Once considered the domain of men, architecture schools are now bursting with women. Most have at least 50 percent female student bodies. Yet women currently represent only 26 percent of all architecture firms’ staffs and only 16 percent of principals and partners, according to the American Institute of Architects (AIA). “Architects work intensely, often through the night. And after a project, an office might reduce its staff drastically,” explains Annmarie Adams, an architecture professor at McGill University. “For women trying to balance family, planning is particularly difficult.” Retired architect Beverly Willis founded The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation to advance women in the industry — and to preserve the legacy of those who came before. This month the Foundation and the National Building Museum (nbm.org) mark Women’s History Month with a special symposium. Willis teamed up with PINK to list 10 top women in architectural history.
Status: Principal at Gae Aulenti Architetti Associati
Structure: Musée d’Orsay (Paris)
Story: An architect, installation artist, set designer, and interior designer and theorist, Aulenti was one of few women working in postwar Italy, making a name for her – self creating elegant and innovative work. She’s taught at the Venice School of Architecture and the Milan School of Ar chi tecture.
Success Secret: “My advice to whoever asks me how to make a home is … to take a stand against the ephemeral, against pass ing trends … and to return to lasting values,” she once told Vogue.
Status: Principal at Deborah Berke & Partners Architects LLP and Yale professor
Structure: Yale University’s School of Art & New Theatre
Story: Berke has been the subject of museum exhibitions and has received numerous top industry awards. She’s served as an officer or board member at multiple schools and institutions, including the National Building Museum and the AIA. She chairs the board for Columbia University’s Center for the Study of American Architecture.
Success Secret: “I am never too busy to party. It’s fun and a good way to get to know clients.”
Status: Principal at Venturi Scott Brown and Associates
Structure: University of Michigan Life Sciences Complex
Story: Best known for her interdisciplinary background in architecture and urban planning, Brown primarily designs academic architecture. She has also taught at Yale, UCLA, Harvard, Princeton and UC-Berkeley and advised on urban planning issues at the World Trade Center site.
Success Secret: “I’ve lived on three continents and am trained in two professions — and I love to make things.”
Status: Principal at Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and professor of architectural design at Princeton University
Structure: The Blur Building in Switzerland
Story: Refusing to distinguish art from build ing design, Diller’s firm created architecture that unites design, performance and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory, earn ing the prestigious MacArthur “genius grant” (the first architects to do so) and the Smithsonian’s 2005 National Design Award.
Success Secret: “Being oblivious to the opinions of others.”
Status: Deceased (1878-1976)
Structure: Lou Pérou (France)
Story: Neglected for most of her career, Gray was one of the most important architects and furniture designers of the early 20th century, inspiring both modernism and art deco. Denied access to the support networks of her male contemporaries, Gray was known as a proud loner with extremely distinctive work.
Success Secret: “The thing constructed is more important than the way it is constructed. It is not only a matter of constructing beautiful arrangements of lines but, above all, dwellings for people.”
Status: Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and professor of architecture at the University of Applied Arts (Austria)
Structure: Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (Cincinnati)
Story: Hadid, an Iraqi-British architect, artist, and furniture and urban designer, has chaired departments at Harvard and the University of Illinois and became the first woman laureate of the Pritzker Archi tecture Prize. Her work is on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in both New York and San Francisco.
Success Secret: “Perhaps it was my flamboyance rather than being a woman that gave me such determination to succeed.”
Status: Deceased (1872-1957)
Structure: St. John’s Presbyterian Church (now the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts) in San Francisco
Story: After completing the University of California’s civil engineering undergraduate programin 1894, Morgan moved to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was refused admission for two years because of her gender. She entered (and won) almost every prestigious architecture competition in Europe until the school conceded. She returned to San Francisco to work on the master design of her alma mater and design the Hearst Greek Theater.
Success Secret: “Never turn down a job because you think it’s too small; you don’t know where it can lead.”
Status: Principal of Toshiko Mori Archi tect, and professor and department chair at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design
Structure: The Syracuse (N.Y.) Center of Excellence
Story: With a research-based approach to design, Mori, a prolific writer and lecturer, has taught at Columbia, Yale and the Cooper Union School of Architecture. She has served as a board member and adviser for the N.Y. Foundation for the Arts.
Success Secret: “Having a sense of humor and recognizing absurdities gave me a larger perspective.”
Status: Retired
Structure: San Bernardino (Calif.)City Hall
Story: Sklarek was the first African-American woman licensed as an architect in the U.S., as well as the first to be elected a fellow of the AIA and to found an architectural firm. Formed in 1985, Siegel, Sklarek, Diamond was the nation’s largest wom anowned and mostly woman-staffed firm.
Success Secret: “I was highly visible, so I was always punctual and ready to answer any question accurately. I had to be better.”
Status: Semi-retired, running The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
Structure: San Francisco Ballet Building
Story: An experienced architect and urban planner, she formed one of the first woman-owned architectural firms in the world in the 1960s, taking on a wide array of projects from furniture design to a set of panels for United Airlines.
Success Secret: “I made clients believe my great idea was theirs.”
This article originally appeared in the March.June 2008 issue of PINK Magazine.
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