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Architect Richard Meier is retiring from his firm renamed Meier Partners in a restructuring plan that signals an official end to the 86-year-old architect’s involvement with the practice. Meier has been away from the office since the fall of 2018 after sexual harassment allegations... View full entry
Bernhard Karpf, the 30-year veteran of Richard Meier & Partners who helped take over the firm after Meier was accused of sexual misconduct by five women in 2018, has left the office to start his own practice, Karpf Khalili Architects. Karpf departed Meier & Partners in July of 2019, The... View full entry
Post-Meier, the AIA has centered its efforts to stop sexual harassment by affirming good behavior in the profession. It’s using positive reinforcement to address sexual harassment and discrimination by saying the best work emerges from firms that embody equitable practices, and using that as the foundation of its strategy to incentivize better behavior. — Curbed
Curbed's Diana Budds takes a deep dive into the efforts being undertaken within the architecture community to eradicate sexual harassment in the workplace in the wake of the #MeToo movement. According to the report, although the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has worked to update its... View full entry
The plight of sexual harassment claims and news of misconduct within the profession continues to surface as more practicing architects stress the importance of equity in the workplace, representation, and accountability. The global rise of the #MeToo movement has impacted several industries, the... View full entry
Architectural education is plagued by the mentality that suffering is a necessary part of its practice. [...] The acceptance of suffering easily slips into normalizing sexual misconduct and its suppression as simply part of the practice. Cultlike worship of the star architect only exacerbates this condition, and there are plenty [...] willing to sacrifice their time and integrity because they have been conditioned to believe that this mode of production is normal. — The New York Times
The architecture world is known for many movements that have enabled architects to create iconic works. From bauhaus to brutalist, midcentury modern to contemporary, countless movements have impacted the architectural timeline. But in today's climate of inclusivity and representation is there one... View full entry
Richard Meier is officially out at Richard Meier & Partners Architects, the company announced in a statement titled Leadership Changes this morning. "Founder Richard Meier will step back from day-to-day activities and support the leadership transition of the firm he founded in 1963," reveals... View full entry
The AIA Board of Directors have recently approved new changes to the AIA Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to explicitly address sexual harassment, equity in the profession, and sustainability. AIA 2018 President Carl Elefante, FAIA stated, “The architecture profession is... View full entry
UC Berkeley Professor Nezar AlSayyad has been suspended for three years without pay for engaging in a pattern of sexual harassment and abuse of faculty power, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. AlSayyad, a tenured architecture professor and Middle East scholar, sexually harassed his former... View full entry
But gender bias is not the most dangerous consequence of the lone-wolf image: It is the unspoken permission to abuse that should worry us. For the privilege of working alongside this aggressive and uncompromising genius, we are asked to tolerate his erratic, harsh, and selfish behavior. [...] To fight sexual abuse and abusers, we must first let go of this simplistic and fictitious image of the lone wolf. — Esther Sperber on Architect Magazine
In this short opinion piece, Studio ST Architects founder Esther Sperber argues that, in light of the ongoing #MeToo movement, rejecting the prevalent “lone wolf”/creative genius myth and emphasizing a collaborative culture instead are important steps to stopping abuse in architecture. View full entry
This is a painful period of reckoning for our community. While we don’t presume to have all the answers, we believe achieving a more just and accountable professional culture moving forward begins with open dialogue and, above all, an unwavering commitment to respecting the human rights of all individuals. — The Architectural League of New York, via Architect Magazine
In a statement published on Architect Magazine yesterday, The Architectural League of New York announced that they have revoked Richard Meier's status as a Life Trustee of the League, a month after the architect was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. In the following weeks after news... View full entry
On Harvard's campus, students in their Graduate School of Design programs are pressuring the administration to respond to an anonymous spreadsheet that catalogued incidences of assault, harassment and other abuses in the industry. The spreadsheet, known as the Shitty Men in Architecture list, was... View full entry
After a report last month by The New York Times detailing a pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Meier, more women have come forward to share their own upsetting encounters with him. But in recounting such experiences, these women said they had also been disturbed by a sense of helplessness that pervaded the firm. Mr. Meier’s behavior was common knowledge, they said, but no one seemed to have the power to stop it. — New York Times
With the #metoo movement, women have come forward exposing Richard Meier's abusive behavior to his employees. Further investigation has explored why this behavior of powerful men harassing or assaulting women went unchecked at their organizations. The common thread is fear of losing a job. Many... View full entry
The Architecture Lobby released the following statement with regards to the #metoo movement in architecture. The organization invites firms to join their Solidarity Network in support of those who speak up against sexual harassment or abuse. "We, The Architecture Lobby, stand with victims of... View full entry
In other words— you ask, will there be a revision of canon? Should we revise the canon? I would say, it’s not so much that we’re going to revise the canon, but that there will certainly be a revised narrative of architects who contributed to the canon. — Blair Kamin in Common Edge
In light of the sexual harassment allegations against Richard Meier, architectural writer Eva Hagberg Fisher interviews Blair Kamin about writing and reporting on architecture's about-time-it-happened #metoo moment. “So the first responsibility, the moral and professional is simply to bear... View full entry
... given allegations of inappropriate and unacceptable behavior by two AIANY 2018 Design Award Recipients—Richard Meier and Peter Marino—the AIANY Board of Directors has made the decision to rescind the honors that were announced in January 2018 and were to be celebrated at the Honors and Awards Luncheon next month.
AIANY executive director Benjamin Prosky issued a statement on their decision to revoke Design Awards from Richard Meier and Peter Marino. Prosky states, “Our decision does not speak to the design quality of the projects or the contributions from the respective firms’ design teams, rather we... View full entry
