they just get burned out, and honestly no one from that firm that I see at AIA functions or lectures ever seems very happy – they all look so grim about architecture, and what’s the point? Her husband had good benefits through his job, so she was able to take that out of the equation when she made her decision to “downshift” her career.
Anyway – I work in an extremely supportive environment and I am certain it’s because we have one female partner, and I’m equally certain that the her influence here is the main reason I am able to be a full-time working architect new mother (add to that my incredibly supportive husband who takes on a lot of the baby-care responsibilities).
As I see it, family issues are the number one problem facing women in architecture. But I don’t see those problems being specific to architecture, I think any profession has them, so I’m skeptical that the 50/50 campaign is needed, I think we just need an overall change in attitude towards the importance of working – I think people’s social and mental lives need to be seen as equally important to their job success.
Very funny TED – but did you ever hear one of those bubbly undergrad students say something like: “Oh, I love doing construction, I especially love doing demolition! It’s so much fun to swing a sledgehammer!” We young architecture students have no idea how f’ing hard it is to be a contractor, and I think we often come across to laborers as big clueless children, hanging out on the construction site because it’s fun, and I think young women interns might be particularly prone to be perceived in that way – do you get my meaning?
And yes I was one of those girls until I spent three months worth of weekends tearing down half my house – demolition sucks.
we all need bosses/work environments like liberty's. it seems like they understand that the most important asset they have is the long term retention of their employees. that means keeping them happy and showing them that they matter. i've worked in so many places that don't understand this fundamental point.
yes, e - and this is my point about the 50/50 campaign: the office policies that make women happy tend to be the ones that make employees, especially those with families, happy. I don't see that we need to focus specifically on making the work environment better for women, just for people in general.
We have exceptional retention and loyalty in our firm.
And please no one take from my posts that I'm some rabid feminist man-hater - I love men, and I'm glad men and women are different.
i love that in my practice, you can be an integral/intimate part of a project, then get pregnant and force my hand to hold your job while you spawn...all the while costing me more money/resources/stress to find a replacement while you create your little gang-banger.
Liberty, and others - it is great to hear women in the profession discuss women/family related issues. Often when I am among other women architects I feel like I am being looked down up on simply for being married (even without kids). Perhaps I give myself a persecution complex but many of the strong women that I would like to be influence/be influenced by and share my ideas with seem to think that I have subjected myself to the enemy and am now only thinking about what I will cook for my next dinner party.
I imagine that will increase with the addition of children. I guess what I am saying is that pressure and judgement doesn't only come from men in the profession.
that is very right, but i've found that pressure and judgement come in unbalanced work places.
job 1 for me in the states: big corporate office, few women architects, lots of snickering, competition, hostility between women-. talked to someone that quit a few months before me and found she had had the exact same experience, but we had both been too embarrased to talk about it.
job 2 in the states: medium sized office with one woman partner, gender basically a non issue, my relationship with other women in the firm was friendly and basically normal.
and liberty, i like your point that better quality of life for the employees and consideration for family issues is not gender specific and results in a better work environment.
I don't know what my companies policies are on pregnancy, leave of absence type stuff. Is that crazy? I am afraid to ask. I do know that 2 out 2 women (one arch and one interior) who got pregnant since I've been here don't work here any more. I can only imagine what happened. From my perspective it appearred too unmanagedable for them.
setsquareboy - It did suck when all of the sudden someone was gone and the rest of us had to fill in. But that's life - literally.
Are other women aware of policy in your firms? It's something you just don't talk about here. Is this something you have discussed at interview time whether in a bad or good way?
A woman friend of mine told me once about an interview where she was grilled on "what are you going to do when you start a family? how do you think you can have a career and kids? what's your timeline for having kids?" It dominated the interview and made her disgusted. Needlesstosay she didn't want to work there.
I'm afraid this flavor of male management is common to a certain degree everywhere in my neck of the backwards woods where we aren't as progressive as the coasts.
Not to throw a bomb out there but what roles do sexuality play in our gender discussions? Is it easier to be a gay designer? Do lesbian architects experience the same glass ceiling as women?
i have often seen that gay classmates/ fellow workers are perceived to have better taste and to be better designers and that lesbians are judged less critically about their (in)sensitivity and or toughness.
and as Seinfeld and George said, "not that there is anything wrong with that." just pointing out some observations.
i out-design all the fags i know. lesbians too! i'm so good that i often get misstaken for a homer. however, that might have more to do with the way i dress and how i do my hair...
I'm fairly certain that an employer asking personal questions, especcially since it is in regards to a hypothetical future event, in illegal. Vague question that could be addressed to anyone such as, how long do you plan to stay with the firm, are all right. They must be questions that are or could be relevant to all applicants such questions or else they are discriminatory. Unless you currently have kids, or I guess if you are currently pregnant, it isn't really pertinent and since you probably don't want to work for someone who is asking these questions you might as well go ahead and tell them that.
We have all thus been quite civil in or disagreents and or commentary. I implore you, let us not sink this thread to philistine levels. Have respect and use language that conveys that respect to all. This is not a frat basement.
50/50 Campaign: Women & the Profession
"but men may have a lot to learn from women about being diplomatic and subtle and not shooting off at the mouth. can be a benefit in terms of client retention."
Word.
well that's what you wanted, right? you've been asking for it since the first post. it's been fun 'reading' your increasingly incendiary comments be ignored, but we can move on now and actually discuss this issue.
strawbeary, i say ask whenever you damn well please. if you don't know, ask. if you aren't sure, ask. who cares if someone else hates your question. it's their problem that they fear looking stupid. and if they are making up an answer, call them on that shit. they should check their ego at the door. asking questions should never be discouraged. the consequence of not asking is that you'll grow up to be just as ill-informed as the guy sitting next to you.
dude, i was practicing. come on. if you want women to be more confident, you have to let us be more like you, right?
e... but asking questions shows lack of "confidence." get my point?
"shanec....you bitch."
Snap. Snap. Talk to the hand sister=).
oh, i hear you strawbeary, but ignorance is real. "confidence" is not.
Museschild
"Specifically insecure, sexually repressed, video game geeks. When these people get threatened by things like critical theory (which brings in academic culture which is much more diverse) or discourses about the body or even materiality or perception this gets declared “over†or “irrelevant†and replaced with MathCAD and “surfacesâ€Â. "
Ouch. Talk about prejudice.
BUT YOU WIN THE PRIZE! Sort of...
I was STOKED when the new GTA came out (SAN ANDREAS, BABY)... not insecure (damn, I hope not anyway... maybe you can point out how I'm obviously insecure based on my posts somehow)... or sexually repressed (just trust me on that one).
Big Micheal Hayes fan, are you? Not that into Mr. P. Scott Cohen?
Well... lets see... sounds like someone doesn't get along with the computer, but likes to read a LOT. Case in point. See above posts.
I should stop now before I get fired by my female boss FOR NOT DOING A DAMN THING TODAY.
Cheers.
dude, I think you have me confused with someone else. check your thread. personally, I get along quite well with the computer and fielded several Revit questions from 2 male colleagues just today...oh wait, here's another one, gotta go.
museschild writes:
"I get along quite well with the computer and fielded several Revit questions from 2 male colleagues just today...oh wait, here's another one, gotta go."
Fielding Revit questions? Approaching geek-hood yourself there.
Okay bitches, back to the real post.
There are several women posting here. Why or what MAY sway you to remove yourself from the architecture career path? I'll start.
Glass ceiling, aka the good ol boys club aka I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine. Statistics show women making 70 cents on the dollar in architecture. It is real, and it is lame.
Family - We desire a one person income household and one stay at home parent. He can't be the stay at home cause one architecture career cannot sutain a family. Given the choice between letting my kid grow up in daycare and this career, I pick my kid. We feel this is our duty to society to raise good kids.
Too high of standards, expectations. Emotional strain, frustration.
Lack of real role models, mentors, confidants to relate to.
Linear path of gaining experience, becoming a respected architect doesn't allow for any wandering or exploring.
Strawberry writes:
"Glass ceiling, aka the good ol boys club aka I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine."
Sorry, you wanted women's responses... but I have an honest question. I hear about the "goodolboys club" a lot... but I have NEVER actually seen it in action... and by the schools I've gone to and the office I work for God knows I should have seen it by now.
Am I in it and don't know it? Am I too dumb to see it? When does the "club" convene, and what do they do that serves to push the men onward and upward and leave women behind? These are not rhetorical questions, I really want to know.
I will admit, its easier to see the barriers if you are behind one... harder when you're on the other side of it.
I, for one, see the "good ol boys club" as a $$$ thing rather than as a gender thing... and it AIN'T just boys that belong (Williams and Tsien, boutique firms up the wazoo, etc...) And I see the $$$ club in action EVERY day, beleive me.
Again, really just an honest question... not looking for an argument.
i'll take 1 and 2. i didn't believe the glass ceiling existed until i saw the unbelieving eyes of a colleague with similar education when i told him what his firm was offering me. he was embarrased.
family: i'm not there yet but it will eventually come. it does seem that in the states it is harder to manage. in south america there is no such thing as parental leave [that how it's called?] but things are looser, somehow easier to manage... easier and harder i guess. let me think about that one.
i'm not sure about the standards because i think guys can argue the exact same thing...
i like kazujo sejima [sp?] as a role model, heard her talk once and she seemed just like her buildings: quiet, elegant, smart.
i'd say the linear path argument is not gender specific.
strwabearys last point resonates with me even though i'm not a woman. i worked in architecture for about 10 years at a variety of places. i started to get bored. i started to wonder what's next. i started to admire ray and charles eames and i read a book by olt aicher "the world as design." i was inspired to try something different. i left architecture for a graphic design position which lead to an industrial design position. while doing id, i also did a good bit of application design, interaction design and web design. i now work for myself doing mostly print and digital design.
when i left architecture, i noticed that my femaie friends reacted differently than my male friend to the change. the ladies said, "wow, that's great. how wonderful. i'm so happy for you" the men said, " really. why? why do you want to give up?" who said anything about giving up? i want to wander and explore as strawbeary said. my conclusion what that men view success in a very linear way. intern leads to designer leads to project head lead to studio head lead to the big cheese. climb the mountain boys. women see success as the cumulation of experiences and events. it not the path but the journey that is important. i'm still overwhelmed by the success of ray and charles eames. their breadth is so inspiring and impressive.
i don't think that is nessecarily a male/female way of looking at life or time. working your way up the ladder can be a culmination of experiences and events as well. it just happens to be the more acceptable route of growing professionally.
glass ceiling fucking blows.
good old boys definately do exist. and i am going out on a limb and saying, especially in less metropolitain areas.
i do not desire to have children for many career related reasons.
hey hey stephanie, settle down there. you have to wait till your mid 30's and really show us that you are committed to THE PROFESSION[and your not going to quickly run out to follow your biological clock...]. else clearly you only having fun at this point in time.
signed
TED for liberty bell.
sorry lb. couldnt resist.
pre-aalto
i just wish female architects could be able to have a slew of illegitemate love children while well on their way to international fame.
be careful what you wish for ....you may have a slew of archinect members [in approved t-shirst of course] showing up on your doorsteps.
has anyone on here been pregnant while practicing?
oo thats a thread killer if i ever saw one as you will get this long silence........if the practice is 20/80 women to men it appears archinect is 5/95....... i remeber a discussion on archinect v1. but cant say i remember anyone here ....maybe mum?
cha-ching!
little boys and girls go make sure you have wads of money if you want to move up in architecture.
shanec seems to be one of the few people that are able to drill down to the core of the argument: its not about being black/ green/ a chick/ a dude/ straight/ gay/ bi/ membership in the good ol boys club or not...
Architecture is a rich people's club! its the williams and tsien/ thompson rose/ maya lin/ Laurinda Spear, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Marilyn Taylor, Zaha Hadid, Toshiko Mori... I am not discounting their talents but the reality is that they have the cash to be able to do what they want.
Like i said a few post back, in the picture in the opening post, David Adjaye may be a black man but he is for sure NOT a broke black man. Gender, etnicity and economic (dis)advantage are not related. Until people realize this critical distinction we will be wasting efforts going after the wrong problem.
its not a glass ceiling holding people back. its their empty wallets and broke bank accounts that keep them back.
Would it matter if this moneyed architect recently written up in the NYTimes was a man/ woman or smurf blue colored?
January 9, 2005
HABITATS
Architect's Magnificent Obsession
By PENELOPE GREEN
HE apartment had all the flourishes you would expect from a young and prolific architect: the vintage modernist furniture (a little Mies, some Florence Knoll, a chair by Bruno Mathsson); the muted palette of gray, black and brown; the gallery-quality black-and-white photographs (mostly Wayne Maser and the haunting botanical portraits of Don Freeman). It's all very precise, and it's all in the details.
But the architect, Stephan Jaklitsch, 37, whose extreme good taste has shaped all the Marc Jacobs stores worldwide (that's nearly 50, and still counting) and who has been running his own 17-person firm for six and a half years, has amped the aesthetic volume up so high in his Horatio Street one-bedroom that only the most educated ears can pick up the frequency. For instance, on the coffee table, sitting casually at magazine level (not that there were any unsightly magazines) was a tiny celadon bowl the color of a grasshopper's wing. It turned out to be about a century or two older than most objects in the room.
Mr. Jaklitsch took about 15 seconds to find the bowl's pedigree papers - it's Chinese, from the Qianlong Dynasty (1736-95) - which were filed neatly in a Florence Knoll credenza nearby. Nearly as quickly, he offered a delicate Chinese terra cotta vessel weighing no more than a sheet of paper, its clay skin imprinted by a faint basket-weave pattern. Its papers declared that its year of birth was somewhere between 475 B.C. and 221 B.C.
Slightly built and with a husky voice and impish smile, Mr. Jaklitsch looked considerably younger than his age. An hour or so later, shrugging on his Marc Jacobs peacoat, he in fact looked much like a graduating senior from a prep school in the Northeast - Andover, maybe, or St. Paul's. Except that his peacoat was lined in sable, and his dorm room gewgaws have been bought on the Hollywood Road in Hong Kong.
"I've had friends walk in and say: 'What is the story in this room? How does the Asian stuff work with the modern? I don't get it!" Mr. Jaklitsch said. "The story is just that I respond to anything that is rigorously designed."
Which explains why this lover of Mies is living in an archetypal prewar apartment building - one of five Emery Roth buildings designed for the real estate developers Bing & Bing in Greenwich Village just before the Depression (and the only one that's a co-op; the other four, at 59, 299 and 302 West 12th Street and 45 Christopher Street, are condos). It's sort of a joke, Mr. Jaklitsch said, but kind of true that when he learned that Mies van der Rohe had, in fact, lived in a prewar building himself, Mr. Jaklitsch thought he "could cope with this one."
Also, as he pointed out, it's rigorously designed; its gracious proportions are an Emery Roth signature. R. A. Sassone, a vice president at the Corcoran Group who handles sales in many of the five Bing & Bing buildings, said it's a truism among fans of the Village quintet that if you are blindfolded and led into one, "you can't tell which building you're in." All have the same low and lovely beamed ceilings, brick fireplaces and cloistered bedrooms. Mr. Jaklitsch said he loved the proportions of his 800-square-foot home, bought in early 2002 for $441,000. (At an open house for the apartment, which had been on the market for just four days, Mr. Jaklitsch was one of 90 people sidling through its rooms. He found the owner, shook his hand and said, "Here's the asking price and here's my phone number.")
For a guy who spends four days each week traveling, it was imperative he find a quiet sanctuary for the few hours he has to himself. (Last year, Marc Jacobs stores opened in Boston, Beijing, Shanghai and Los Angeles; including the Marc Jacobs stores on deck for this year and beyond, Mr. Jaklitsch's firm right now has 45 projects on its drafting tables.) "The pace of work is relentless," he said happily.
Mr. Jaklitsch resurfaced the apartment's walls and replaced moldings long since vanished to restore it to a crisp 1929 state. He didn't touch its closet-sized kitchen and funky tiled bathroom. Set at the back of the building, the apartment is as quiet as a house on a suburban cul-de-sac. Mr. Jacklitsch has no television set, and the cellphone reception is lousy. "And since I'm never here to return calls on the land line," he said, "people have learned not to use that number."
Since moving to New York City in 1994, Mr. Jaklitsch, who grew up in Maryland and took his architecture degree at Princeton, has lived in the same four-block section of the West Village. "I hate the grid," he said, "and I love the trees."
Like many architects, Mr. Jaklitsch calls himself a generalist and does not stamp his clients' spaces in his own image. A West Village town house is all steel and hearty rough-hewn beams; another town house a few blocks away is a 19th-century paneled homage to itself. Five years ago, a contractor recommended Mr. Jaklitsch to Robert Duffy, Marc Jacobs's business partner, when Mr. Duffy wanted to renovate his own Fifth Avenue apartment.
Mr. Jaklitsch has since completed a town house for Mr. Duffy and designed every Marc Jacobs store, in collaboration with the French furniture designer Christian Liaigre, beginning with the company's second, in San Francisco, in August 2000.
"He is demanding as hell," Mr. Jaklitsch said of Mr. Duffy. It was clearly a compliment.
Mr. Duffy later doffed his own hat to Mr. Jaklitsch. "He has incredibly good taste - and he would hate for me to say that," Mr. Duffy said. "I love watching him on these safaris through the antiques stores in Hong Kong, evaluating and choosing and falling in love with a perfect bowl. I like that his apartment is so orderly and so neat, and that maybe there is this one perfect object on display that I know - because I've seen him do it - he's agonized over. And in our work together, I need the integrity of what he does to make what I want be good."
Mr. Jaklitsch is indeed so in love with good design he's arrayed silver-framed photographs of great buildings on a mantel and a side table like family portraits. You'll peer into them expecting to see the grinning faces of small children (Mr. Jaklitsch has 24 nieces and nephews). Instead, you'll see a snapshot of the Japanese Imperial Palace, or the Parthenon, his favorite building.
His second favorite is the Resurrection Chapel in Stockholm - a riot of classical details. He'll eagerly point out its intricacies, and the fact that its architect, Sigurd Lewerentz, designed it with two proportional systems, one for the inside and one for the exterior.
"No one could know that just by looking," he said, lauding Lewerentz's obsessiveness. "But he knew, and it mattered to him. I love that."
So, a visitor wondered, taking in the pristine space around her, did Mr. Jaklitsch consider himself to be in any way obsessive?
"Completely," he said. "Have you ever met an architect who wasn't?"
i think that the perception that "Architecture" requires a lot of money is an extremely narrow perception of what architecture is.
it is a narrow one, but i think it is accurate of how most practice architecture.
There was an article in the L.A. Times in August 2003. It contained interviews with several women in demanding architectural positions.
I can't figue out how to post it as a link, and the LA times wants to be paid for their online articles.
Where does architectural clout come from?
It doesn't come from my degree.
It doesn't come from licensure.
It doesn't come from AIA membership.
It comes from my pedigree.
money makes it easier but it is another parameter in the equation.
maybe it's stronger than gender, but that doesn't mean gender is not an issue.
if you live in capitalism, money will always be an issue, that is harder to change.
glass ceiling: when gender related, is easier to change and is what we are talking about.
that and the perception that women are unable or unwilling to do specific tasks within architecture.
maybe the stress of the profession is too much for women...just a thought.
i did 2 architectural degrees, and let me tell you my observations (not a generalization, and actual true account):
women cried on a regular basis. they had all of the nervous breakdowns. they took out their frustration on their bodies (in an unhealthy way). the ones i knew were all on perscription drugs. the scene/culture bred unhealthy women. this is not to say that the guys weren't messed up...but somehow, they (we) hid it. it's probably why we're ego-maniacle cheaters in the later years.
I have the amazing good fortune to work in a firm with 1 female partner – that’s 25% of the partners, which is pretty high in architecture. She has been an incredible role model and inspiration for me, as she has kids and a full life outside of the firm, but is also an enormously influential force within the office. Our office is very family friendly. The men in our firm don’t have to worry about being seen as “weak” or not dedicated if they take an early afternoon every now and then to go see their son’s soccer game, or whatever. Our firm also offers a great benefits package, which is critical to families. Having to pay daycare cost plus healthcare costs can just make working unaffordable.
Warning! This post from here gets slightly graphic regarding pregnancy and breastfeeding, so if that stuff freaks you out skip it…
If not for the example of my female boss, I could easily have been derailed by having a child. Pregnancy while practicing is NOT easy – your body is demanding so much energy to make a child, and by the time I got pregnant (mid-30s) my body was well over being able to pull all-nighters without being wrecked for a week after. Nonetheless, while pregnant I also taught a design studio, took on two freelance jobs, and worked on renovating my house. I think architecture school charettes prepared me – all of us - to work harder than many people think they are capable of. So working my butt off through morning sickness then while hauling around 30+ pounds on my belly didn’t seem all that demanding – although it was definitely not a cakewalk. The hardest part is before you can tell anyone you’re pregnant, when you feel so nauseous and weak and miserable from morning sickness but can’t explain to your colleagues why you are working slowly and might break down in hormonal exhausted tears at any moment.
My boss, the female partner, had gone through breastfeeding while back at work, and I was also fortunate that one other woman in the office gave birth three months before I did – so we actually commandeered the carpet/fabric sample closet as a pumping room. Other women architects I know had to pump in the bathroom – not nice – so I was incredibly fortunate to have an understanding firm in this regard. I feel confident that had I not been at this firm, I would have not been able to go back to work at three months as I did. I am also blessed to have a wonderful daycare that I think is doing a better job of teaching my child than I could have, anyway. We all make choices, and though daycare is often seen as being a poor second choice to a stay-at-home mom, I disagree. But I also found a really, really good daycare.
A new-mother friend who is also an architect changed jobs to a firm where she could work part time two months after going back to work – the original firm’s policy on working hours was unacceptable for a new parent, of either gender. They famously do not have many women working there, blow through handfuls of interns every year because they just get burned out, and honestly no one from that firm that I see at AIA functions or lectures ever seems very happy – they all look so grim about architecture, and what’s the point? Her husband had good benefits through his job, so she was able to take that out of the equation when she made her decision to “downshift” her career.
Anyway – I work in an extremely supportive environment and I am certain it’s because we have one female partner, and I’m equally certain that the her influence here is the main reason I am able to be a full-time working architect new mother (add to that my incredibly supportive husband who takes on a lot of the baby-care responsibilities).
As I see it, family issues are the number one problem facing women in architecture. But I don’t see those problems being specific to architecture, I think any profession has them, so I’m skeptical that the 50/50 campaign is needed, I think we just need an overall change in attitude towards the importance of working – I think people’s social and mental lives need to be seen as equally important to their job success.
Very funny TED – but did you ever hear one of those bubbly undergrad students say something like: “Oh, I love doing construction, I especially love doing demolition! It’s so much fun to swing a sledgehammer!” We young architecture students have no idea how f’ing hard it is to be a contractor, and I think we often come across to laborers as big clueless children, hanging out on the construction site because it’s fun, and I think young women interns might be particularly prone to be perceived in that way – do you get my meaning?
And yes I was one of those girls until I spent three months worth of weekends tearing down half my house – demolition sucks.
:-\
i worked construction for two summers as an undergrad and i did love it.
it was hard work, but i learned a lot.
if i ever get a woman pregnant, i'm gonna ask for my own private area to breast feed too!
we all need bosses/work environments like liberty's. it seems like they understand that the most important asset they have is the long term retention of their employees. that means keeping them happy and showing them that they matter. i've worked in so many places that don't understand this fundamental point.
mee tooo
yes, e - and this is my point about the 50/50 campaign: the office policies that make women happy tend to be the ones that make employees, especially those with families, happy. I don't see that we need to focus specifically on making the work environment better for women, just for people in general.
We have exceptional retention and loyalty in our firm.
And please no one take from my posts that I'm some rabid feminist man-hater - I love men, and I'm glad men and women are different.
i love that in my practice, you can be an integral/intimate part of a project, then get pregnant and force my hand to hold your job while you spawn...all the while costing me more money/resources/stress to find a replacement while you create your little gang-banger.
not to mention the additional load on your co-workers...they must looooove you for that. lol.
ps...sarcasm is my friend!
Cant architects afford to pay to hire a good wet nurse? all the wall street throphy wives are doing it.
never thought you were a man-hater liberty. these are issues that impact all of us.
Liberty, and others - it is great to hear women in the profession discuss women/family related issues. Often when I am among other women architects I feel like I am being looked down up on simply for being married (even without kids). Perhaps I give myself a persecution complex but many of the strong women that I would like to be influence/be influenced by and share my ideas with seem to think that I have subjected myself to the enemy and am now only thinking about what I will cook for my next dinner party.
I imagine that will increase with the addition of children. I guess what I am saying is that pressure and judgement doesn't only come from men in the profession.
that is very right, but i've found that pressure and judgement come in unbalanced work places.
job 1 for me in the states: big corporate office, few women architects, lots of snickering, competition, hostility between women-. talked to someone that quit a few months before me and found she had had the exact same experience, but we had both been too embarrased to talk about it.
job 2 in the states: medium sized office with one woman partner, gender basically a non issue, my relationship with other women in the firm was friendly and basically normal.
and liberty, i like your point that better quality of life for the employees and consideration for family issues is not gender specific and results in a better work environment.
I don't know what my companies policies are on pregnancy, leave of absence type stuff. Is that crazy? I am afraid to ask. I do know that 2 out 2 women (one arch and one interior) who got pregnant since I've been here don't work here any more. I can only imagine what happened. From my perspective it appearred too unmanagedable for them.
setsquareboy - It did suck when all of the sudden someone was gone and the rest of us had to fill in. But that's life - literally.
Are other women aware of policy in your firms? It's something you just don't talk about here. Is this something you have discussed at interview time whether in a bad or good way?
A woman friend of mine told me once about an interview where she was grilled on "what are you going to do when you start a family? how do you think you can have a career and kids? what's your timeline for having kids?" It dominated the interview and made her disgusted. Needlesstosay she didn't want to work there.
I'm afraid this flavor of male management is common to a certain degree everywhere in my neck of the backwards woods where we aren't as progressive as the coasts.
Not to throw a bomb out there but what roles do sexuality play in our gender discussions? Is it easier to be a gay designer? Do lesbian architects experience the same glass ceiling as women?
i have often seen that gay classmates/ fellow workers are perceived to have better taste and to be better designers and that lesbians are judged less critically about their (in)sensitivity and or toughness.
and as Seinfeld and George said, "not that there is anything wrong with that." just pointing out some observations.
i out-design all the fags i know. lesbians too! i'm so good that i often get misstaken for a homer. however, that might have more to do with the way i dress and how i do my hair...
I'm fairly certain that an employer asking personal questions, especcially since it is in regards to a hypothetical future event, in illegal. Vague question that could be addressed to anyone such as, how long do you plan to stay with the firm, are all right. They must be questions that are or could be relevant to all applicants such questions or else they are discriminatory. Unless you currently have kids, or I guess if you are currently pregnant, it isn't really pertinent and since you probably don't want to work for someone who is asking these questions you might as well go ahead and tell them that.
setsquareboy,
We have all thus been quite civil in or disagreents and or commentary. I implore you, let us not sink this thread to philistine levels. Have respect and use language that conveys that respect to all. This is not a frat basement.
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