Naturally, there were some projects that Bob worked on more and others that I worked on more. Sometimes our collaboration was more close than others. But I think our best projects were when we worked together. I remember so many real tousles—and those were the projects that worked out best. — Architect Magazine
The co-founder of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (now VSBA) talks to ARCHITECT about a petition to put her name on the 1991 Pritzer Architecture Prize, about sexism in architecture, and about her career in design.
h/t Ana María León
3 Comments
Excellent interview. DSB has clearly been an enormously important influence in our profession, both as theoretician and as practitioner.
But my favorite part of the interview is how she also shows what an excellent educator she has been and remains: her story about talking to the young student who feels "lost", and admitting her own sense of feeling lost as a young student. I think all young architects feel lost and overwhelmed by our practice at some point, and at risk of sounding too tied to traditional gender roles, having the voices of women in the profession is one element of breaking down the he-man hero worship that so much of the public identifies with architecture.
Re-examining the Pritzker guidelines is timely. Do the right thing, Pritzkers.
DSB is clearly deserving of equal recognition for the prize.
Hopefully this is altered in the appropriate method and we can get back to talking about architecture ideas again.
I think that associating singular artistic expression with men and collaborative approaches with women is also an unfortunate gender bias, and it is perhaps one of the reasons why people are so hard on Zaha Hadid. DSB should be recognized because she and Venturi chose to have a collaborative practice and therefore they both deserve recognition, but not because a collaboration is more or less desirable than an individual project.
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