The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) is continuing its ‘New Angle: Voice’ audio documentary series with a look at two early female pioneers of architectural criticism and design education.

The new season premiered last week with an episode highlighting the late writer Ada Louise Huxtable, the New York Times’ first-ever architectural critic and important mentor to Paul Goldberger, Christopher Hawthorne, and other journalists who have shaped the landscape for architecture criticism as it embraces the new digital age.

The next episode, which is set to premiere in mid-May, will focus on the life of Amaza Lee Meredith, a Black woman born in 1895 and credited with establishing Virginia State’s School of Fine Arts Department. Meredith designed several structures in the state and Sag Harbor, New York (including historic Azurest South which she and her partner called home) after 1939, and enjoyed a dual career as an educator in addition to her pursuits as a painter, which are also featured in public collections in New York and North Carolina. 

Since its launch in 2021, the series has gone on to garner recognition from the broader industry, winning grants from both the Graham Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. The series will continue later in the month with episodes on both the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based The Architects Collaborative and American suffragist designer Anna Keichline.

The organization shares: "New Angle: Voice embodies the mission of BWAF, to lead a cultural revolution in the building industry that will acknowledge, cultivate, and value women’s contributions and achievements — past, present, and future. The series shines a spotlight on the often untold or forgotten stories of American women who broke barriers of gender, race, and education, offering the recognition they deserve for redefining the physical landscape of this country and reinventing the role of women in leadership."

The series is sponsored by MillerKnoll. Each episode is available on Spotify and can be found in a separate archive here.