Snubbed, cheated, erased: the scandal of architecture's invisible women

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They are among the most talented architects of their age. Yet the credit, praise and awards have gone to the men instead. Meet the women who are tired of being written out of history

Denise Scott Brown was an associate professor when she married Robert Venturi in 1967. She had taught at the universities of Pennsylvania and Berkeley, and initiated the first programme in the new school of architecture at the University of California. She had a substantial publication record, enthusiastic students, and the respect of her colleagues.

The first sign that marriage had changed things came when an architect whose work she had reviewed said: “We at the office think it was Bob writing, using your name.” It was an indication of what was to come for the rest of her career. Scott Brown was relegated to being the wife of the famous postmodern architect Bob Venturi – who died last month – rather than one half of an equal creative and intellectual partnership that changed the world of architecture as we know it.

As she recounted in her 1989 essay, Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture, there would be celebratory dinners where she was left out “because we’re not inviting wives”; job interviews where she was excluded because the presence of “the architect’s wife” distressed the board; countless meetings that began “So you’re the architect!” to Venturi, followed by: “And you’re an architect too?” To crown it all, when the 1991 Pritzker prize jury described how their body of work had “expanded and redefined the limits of the art of architecture in this century, as perhaps no other has”, the accolade was awarded to Venturi alone.

In 2013, two students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design began an online petition to demand that her contribution be recognised. It now has more than 20,000 signatures. “They owe me not a Pritzker prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony,” Scott Brown said. “Let’s salute the notion of joint creativity.” Lord Peter Palumbo, chair of the prize, politely declined. “A later jury cannot reopen, or second-guess, the work of an earlier jury,” he wrote in response, before thanking the petitioners for “calling directly to our attention a more general problem, namely that of assuring women a fair and equal place within the profession”. Only a year earlier, his jury had awarded the gong to Chinese architect Wang Shu, overlooking the fact that his practice has always been a joint partnership with his architect wife, Lu Wenyu.

This month marks a small righting of past wrongs when Denise Scott Brown, now 87, will be awarded the 2018 Soane medal. She is the second recipient of an annual award given to architects who have made a major contribution to their field. I was part of the jury this year, and as soon as Scott Brown’s name was mentioned, all the other competition fell away. It was the most unanimous decision of any such deliberations I have witnessed.

The individual contributions of creative partnerships are always difficult to disentangle. However, it is clear that Learning from Las Vegas, the “gentle manifesto” published in 1972 that championed billboards and hot dog stands as worthy of architects’ attention, would never have happened without Scott Brown. She had already made several pilgrimages to the Vegas Strip by the time she took Venturi there in 1966, drawn by a fascination with roadside vernaculars and pop culture that she had developed growing up in South Africa. It also resonated with ideas she had learned in London from Alison and Peter Smithson, while studying at the Architectural Association, the Strip in effect being a very large “as-found” object.

Scott Brown chose Las Vegas as the subject she would teach at Yale with Venturi and Steven Izenour in 1968. She also coined the term “duck” to refer to buildings that act as sculptural, symbolic objects (in reference to a duck-shaped egg-stand on Long Island), set in opposition to the “decorated shed”, a functional box with ornament applied independently of what’s going on inside. The term has been popularised over the decades, often now referred to as the “Venturian duck”. Scott Brown once wrote to an editor to correct the attribution. Her letter was printed under the title “Less is a Bore”, a quotation from her husband.

Scott Brown is not alone. A deeply institutionalised invisibility cloak has long obscured the women in successful architectural partnerships, whether it’s MJ Long’s work on the British Library, a project usually credited to her husband Colin St John Wilson, or Su Rogers and Wendy Foster’s work on early projects with their husbands, Richard and Norman (though Rogers feels she was always equally credited for her work and says she’s never suffered any discrimination from being a woman working in architecture). Patty Hopkins, co-founder of Hopkins Architects, was quite literally erased from history when she was Photoshopped out of a group of male hi-tech architectsto promote the 2014 BBC series, The Brits Who Built the Modern World. The global success of Daniel Libeskind, meanwhile, owes a huge amount to his wife, Nina, a fearsome political negotiator who has handled every aspect of the company’s management.

Dutch artist Madelon Vriesendorp has been long accustomed to the lack of credit to the wives of maverick male architects. In the early 1970s, when she moved to New York with her husband, Rem Koolhaas, she began to paint a series of images inspired by the architecture of Manhattan. Her eerie dreamscapes pictured the Statue of Liberty in states of undress, the New York skyline being gobbled up by a monster, and the Empire State Building in bed with the Chrysler Building, caught in the act by the Rockefeller Center. This last painting, Flagrant Délit, would become the cover of Koolhaas’s polemical book, Delirious New York, and would take on a mythology of its own. It was used on the cover of other books without permission, and was retrospectively captioned as being “commissioned by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture”, the architecture practice Vriesendorp co-founded.

“I don’t want to make a fuss,” she says, sitting at the kitchen table of the flat in Hampstead where she formed OMA with Koolhaas and Elia and Zoe Zenghelis. “But there have been a lot of historical misprints, which continue to be repeated.”

When she was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable prize earlier this year by the Architectural Review, she mentioned the #MeToo movement. But she stressed that, “more often, and more insidious, is the way that women are ignored, written out of the script, and invisible to the nakedly ambitious self-promoting eyes”. For these women, she quipped, “I would like to start a counter-movement, called ‘Me Neither’.”

She says it was “a bit of a joke”, not intended to diminish #MeToo, and she downplays her role in the early days of OMA as “just colouring in”. The kind of colouring in that MoMA has collected, that is. “Me and Zoe were the sidekicks,” she claims. “I did the watercolours, she did the acrylics, and we packed everything up and took it to the post office when the men were too tired at the end of a deadline.”

But the early OMA schemes show Vriesendorp’s influence. From the seminal Exodus project, an imagined walled city of which she made mesmerising collages, to the competitions for the Dutch parliament, the house for the Irish prime minister and the Parc de la Villette in Paris, her distinctively surreal hand shines through in them all.

Like Scott Brown, she has found the architectural establishment’s casual misogyny to be par for the course. One prominent dean of a US architecture school, when introduced to her by Koolhaas, refused to shake her hand. “I don’t believe in that feminist crap,” he said, as he turned away.

“We accepted everything,” she says. “All the bum-pinching and the clumsy advances. There was this idea that men, poor things, have this urge, they just can’t help themselves.” Then there were the wives who had to put up with their famous husbands’ philandering. “Everyone was having boyfriends and girlfriends,” says Vriesendorp, “but it was easier for men because they didn’t have kids. They didn’t have to go home and have no sleep for the night.”

She cites having children and the cost of childcare as the reasons many women end up being sidelined. “Having kids totally limited my involvement in OMA,” she says. “It’s so tiring, being up all night, and having no time to do anything.” It is perhaps no coincidence that many of the world’s prominent women architects – Zaha Hadid, Liz Diller, Kazuyo Sejima – didn’t have children. According to a Women in Architecture survey conducted by the Architects’ Journal, more than 90% of female architects in the UK believe motherhood hinders their careers. More than half of the respondents said they had experienced sexual discrimination, while another survey found that women occupy only 10% of the highest-ranking jobs at the world’s leading architecture firms. There’s still a very long way to go before architecture reaches anything like equality. The lack of repercussions after the fleeting online publication of a “Shitty Men in Architecture” list, detailing alleged incidents of bullying and sexual abuse by a large number of prominent male architects, shows just how tightly men retain their grip on the profession.

As Vriesendorp put it in a recent interview: “What do they say? Behind every successful man is a surprised woman. Or now is it behind every successful woman is an angry man?”

POP // CAN // CRIT 2018

The Business of Architecture in Canada is a national, panel-based, architecture symposium that brings together leading voices in architecture practice, academia and related fields, who are changing the way we see and understand architecture.

This year's event will explore the business of architecture through a series of panel discussions in a day-long symposium on October 19, 2018 in Vancouver. Panel discussions will focus on how business topics are being taught in architecture schools in Canada, how the art and business of architecture come together, how women architects are finding success as both architectural and business leaders, as well as how and whether architecture firms are succession planning - and what does that mean for the future of architecture in Canada.

What: POP // CAN // CRIT 2018: The Business of Architecture in Canada

Date: October 19, 2018

Time: 8:30am - 4:30pm PDT

Location: Simon Fraser University, Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Room 2555, Vancouver

Attendance: In Person or Online (LIVE WEBINAR!)

Registration: spacing.ca/popcancrit  

POP // CAN // CRIT is an excellent opportunity to:

• network with peers,

• receive relevant and exciting information on the practice of architecture and design,

• receive Continuing Education Learning hours.

We are pleased to say that this year we will be doing a LIVE webcast of the event. So no matter where you are you can join in on the conversation.

Attendees are also eligible to receive structured continuing education learning hours. Continuing Education Certificates of Attendance will be issued by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Architecture Is No Longer Just a ‘Gentleman’s Profession’

Click here to view The New York Times

Architecture was long called a “gentleman’s profession,” which may have been true if by that you meant one that systematically excluded women for most of its existence. Before World War II, you could count the number of noted female architects on one hand. As late as the 1990s, the percentage of architecture firms owned by women in the United States was still in the single digits.

Today, less than a third of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) membership is female, and a survey of the world’s 100 largest architecture firms by the online design magazine Dezeen found that women occupied just 10 percent of the highest-ranking jobs. The first time a woman won the AIA’s Gold Medal, its highest honor, was in 2014. The recipient, Julia Morgan, had been dead for 57 years.

There are signs of improvement, though. According to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the number of women in the field continues to rise: Women now account for nearly half of the students in architecture schools in the United States; they make up about 40% of those taking licensing exams — up by nearly 50 percent in 20 years.

As the 14 projects streaming across these pages indicate, offices led or owned by women are creating an ever-wider range of public buildings that address architecture and urbanism in new and invigorating ways.

The Shed, an arts center in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group. Right, Elizabeth Diller.

In 1999, when Elizabeth Diller and her husband and partner, Ricardo Scofidio, won the first MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant ever given to an architect, they were known more for their brainy publications and art installations than for their buildings — of which there were none. Today, Ms. Diller’s office is a high-culture juggernaut, responsible for some of the most renowned projects of the last decade, including the High Line in New York City, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Broad Museum in Los Angeles.

With the Shed, a new multidisciplinary arts center at Hudson Yards in Manhattan, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the Rockwell Group, their design collaborators, have created a first-of-its-kind, 200,000-square-foot, reconfigurable event space for the Far West Side. The building’s signature element is a striking 120-foot high, pleated glass enclosure on massive wheels that can extend or retract to accommodate varied programs — concerts, exhibitions, theater — and crowd sizes. Major construction is expected to end this winter.

Though also an arts center, Deborah Berke’s NXTHVN, in New Haven, is world’s away from the Shed. Ms. Berke, who announced herself to the architectural world with a manifesto entitled “Architecture of the Everyday” and is now the first female dean of Yale’s School of Architecture, has always eschewed the flamboyant. NXTHVN, which opens in December, occupies two former factories that were quietly renovated into studios and a community center founded by the artists Titus Kaphar and Jonathan Brand. A new tower clad in glass and scalloped concrete panels links the two buildings and creates a beacon of renewal for its frayed neighborhood.

Renewal and civic identity are also the goals of an arts project in Mestre, the Italian port town long overshadowed by Venice, its more glamorous neighbor across the lagoon. In December, an angular, colorful, 250,000-square-foot museum and cultural complex called M9, designed by the Berlin firm Sauerbruch Hutton, will open at the city’s center. “The big victory here,” says Louisa Hutton, the firm’s founding partner, “was reinstating walking paths across a site that had been closed to the public for decades. This knits the project into the city and gives residents a place to gather — and call their own.”

The Parisian architect Manuelle Gautrand also aims to create an urban gathering place with her new Belaroia Hotels, a mixed-use project in the southern French city of Montpellier. Ms. Gautrand wraps a conference center, hotel, restaurants, shops and apartments around a five-story public terrace that looks out over the city. “The question of how we make our cities welcoming to new populations is paramount,” Ms. Gautrand said in a recent interview. “This space addresses that.”

The architect Amanda Levete and the artist Anish Kapoor, both of London, pursue a similar goal with the subway entry plazas they have created for a neighborhood in Naples, Italy, that has suffered from municipal neglect. Two massive, contrasting sculptures — one in reflective aluminum, the other in Corten steel — now mark the two entrances of the Monte San Angelo station. Below ground, Ms. Levete incorporates the vaults of an earlier, failed transit station into the rest of her design. The 80,000-square-foot project began while Ms. Levete was a partner at her previous firm, Future Systems, and is scheduled to open in early 2019.

Next month, when a school that the New York architect Toshiko Moridesigned pro bono for the remote Senegalese village of Fass opens, it will be functionally and architecturally momentous. It is the first school in a region with 30,000 school-age children, and will serve girls and boys. Ms. Mori’s oval design, plaster-covered mud-brick walls, and thatched roof are a modern take on local housing traditions — an effort to make the building welcoming to its 200 students, ranging from 6- to 10 years old.

“I’m fascinated with how we bring forward the vernacular with contemporary applications,” said Ms. Mori, who in 2015 completed the Thread cultural center in the village of Sinthian, about an hour to the north.

Magui Peredo and her partner, Salvador Macias, the principals of Estudio Macias Peredo in Guadalajara, Mexico, and finalists for this year’s Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Architecture, elegantly reinterpret the Mexican building tradition of thick walls and courtyards for their mixed use — apartments above commercial space — González Luna Building.

“Walls are an enduring aspect of Mexican architecture in general, and our work in particular,” Ms. Peredo explained. “Luis Barragan, who was from here, used walls to critique the thinness of glass, its impermanence. For us, the question was how to express the wall in a vertical building.” Their solution was to puncture the exposed concrete perimeter structure with recesses that give visual depth and create private terraces and shade for the apartments.

Tradition also inspired Neri & Hu’s brick-clad, 17-room hotel in Yangzhou, China, which opened officially last month. The Shanghai architects, whose practice also includes a thriving design store and their own lines of furniture and objects, looked to Chinese urban and residential typologies to create a modern-day “walled city,” a collection of quiet courtyards and enclosed spaces linked by a grid of narrow pathways.

Another of the firm’s projects, the 25,000-square-foot Aranya Art Center in Shanghai, is trying to become an urban destination in one of the hastily built, culturally arid suburban developments that characterize so many modern Chinese cities. “The situation in these developments is far from ideal,” said Rossana Hu, the firm’s co-founder. “We’re trying to create context where there is none.”

Creating context was not an issue for Huang Wenjing and Li Hu, principals of the Beijing-based Open Architecture, with their Tank Shanghai project, which opens this month. It repurposes the fuel storage tanks of a former military airport into an art museum and cultural center in the booming West Bund arts district. There’s a traditional museum in one tank — and a restaurant, nightclub, and event space in individual tanks. The 110,000-square-foot project also includes a tank with an open-air oculus, for exhibiting large-scale art.

On a smaller scale, but equally striking, is the firm’s 8,000-square-foot Dune Art Museum, opening in October and named for its unusual location: carved into — and mostly beneath — a sand dune near the Chinese coastal city of Qinhuangdao. The subterranean siting strategy actually preserves a small slice of open sand in an area where mammoth development has all but erased a once sylvan beach.

More than almost anyone, Zaha Hadid unmoored contemporary architecture from its affinities for right angles and male dominance. The first woman to win the Pritzker Prize (in 2004), she died at the height of her powers in 2016. Two of her later projects will finish major construction at the end of this year and extend her legacy. The first, 1000 Museum Tower, is a 900,000-square-foot condominium in downtown Miami with an exposed structural system that climbs the 62-story building like the tendrils of a giant, otherworldly beanstalk.

Hadid’s 70,000-square-foot headquarters for the Bee’ah Corporation, an environmental and waste consultancy in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, is even more organic in design: a 70-foot-high, dunelike composition that looks as though it was swept into place by a desert wind.

When Hadid opened her office in 1979, there was some question as to which was more radical: her work, or the idea that a woman could lead a practice that would grow to a staff of more than 400. Happily, today only the work continues to amaze.

What would cities look like if they were designed by mothers?

Click here to view The Guardian

There’s an architect’s impression of a new development for Greenwich, south-east London, that has caused some outrage on social media. The Elysian rendering of Charlton Riverside features 36 people frolicking in the park, and only one of them is black. Among the white millennials and young children there is also a single older person, gesticulating in a sprightly manner with a walking cane.

Architects are overwhelmingly male and pale, young and privileged, and there are legitimate concerns about them designing our cities in their image. Fewer than one in every 10 architects is black, Asian or minority-ethnic, and less than a third of UK qualified architects are women. And the numbers are not improving.

Statistics on the creative industries published in July by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport revealed a shocking 10% drop in the number of women in architecture, while the number of black and minority-ethnic architects remains unchanged. The furore over the whitewashed Greenwich graphic comes as the Royal Institute of British Architects faces allegations of racism over its recent presidential elections.

Lately I’ve found myself imagining what the world might look like if the people who designed it – politicians, planners, developers and architects – were more diverse. I don’t believe that men and women design differently, or that poverty and ethnicity inform architecture, but lived experience is a great teacher. The regeneration projects of the past decade are more about planters and cappuccinos than access to free drinking water, public toilets, cheap groceries and a post office. They appear to solve only the first-world problems of the monocultural illuminati who created them.

What would our cities be like if mothers had more of a role in designing them? There would be ramps everywhere, for a start. Schlepping a pushchair around makes you think differently about stairs. I cried when my nearest station was revamped without the inclusion of a lift. To  stand at the bottom of that flight of steps with two kids and a newborn in a pram is to experience the kind of despair usually reserved for rat-infested dungeons. Any station or public building undergoing refurbishment should by law be made step-free.

But I’m unlikely to find many sympathisers among architects. According to a recent survey by the Architectural Review, 75% of women in architecturedon’t have children. Most architecture graduates think they’re designing access ramps for the odd wheelchair, not every child under three.

Opt for the bus, and you will soon realise that room for two pushchairs or one wheelchair is not room enough. There’s just not enough space for shopping trolleys, walking frames, luggage or 28 exuberant seven-year-olds with rucksacks on a school trip. And the New Routemaster buses may have fancy rear doors, golden handrails and two staircases, but passengers also require air. Even if the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, ordered openable windows to be installed in these double-decker sweat lodges, gone is the former pleasure of the big-windowed and windy upper deck. You couldn’t stuff a chihuahua’s head out those slits. And even with all of them open, there’s no breeze. It’s clear that the procurers of these red elephants have never taken the bus.

And if pensioners designed our urban environments? We might have somewhere to sit. Most London bus shelters have those angled, non-stick benches that are to buttocks as icy hills are to sledges. They’re basically a trompe l’oeil. As for mainline train stations, if you’re delayed in Euston or King’s Cross, you’re expected to float around the arrivals hall without a seat, like the ghost of a nationalised past, unless you go outside to the abundance of benches in attractive wastelands of public space.

Equally challenging is the UK’s lack of public toilets, which requires you to have a pelvic floor of steel. The bladderful must either cross their legs or participate in the false economy of buying a drink for the sole purpose of eliminating it. On that note, how is it that many Pret a Mangers and EATs don’t have loos? It’s scandalous that you can drink coffee with reckless abandon, then find there are no facilities. The rules should be that if you can eat in, you can wee in, too.

If teenagers designed cities, charging your phone would be a human right. Adverts featuring beautiful, thin people would be banned. There would be chip shops on every corner. Parkour – the discipline that involves navigating urban spaces by climbing, jumping, balancing and running through them as if on an obstacle course – would be a national sport. There would be slow lanes on cycle paths for cruising your BMX, and for skateboarders, scooters and children learning to ride. There would be designated loitering spaces, repurposed from those weird fenced-in patches of grass on council estates. Anyone posting a “no ball games” sign would be fined for antisocial behaviour. Adventure playgrounds would stay open late. Every major development would have to have a normal shop that sells things at normal prices – not £7 sandwiches and not £3.50 flat whites. There would be police walking the streets when you actually need them, and they would help you, rather than private security guards shooing you off.

Of course, there are spaces that work beautifully, and offer the ease and unexpected joy of a well-designed place. My favourite in London is the uninterrupted ramp that floats you over the Thames from St Paul’s Cathedral to the Tate Modern via the Millenium Bridge without a step. There’s even play equipment and several places to sit. I have yet to find a human who didn’t enjoy it. It only goes to show, it can be done.

Finding Our Place in the Field - BEAAtlantic

Click here to view Canadian Architect

By Jill Bambury, Adele Weder

Hip Hop Architecture

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp™ is a one week intensive experience, designed to introduce under represented youth to architecture, urban planning, creative place making and economic development through the lens of hip hop culture. The Camp is based on the "4C's" which are Creativity, Collaboration, Communication and Critical Thinking. During the camp, students are paired with architects, urban planners, designers, community activists and hip hop artists to create unique visions for their communities which include the creation of physical models, digital models and the creation of a Hip Hop Architecture track and music video summarizing their designs. 

Our vision to use hip hop culture as a catalyst to increase the number of underrepresented communities in fields S.T.E.A.M. fields. 

Who should  apply for The Hip Hop Architecture Camp™?
The Hip Hop Architecture Camp is open to middle school and high school students, because of the overwhelming interest in the camp, participants must apply for the limited spaces available in each city. There is no typical student for The Hip Hop Architecture Camp™. Our students are inspiring architects, urban planners hip hop artists, musicians, computer game creators, interior designers, industrial designers, politicians and more! 

You don't see your city listed? 
If you would like to bring The Hip Hop Architecture Camp to your city, click the link below to have you organization become a host site.

Become a volunteer - http://hiphoparchitecture.com/volunteer

Are you interested in be coming a volunteer for The Hip Hop Architecture Camp? If so, complete the form below and we will let you know when a camp is scheduled near your city. Volunteers are not required to be in the architecture profession, we are looking for designers, real estate developers, educators, hip hop artists representing all the elements, (Graffiti, Djing, MCing, Bboy/BGirl), urban planners and community leaders to join our sessions for youth. Be sure to check out our growing list of 2018 Hip Hop Architecture Camps located here. 

Architect Alison Brooks learns from history and fights for a better city

Click here to view The Globe and Mail

Do architects have the power to make great buildings and better cities? As I speak to design professionals in Canada, the answer I hear is no. When it comes to the bulk of what we’re building – especially housing – they simply don’t have the influence.

Alison Brooks is different. The Canadian expat, based in London, won’t have any of that pessimism. “As architects, we have a certain responsibility,” she told me recently. “If the profession that’s responsible for delivering buildings – and should also be delivering joy and beauty – won’t stand up for quality design, then who will?”

Her career of three decades in Britain suggests a lesson for design professionals: That fighting for the ideal building and city is their job, and sometimes they can even win.

Brooks is about to open a new building, the Cohen Quadrangle, at Exeter College in Oxford, and is working on a major Vancouver housing project for the developers Rize.

So far, her buildings are respectful of traditional urban design, sensitive to the city around them and are both beautiful and inventive. Brooks aims to pursue all of these values at the same time. During a recent April 12 talk at the Architect@Work conference in Toronto, she summarized her values in four words: authenticity, generosity, civicness and beauty.

That creates particularly compelling results in the field of housing. That type of building is Brooks’s specialty and her firm has won all three of Britain’s top architecture awards for such work. Brooks presented some of her firm’s residential projects, which suggest how contemporary apartments – both for market housing and for social housing – can be humane, sensitive to their contexts and beautiful.

Take Ely Court, a series of residential buildings that are part of the rebuilding of a postwar public housing estate in northwest London. Brooks’s team designed three four-storey blocks, containing 43 homes, as part of a larger rebuilding of the South Kilburn Estate that’s being run and owned by the local municipality. Originally this area was brick row houses, built by developers in the 1860s, and those blocks were torn up, beginning in the 1950s, for a complex arrangement of mostly mid-rise and high-rise apartments.

Brooks’s work, in some respects, goes back to the 19th century. “The Victorians were excellent urban designers,” she says, and accordingly her three buildings rebuild the Victorian street grid, adding a new lane and street and facing squarely against those public ways.

The architectural language is friendly to its older neighbours: Brooks has chosen a warm, light-brown brick that harmonizes with the London stock brick around it. And at four storeys, her buildings are similar to the older three-storey terraces; they also extend two-storey porticos out toward the street, and place balconies recessed within the face of the building, adding an attractively varied texture.

On the other hand, there’s no effort here to mimic the details or even the precise forms of Victorian housing. These buildings are square, largely without ornament and they have the odd diagonal corners carved out for a bit of formal poetry. There’s nothing faux-old about this: It is unapologetically 21st-century architecture that recognizes the past.

“When you design a residential project, you’re designing a neighbourhood,” Brooks says. “How do you create a sense of diversity and an organic quality to that area? We think about it as city-building first and the buildings – particularly housing architecture – are devices that create civic space.”

Of course Brooks is doing most of her work in the context of London, which boasts a wealth of architectural and urban history – and where responding to that history is both expected and required. “There are experts in planning and conservation and there’s an expectation of living up to the historic context,” Brooks says.

And yet Brooks is, and remains, Canadian, which perhaps explains some of her social bent. “It’s a bit strange, because I’m from North America, which is not known for high-quality housing,” Brooks said. “But in London I’m one of the strongest advocates for that subject.”

Raised in Welland and Guelph, Ont., Brooks attended architecture school at the University of Waterloo. After graduation she moved directly to London, joining a group of fellow 1987 and 1988 Waterloo graduates in search of opportunity. “I went on a two-year working holiday and never came back,” she says with a smile.

Among her cohort was her partner, architect and engineer Charles Walker, who is a director at the Zaha Hadid Architects. (Other very distinguished Canadians among their generation in London are the McGill graduate Adam Caruso, and University of Toronto graduate Jamie Fobert, who recently completed a remarkable new gallery space for the Tate St. Ives.)

For her part, Brooks initially found her niche working alongside the trouble-making artist-architect Ron Arad. “His approach – which was really irreverent toward the architecture world – was valuable,” she recalls. “I’m very much about space, and Ron is about the object. We had a symbiotic relationship in that sense.”

Brooks has dabbled in object-making herself. In 2016 she designed the Smile, a 34-metre long pavilion made of engineered wood that was shaped like, yes, a smile. It was a hit, much Instagrammed.

But there is a strong element of social responsibility in what she does. Ely Court is a case in point. London’s “estate regeneration” projects are architecturally complex and politically loaded: They are undoing the physical manifestations of the postwar welfare state and they generally include public-private partnerships which, as The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright has reported, are often stacked in favour of developers. Here, too, Brooks has a point to make: She isn’t playing that game. The Ely Court project, unlike other similar projects, is owned and operated by the local Brent council. “There’s a real benefit in having a client who is committed to the long term,” she says. “You’re able to make the right choices.”

And doing the right thing – choosing quality materials, designing proper details, creating a neighbourhood that works for each resident – is the thread other architects should follow. “We’re on the front lines of urbanization, one of the critical issues of the century,” Brooks says of her profession. “If we don’t use our authority, we will lose it. We should be defending human values for the common good.”

What is a School? (of Architecture, Landscape, Art, and Urbanism)

Registration is required for this event. Reserve your ticket on Eventbrite.

Fri, Apr 27/18 to Sat, Apr 28/1

The "What is a School? (of Architecture, Landscape, Art, and Urbanism)" symposium will take place in Principal Hall at the Daniels Building, the new home of the Daniels Faculty. This event will bring together a rich array of educators, theorists, historians, and practitioners to address questions surrounding the design of learning spaces, including:

—What kind of a pedagogical instrument is a school of architecture/design and what role do its physical spaces and architecture play in its pedagogies and research? 
—What is the contemporary role and relevance of a general education in design?
—What might be the agency and reach of the architecture/design school, beyond the school or university?
—How can an architecture/design school be both a place where ideas are cultivated over time, and where they are subject to continuous experimentation? 
—How do schools of architecture/design navigate the changing political and intellectual landscape of the research university?

Schedule

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Friday, April 27

The Architecture of the School
Keynote
6:30 pm – 8 pm
Featuring:
—Michael Maltzan, Michael Maltzan Architecture
—Nader Tehrani, NADAAA & The Cooper Union
—Shohei Shigematsu, OMA
Respondent: Sara Diamond, OCAD University
Moderator: Richard Sommer, University of Toronto 

Saturday, April 28

Introduction
9am – 9:30am

Lobby (School as Political Platform)
9:30am – 11am
Featuring:
—David Fortin, Laurentian University
—Lisa Steele, University of Toronto
—Ginger Nolan, University of Basel
Moderator: Jane Wolff, University of Toronto

Test Kitchen (School as Incubator)
11:30am – 1pm
Featuring:
—Alla Vronskaya, Illinois Institute of Technology
—Axel Kilian, Princeton University  
—Thaisa Way, University of Washington
Moderator: Wei-Han Vivian Lee, University of Toronto

Dining Room (School as Curatorial Space)
2pm – 3:30pm
Featuring:
—Giovanna Borasi, Canadian Centre for Architecture
—Ijlal Muzaffar, Rhode Island School of Design
—Mark Wasiuta, Columbia University
Moderator: Barbara Fischer, University of Toronto 

Designs on the University
Closing Events
4pm – 6:30pm
Featuring:
—Mark Jarzombek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
—Joan Ockman, University of Pennsylvania
Dissenting Choir: Roundtable with Special Guests

Speakers

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Professor Lisa Steele

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Michael Maltzan

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Mark Jarzombek

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Shohei Shigematsu

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Alla Vronskaya

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Giovanna Borasi

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Ijlal Muzaffar

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David

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Joan Ockman

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Axel Kilian

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Mark Wasiuta

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Nader Tehrani

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Ginger Nolan

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Dr. Sara Diamond

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Thaisa Way

Dissenting Choir: 

— Nancy Levinson, Editor / Executive Director, Places Journal
— John Bass, Associate Professor and Chair, Architecture, The University of British Columbia
— Tye Farrow, Senior Partner, Farrow
— Liat Margolis, Director of Master of Landscape Architecture program, Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto
— Charles Stankievech, Director of Visual Studies program, Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto
— Mary Lou Lobsinger, Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto
— John Harwood, Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto

Alison Brooks Will Speak in Toronto at Architect@Work

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Just announced: Multi-award winning U.K. architect Alison Brooks will speak at Architect@Work, an international convention being held for the second year in Toronto this April. Tickets are free. Register on the Architect@Work website using code 18000.

Principal and Creative Director of Alison Brooks Architects in London, Alison Brooks is recognized as one of the leading architects of her generation. Her approach to building emerges from extensive research, with each project expressing a specific response to place, community and landscape. Since founding her practice in 1996, she has produced an outstanding portfolio of projects that range from urban design and housing to buildings for education and the arts.

Her most Instagrammed project to date is The Smile, a landmark project for the 2016 London Design Festival installed at Chelsea College of Art and a showcase for the structural and spatial potential of cross–laminated American tulipwood.

Measuring 34 meters in length, the enterable pavilion was double cantilevered with upturned ends, giving it the shape of a rocking chair glider, or as its name suggests, a wide grin.

Acclaimed for the sculptural quality of her work and its ingenious detailing, no other project exemplifies these traits quite like the spectacular Cohen Quadrangle for Exeter College, Oxford, completed in 2017.

The building is organized around two new courtyards connected by a three-dimensional ambulatory. A multi-level common space is at the centre of the S-shaped plan and opens onto both courtyards. Its over-riding concept, of a “scholarly home,” is characterized by an all-embracing curved roof.

AZURE Talks and Architect@Work are proud sponsors of Brooks’ lecture, “Experimental Archetypes and the New Civic,” which will highlight the best of her award-winning practice. It will also cover topics that interest her the most, including the resurgence of building craft, housing as advocacy, and the rise of timber in architecture.

Brooks will be speaking on Thursday, April 12, 2018, 3pm, at the Enercare Centre 100 Princes’ Blvd., Toronto. Tickets are free, though attendees are required to register here, using code 18000.

This lecture qualifies for one ConEd structured learning hour (a certificate will be provided upon request, post-event, by email).

Yesomi Umolu named artistic director for Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019

Chicago-based "visionary curator" Yesomi Umolu has been announced as the artistic director for city's third architecture biennial, taking place next year.

Umolu's role in overseeing the curatorial programme for the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019 was revealed today.

She currently holds a leading position at the University of Chicago acting as exhibitions curator for the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, lecturing in the humanities division, and devising strategies to bolster the school's architecture, urbanism and contemporary art output.

The curator is also a writer, and visiting speaker and critic at international institutions including London's Bartlett School of Architecture and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Umolu hopes to engage local and international visitors

She will become the third artistic director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, held every two years in the US city to present current architectural designs, project and theories to both industry members and the public.

"I am honoured to be invited to serve as artistic director of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial," said Umolu. "Having my roots in the field of architecture, spatial questions have always been an important consideration of my work with contemporary artists, architects, and urbanists from across the world."

"I am excited to embark on the journey of engaging the city of Chicago and it publics, as well as visitors to Chicago from across the country and around the world, in these conversations," she added.

Umolu was chosen from a selection of international candidates by a committee comprising Chicago Architecture Biennial board members, and previous artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee.

Her appointment recognises her commitment to Chicago and portfolio of university exhibitions that focus on the built environment. This includes shows titled Kapwani Kiwanga: The sum and its parts; The Land Grant: Forest Law; and The Museum of Non Participation.

"Yesomi is a 'visionary curator' with strong roots in Chicago, and she will work tirelessly to cultivate an incredible cultural, educational, and economic event for the city," said the city's mayor Rahm Emanuel, who made the announcement.

"Umolu's curatorial practice, which boldly, yet elegantly, traverses the fields of art and architecture, makes her uniquely situated for success in this role," added Johnston and Marklee.

"The Biennial is a complex and multifaceted platform for exploring both the history and present-day challenges in the field, and we eagerly await the outcomes of Umolu's curatorial inquiry and exploration."

New artistic director to build curatorial team

Prior to taking her role at the University of Chicago, Umolu also curated highly commended shows at Michigan State University's Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Minneapolis' Walker Art Center and the European Biennial of Contemporary Art.

In 2016, she was awarded a curatorial fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial was launched in 2015 to establish the city as an epicentre for architectural discourse. Joseph Grima and Sarah Herda teamed up to be artistic directors for the first year, which attracted more than double the attendees of Venice Biennale in the previous year.

Johnston and Lee, the founders of Los Angeles-based architecture studio Johnston Marklee, led the follow-up event in 2017 with a focus on history.

Umolu is now gathering together a team of international curators for the third biennial, which will open to press and professionals from 17 September 2019, and to the general public from 19 September 2019 to 5 January 2020.

Original Post

CNN names Shirley Blumberg as one of the world’s leading architects in honour of International Womens Day

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As long as there have been cities, women have built them: shaping structures, influencing architecture, and designing the neighborhoods we live in. But today, in the world-leading firms imagining the cities of the future, equality remains a long way off.

Even as the gender gap closes in architecture school — with nearly as many women graduating in architecture as men — research shows that across the world women are hired less, paid less and blocked from key creative positions at the top of firms.

In a survey of the world’s 100 biggest architecture practices, only three were headed by women, and just two had as many female managers as male, according to magazine Dezeen in November.

But, at the same time gender equality comes under the spotlight across the creative industries — from the Hollywood to high art — a transformation is happening in architecture.
There is now a “crescendo” in female designers’ creativity, said Denise Scott Brown, the pioneering post-modernist designer who has blazed a trail through the industry’s male-dominated world for five decades.

“The efforts of women are making architecture a better atmosphere for women as they are in politics, art, and beyond,” said Scott Brown, the principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and co-author of the classic “Learning from Las Vegas.”

“We need to be brave and encourage our children to be brave.”

In wake of movements such as #MeToo and the international efforts to force industries to publish their gender pay gaps, the architectural world is opening up to change and the realization that, by embracing women, we can create better cities, according to top designers.

For International Women’s Day 2018, we asked five of the world’s leading architects what it will take to break down barriers — from the classroom to the boardroom — for women in architecture, and offer words of advice for the next generation of female creatives.

Amanda Levete

Amanda Levete is founding principal of London-based architecture studio AL_A and the winner of the 2018 Jane Drew Prize for architects who have furthered the progress of women in the industry. She has been a guest editor of CNN Style

There’s never been a better time to be a woman than now. We have to seize this moment. The power of the #MeToo movement to change a culture is unstoppable.

Women, in my experience, are natural risk takers but also pragmatists — the perfect combination for leadership. It’s time to reclaim and celebrate risk in architecture as a positive force. I think we can do this by taking on less predictable risks, working in less predictable ways, finding different ways to collaborate and exploring fresh ideas in the field.

Now is our time — let’s make sure we do it our way.

Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman is an architect, designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she founded and directs the Mediated Matter research group, which probes the relationship between the built, natural, and biological environments

Face it: most of history is patriarchal. Starting with the phrase “For Adam was formed first, then Eve,” Pharaoh’s Egypt, Gandhi’s India, Victorian masculinity, macho Latin America, the status of women in the Arab world…all confirm that since ancient times, biblical times, we have occupied cities designed and constructed by men.

I just returned from Taliesin West—a home, a school, a studio, kernel of humane architecture — where I recalled Jane Jacobs’ quote, “We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves.”

Jacobs was not trained as an architect; she was a journalist-activist, and has probably contributed more to urban design than many of us creators and builders of the physical environment. There is something to be said, then, about approaching urban planning and design through the lens of journalism, or designing a city by actively taking into account women’s rights since Mesopotamia, institutionalized not only by the book but by the (city) block.

There are now more women in higher education than men, including architectural education, yet this is still not the case in practice. As women expect more of themselves, and more of themselves than men, cities will become our purview.

Denise Scott-Brown

Denise Scott-Brown is one of the most influential architects of the Twentieth Century, whose pioneering theories and designs led the Postmodern movement in architecture

The efforts of women are making architecture better for women as they are doing in politics, art and beyond. Recent evidence seems to show what we do for ourselves is the most relevant. We need to be brave and encourage our children to be brave.

You need to fall in love with our profession because it is very hard to work in. If you have a swivel-tilted head, if you look around wherever you go and you like to draw all day, then go ahead. And I think a good book to start with is still “Towards a New Architecture,” by Le Corbusier.

Women are already designing in cities. And there’s been a crescendo in their efforts. However, women architects, like all architects, will not have exclusive roles. The design of cities is produced by societies.

Farshid Moussavi

Farshid Moussavi, is principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture and Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Don’t be alarmed by people who tell you architecture is dominated by men, or that there are few female role models.

Women’s power, and indeed that of any minority, is to introduce different languages, different gestures, and extraordinariness. By ignoring the status quo which focuses on doing things in a preempted way, you can be more creative, and are far more likely to normalize female success.

When will women design our cities? Surely any time now! There is an unprecedented need for fresh thinking about our cities in the 21st century. We need to rethink housing, rethink universities, rethink stores, and rethink the workplace, as cities have become home to diverse cultures, with greater dependence on knowledge and digital technologies. This means not sticking to clichés but fully committing to finding new ways.

I am optimistic that women’s exteriority, or being outsiders, can be a source of creative thinking about the city!

Shirley Blumberg

Shirley Blumberg is a founding partner of Toronto-based Canadian architecture firm KPMB Architects and co-founder of BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto)

Jane Jacobs succinctly stated why it’s critical for women to contribute to the design of our cities: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Women architects and planners are increasingly engaged in designing our cities. Under Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, Amanda Burden and Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s Planning and Transportation Commissioners, implemented transformative public space initiatives.

We founded BEAT to increase retention and advancement for women in architecture. The momentum with which BEAT has grown reveals the overwhelming need for structural and societal change.

But these achievements by women architects and planners are still the exception and not the norm. While I am optimistic, we are likely several generations away from women making an equal contribution to designing our cities.

Editorial: Awards for women architects will eventually become an anachronism

Click here to view The Architectural Review

While it is still the case that women have yet to achieve equality in the architectural world, the Women in Architecture awards applaud first architectural quality, and then the architect – who happens to be a woman

Women suffragettes led by Emmeline Pankhurst faced unprecedented opposition when fighting for the right to vote. This illustration, dating from 1906, depicts them being removed from the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament. This year we celebrate the centenary of the enfranchisement of women over the age of 30. Source: © Parliamentary Art Collection

This magazine makes no apology for its Women in Architecture programme, conducted with our sister title The Architects’ Journal. It is true that there is something slightly jarring about singling individuals out for recognition based on gender (not just quality of work). And it is also true, as Beatriz Colomina argues in this issue, that focusing on gender ignores or masks the reality of collaboration as the key engine for architectural design and production. 

However, it is even more jarring that after more than a century of being admitted to the profession and its institutions, it is still the case that women have yet to achieve anything like equality in respect of the commanding heights of the architectural world, a handful of names being the exceptions that prove the rule. When that ceases to be the case, then gender-based awards will begin to look like anachronisms and will no doubt fade away. Until that time, there is a strong case to be made that under-representation in the profession, and its effects, can be countered by celebrating minority excellence. 

One of those effects has been the restricting of access to potential talent that the architectural profession surely needs. That raises another question, which is the extent to which the design gene pool is also limited by the hurdles facing ethnic minorities and people of working-class backgrounds undergoing the long slog towards qualification. The identification of these minorities is not a simple matter: for example, in parts of London, young white people are an ethnic minority in their own neighbourhood or borough, even though they may not be in terms of national population. You can, of course, identify whether someone is ‘white’, but it is more difficult to say with certainty whether they are working class – until they start speaking. 

The question of class, yesteryear’s key angst-subject in the way that gender is today, plays an important role in the position of women architects across the world. Put simply, it is much easier to have a fulfilled life as a female architect if you can afford servants; it is a commonplace in some parts of the world, almost unknown in others. It is rarely discussed but is a critical factor in the extent to which women architects with families can operate in the same way as their male counterparts. Architecture is generally thought of as a middle-class profession, and it generally is, but the implications of that in different geographies and cultures are hugely varied. 

Life is rarely a matter of fairness and it would be perverse to try to start making awards to people based on class, social standing or degree of ethnicity. A women’s architecture award (itself possibly subject to criticism since it may be thought to exclude other gender minorities) is based on a binary condition which is both strength and weakness. However, the critical pre-condition for a decent awards scheme is that it rewards talent first. You should not be able to win an award just because you are this or that, it is because the work you have produced is first-class, if that is still an acceptable phrase. 

Which brings us to a further irony, which is that all good award programmes or procurement procedures are by their nature discriminatory because they judge some proposals to be better than others. Suddenly, equality has flown out of the window. Not everybody is comfortable with this. There are people (including architects) who think that only local or small practices are appropriate to work in communities or on particular scales of project. There are people who think that if you work for an ethnic community you should come from that community (like police officers). There are those who think that grand architects are incapable of designing housing for the poor, that men can never design for women and vice versa.

They are mainly wrong. What matters is what has always mattered: quality of thought and analysis, empathy for client and future users, budgetary responsibility, technical competence and professional delivery. And of course the indefinable magic of design talent, which has never been distributed equally. In celebrating the winners of this year’s AR Women in Architecture awards, we applaud first architectural quality, and then the architect – who happens to be a woman. It is in that order.

Article Link

Because it’s 2017: Gender Diversity in Canada’s Architecture Profession

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“Because it’s 2015” is, of course, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s much-reported retort to a journalist who questioned his first cabinet’s gender parity. In October of that year, the Ontario Association of Architects initiated a Women in Architecture series on its blog, 23 years after the organization first formed a Women in Architecture Task Force.

The state of diversity in the profession has been under increasing scrutiny both inside and outside of Canada. Despina Stratigakos’ recently published book, Where Are the Women Architects?, summarizes American and British research identifying barriers women continue to face as practicing architects, before cautiously positing evidence of an emerging “ third wave” of feminism in architecture. The latter, she writes, challenges almost 20 years of equity stagnation in the profession that followed significant advances from the 1970s to the 1990s.

While much less research has been undertaken in Canada, voices such as Vancouver’s Women in Architecture group are responding to strong anecdotal evidence that advances in gender equality in education are not being consistently transferred to professional practice. How should the profession respond to ensure more timely progress?

Source: Statistics Canada, National Household Survey

WHERE ARE THE LEAKS IN THE PIPELINE?

Given architecture’s complex licencing process, data on the representation of actual practicing architects can be tricky to obtain. The best general measure is the 2011 census, which reports that women represent 28.9 percent of architects nationwide.

Notably, the percentage of female architects varied widely from province to province. Equally significant are changes from the previous 2006 census. The proportion of female architects in Quebec and Ontario moved upwards (5.5 and 3.3 percent respectively), while in British Columbia, the rate declined by 2.2 percent. Results of the 2016 census are currently being tabulated, but based on the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA)’s figures studying the gender wage gap in Ontario, it is reasonable to assume the national rate will exceed 30 percent, with Quebec passing the 40 percent mark. In addition to reporting that 51.4 percent of students enrolled in Ontario’s architecture programs were women (approximately 10 percent higher than in the U.S.), the OAA’s data revealed that during the past ten years, 33.1 percent of newly licensed Ontario architects were women. By 2015, 45 percent of intern architects were women.

This suggests Canada is ahead of both the U.S. and the U.K., at least nationally. But there are still significant problems. In the States, a study by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) found that the “ licensure pipeline” has seen the percentage of women intern architects rise steadily from 1984 to reach 40 percent female in 2013. But, the ACSA argues, the virtual flatlining of practicing women architects at 25 percent since 2005 suggests significant “practice pipeline” holes.

Similarly, in Canada, representation outside Quebec suggests that the strong advances in the back end of the pipeline have not been appropriately reflected by a proportional national increase of practicing women architects. In contrast, the representation of women as practicing lawyers and doctors in Canada, both professions with similarly demanding licensing, apprenticeship requirements and long hours, is significantly higher. Some 40.3 percent of doctors in Canada are women—which rises to 51 percent for those aged 35 to 44 and 61.4 percent for those under 35.

The strong number of women training to become architects is promising. But unequal progress in practice representation raises key questions. What are the barriers to retention, as well as advancement to leadership levels? And, why is Quebec significantly ahead?

Building Equality in Architecture Toronto hosts an all-gender social at Harbourfront Centre. Photo: Scott Norsworthy

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Major American and British surveys over the last 15 years have suggested a plethora of barriers to women staying in architecture. Back in 2004, Sandra Manly and Clara Greed of the University of the West of England found multiple reasons why women left the profession at a higher rate than men. These included:

• Low and unequal pay;
• Long working hours coupled with inflexible/non-family friendly working hours;
• Being sidelined to limited areas of work, often based on protective paternalism, preventing development experience;
• Stressful working conditions with more job satisfaction elsewhere;
• Macho culture and sexism; and
• Lack of “returner” training after a maternity leave

Twelve years later, the American Institute of Architects (AIA)’s 2016 national survey found all the same barriers—but added fewer job offers on graduation, slower rates of promotion, a lack of women role models, and a broader set of poor return-to-work strategies, including lack of upgrading for technological advances.

One reason for stunted promotion rates, reported the AIA San Francisco chapter’s Equity by Design Report (2014), was that women were less likely to see promotion systems as fair and “ effective,” with senior male architects often engaging in “ in-group favouritism.” The U.K.’s Architectural Review ran an international survey in 2016 that also raised the problem of weak mentoring. This issue dovetails with the frequent finding that women architects lack role models; in the States, less than 18 percent of licensure supervisors are women. A related issue is women’s limited opportunities to lead on projects.

In the Equity by Design study, women architects reported they were more likely to be assigned production and construction documentation roles than their similarly situated male counterparts. According to architect Melissa Higgs of HCMA Architecture + Design, who is active with Vancouver’s Women in Architecture group, a disparate ability to access hours of leadership- and management-related work experience is the number-one problem faced by female interns, followed by lack of mentorship.

As for more diverse role models, many have noted the continued poor recognition of women’s achievements in architecture. Examples range from the Pritzker Prize’s male-dominated record of awardees, to sexist obituaries for Zaha Hadid—even by renowned critics. On the positive side, in Designing Women (2000), McGill architecture professor Annmarie Adams and Peta Tancred offer insights on why women have done so well in Quebec. The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s coincided with Montreal’s building boom, which included highly visible work by women architects, not a few of whom trained in Eastern Europe, where women played a much more central role. With women architects at the centre rather than at the margins, female entry into the profession skyrocketed in the 70s and 80s.

Some reasons women give for leaving architectural practice—such as low pay, stressful working conditions and more job satisfaction elsewhere—also apply to men. But according to the Architectural Review, only 28 percent of women report overall job satisfaction compared with 41 percent of men, suggesting that the adverse impact of these pressures is gendered. Female architects’ satisfaction levels were much better in firms with more women managers and with balanced mentoring programs.

Liz Wreford, Elsa Lam and Johanna Hurme discuss equity on a Winnipeg panel. Photo: Jaya Beange.

Tellingly, all surveys find a significant divergence in how men and women assess the state of gender diversity in architecture. Men are only half as likely as their female counterparts to have seen discrimination against women, and hold similarly divergent perceptions about the fairness of promotion and pay levels. The AIA found that 84 percent and 81 percent of female respondents wanted a change in office culture and increased job flexibility, respectively, compared to 63 percent and 58 percent for men. With males still dominating management roles and partnerships, a significant disconnect remains between how men and women perceive the extent of the problems and the best ways to respond.

Certainly, the issues of work/life balance, flexible work arrangements and return from maternity leave play a central role in women’s professional experience. Historically, women in female-dominated jobs—from office cleaners to flight attendants, to professional nurses—have found ways to cope with these issues in the modern economy. Yet an Australian journalist still felt it appropriate to title a 2015 article “ Women in Architecture: To Be or Not To Be a Mother,” and childless women form an abnormally high percentage of women in architecture. Not incidentally, Quebec’s remarkable increase in women architects from 2001 to 2011 (25.2 to 38.9 percent, compared to Ontario’s increase from 21.3 to 26.5 percent) coincided with the first 12 years of that province’s affordable daycare program, introduced in 1999. However, as Stratigakos told the Princeton University blog, “ The simplistic explanation, trotted out for decades, that women leave practice to have babies doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.” She points out that not all mothers leave architecture, and women without children are also struggling in the profession.

The most disturbing conclusion of the recent surveys and history of architectural recognition may be this: it is not a lack of educational attainment or career interest that creates the gender gap. It is not even systemic barriers that unintentionally exclude women. Instead, it is the presence of significant subtle (and sometimes overt) attitudes and biases that both exclude women, and disproportionately lead them to abandon architecture as a profession. As one senior woman architect who asked not to be identified told me, “Being a woman in business, there is still an attitude that women can attain a certain level within an organization—but that women just may not be as good, or as appropriate, as men.”

THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING LOCALLY

There is a need for—and signs of—Stratigakos’ third wave of architecture feminism, as well as for much stronger messaging by professional organizations. But change also requires direct action by individual firms to ensure that barriers are identified and eradicated. Architecture is increasingly drawing from evidence-based design studies; the same precept must be applied to its human resource practices.

Since 1986, Canada’s Federal Contractors Program (FCP), which covers provincially regulated employers (including most architects) with major federal contracts, requires employers to apply just such an approach by developing and implementing an equity plan.

Under the FCP, employers must first tally their representation of women (as well as Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minority groups), classified by their occupational group. This is followed by a workforce analysis, where representation is compared against availability (the expected representation without barriers) to determine “ gaps” or areas of under-representation. The third, and most difficult step, is an employment systems review that involves a complete audit of all employment systems, practices and processes, including attitudes, for adverse impact. From the findings, an employment equity plan is developed that aims to remove identified barriers, implement special measures like targeted mentoring to speed up the closing of gaps, and introduce supporting initiatives, such as accommodation and harassment policies as well as equity champions in management. Like all proper business plans, goals rather than quotas are set, then used to assess progress. As a data-based system, employment equity works best with larger firms, but its principles can also be used even with smaller practices.

Some provinces—notably Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec—have required similar structured action, but legislated employment equity survived into the new millennium only in Quebec. Certain larger firms, however, remain subject to the FCP through their federal contracts. I spoke to three such firms that have recently completed successful compliance reviews with Labour Canada: AECOM Canada Architects, IBI Group and Diamond Schmitt Architects.

Paul Vincent, vice president with AECOM, reports that 45 percent of the international firm’s approximately 130 Canadian architects are female, including its lead architect for North America. The key first step, he says, is developing and regularly communicating clear corporate values, including a commitment to a diverse and inclusive workforce. This is backed up by regular workforce analyses to monitor representation, an appointed architecture “ diversity champion,” a mandatory annual code of conduct course, and a well-communicated complaints process. A zero-tolerance policy toward harassment or discrimination is also conveyed to contractors and subs

Good representation of women has been achieved by using general recruitment sources, although the firm has used targeted recruitment to improve Aboriginal representation in their workforce. Once hired, women architects can avail themselves of an active mentoring program, which Vincent believes has helped reduce turnover. The firm’s Women Excel Program, explains HR Director Sharon Burton, is an online program that also helps bring women together with mentors and allows for open communication on topics including gender integration. AECOM’s flexible work environment includes options to work from home and a parental leave top-up program.

Women in Architecture Vancouver members on a construction tour of Telus Garden. Photo: Wia Vancouver.

At IBI Group, a recent workforce analysis revealed gender disparity only at the senior architect level—a “legacy” from the original partnership structure, says Jane Sillberg, Global Director of Human Resources. “We need to focus at the leadership level when it comes to gender,” she says. This focus includes a well-structured succession plan, as well as an initiative that identifies the top 20 percent of young high-performance architects and elicits their perspectives on the practice. Although both programs are open to men and women, “we are particularly working with women who may face challenges,” says Sillberg. She notes that women frequently become licensed later than men, often into their early thirties. When combined with having families, this requires flexible work arrangements.

Diamond Schmitt Architects has been under the FCP since 2003, and successfully completed its most recent compliance review this spring. In the analysis prepared by Labour Canada, 32 percent of senior and middle managers and 42 percent of professionals and technicians at Diamond Schmitt were women, in line with Labour’s assessment of availability. Equally important, over half of the firm’s associate architects and 60 percent of its directors are women.

Given Jack Diamond’s long-term involvement with human rights, including as a Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, it is perhaps not surprising that the company has a long-standing, strongly articulated equity policy. Like AECOM, it offers a work/life balance program as well as parental top-up for new mothers and fathers taking leave. This is augmented by an employee assistance program that provides counselling resources 24/7. To eradicate any forms of harassment, the firm has established appropriate policies and procedures, and implemented office-wide training. Other initiatives include active mentoring and networking for women in the firm, with a focus on ensuring women have access to leadership roles. The firm is a Gold Member of Building Equality in Architecture Toronto (BEAT), a non-profit organization promoting equality through advocacy, mentorship, networking and promotion.

Employment equity practices can be readily adapted to smaller operations. Johanna Hurme, an outspoken advocate of women in architecture and founding partner of Winnipeg’s 5468796 Architecture, notes that through a conscious decision and due diligence in its recruitment, the collaborative-based firm of 16 sustains equal numbers of men and women employees.

DIVERSITY AND THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE

Paul Vincent makes a compelling business case for diversity when he says: “ Ultimately, we are an ideas firm and a problem-solving operation. The world is changing and you have to do things in different ways—and to do that, you have to have people that come in with a different pair of glasses.” The dramatic shift in women training as architects, coupled with the similarly huge demographic shift underway, adds urgency.But in the end, it is simply the right of women to take their place within the profession that must drive change. 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Meet BEAT's Persis Lam

What is your favourite part of being an architect?

Being able to work on the bigger picture of a project whether it's community  building or city planning as well as the tiniest details of construction or client relations.

What are some challenges in the architecture industry today?

We need to get better in compensating ourselves.  Fees are too low for what we do but as we chase more work we constantly compete with each other to get the work done with the lowest price.

Do you have any passions outside of work?

Yes, music.  I've studied music for over 20 years, I enjoy playing various instruments, and I love cooking.

What do you do in your spare time?

I have a 4 year old and 2 year old at home so that takes up a lot of my time.  I play in the office rock band

What projects really inspire you?

Projects that are whimsical and playful, that aren't too serious.

How does 'good' architecture build the community?

Good architecture should be multi-faceted and holistic, it should address not only good design but community needs and the human experience

What's you biggest motivation?

Knowing that each project is different and therefore each experience is something to learn from.

Meet BEAT's Stephanie Hosein

Where did you start your #architecture training? 

I attended Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia for both my Bachelor of Environmental Design Studies (BEDS) degree and my Master of Architecture (MArch) degree. 

What has been your most inspiring project to work on?

My most inspiring project to work on is a restaurant that is currently under construction.  It is the first time I am seeing a project through as Project Architect from start to finish and it has been an eye-opening experience to be involved in every single aspect, from city approvals to millwork drawings.  It has been challenging but also incredibly rewarding

Tell us your favourite part about being an architect?

My favourite part about being an architect is working with people.  As architects, we are designing spaces for people to live, work, eat, play... at the end of the day, it always comes back to people.  Whether it’s the client, the users, the consultants, or even the building officials, it’s a very collaborative process and you have to be good at working with people (and you should enjoy it!) to strive in this profession, and that’s one of the aspects I like the most.

Do you have any passions outside of work?

I do my best to lead an active lifestyle outside of work, which ranges from exploring High Park with my greyhound and cycling around Toronto, to getting out of the city for canoe trips in Algonquin Park.  I love to travel, particularly to destinations where I can explore different landscapes and cultures, improve my photography skills and ideally fit in some scuba diving!  Fine arts has always been a passion of mine, and I try to make time for that in some capacity when possible. 

How does ‘good’ architecture build the community?

I think ‘good’ architecture is design that captures the attention of the everyday user - in particular, people without a design background.  It catches the attention of those who normally don’t pay attention to the buildings around them.  I have a lot of friends and family members who are not in the architecture profession, and I often notice that design is often overlooked unless it’s absolutely terrible, or really fantastic.  It’s those fantastic projects that can open peoples’ eyes to the built world around them.  Good architecture helps people see their environment a different way, enhances how they experience a place and may even provide a better understanding of place through means as simple as filtering views and incorporating local materials and building techniques.

RAIC announces 2018 Honorary Fellows

OTTAWA, January 24, 2018 –  The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has selected four international architects to receive 2018 Honorary Fellowships. This year’s Honorary Fellows demonstrate the diverse ways architects contribute to the profession and society, over and above exemplary design and practice.

For example, French architect Odile Decq has taught for decades and recently started a school of architecture. Diébédo Francis Kéré, the first child in his village in Burkina Faso to be sent to school, now provides opportunities to others by building schools and finding construction methods appropriate to local needs.

American architect William J. Stanley III has been a trailblazer for architects of African descent and a community leader, while John Sorrenti, also American, has given time and thought to the associations and boards that make it possible to be an architect.

“We are thrilled that these exceptional professionals have accepted to become members of the RAIC,” said Diarmuid Nash, FRAIC, Chancellor of the RAIC College of Fellows. “Odile Decq is one of the most successful women in architecture and serves as a role model to many. Diébédo Francis Kéré creates inspiring architecture that uplifts communities and helps an exchange of ideas between Africa and Europe. In addition to running a thriving practice, John Sorrenti has devoted countless hours to professional associations, while William Stanley has broken new ground for African American architects in the American South.”

Honorary fellowship recognizes extraordinary achievement. Decq, Kéré, Stanley, and Sorrenti will be inducted into the RAIC College of Fellows at a ceremony during the RAIC Festival of Architecture in Saint John, NB, May 30 - June 2. Kéré will deliver the keynote address at the College of Fellows Convocation, and Decq will be the keynote speaker at the RAIC Foundation Luncheon.

“I have had a long, friendly relationship with Canadian architecture since my first visit in the early 1990s,” says Decq. “It is a great honour for me to receive the Honorary Fellowship. Being from Brittany in France, I have always been looking over the horizon line of the Atlantic Ocean towards the Canadian coast, and receiving this honour in Saint John is more than just a personal pleasure of discovering the place.”

“It is an incredible honour to me to be appointed as an Honorary Fellow of the RAIC because beyond recognizing my work, it recognizes the importance of socially and environmentally responsible architecture,” says Kéré. “It attests to the fundamentality of it in today’s architectural landscape. Since I started, I always tried to incorporate the people and their environment in my designs, and being recognized for it sends the message that it is important.”

“I have always cherished my feeling of endearment to Canada,” says Stanley.  “Early in the 20th century – a period of segregation and Jim Crow in the U.S. – my great-uncle received his highly touted medical degree from McGill University.  Nearly a century later, I have come to appreciate sharing best practices for mentoring young architects with colleagues who are Fellows in the RAIC.  My great-uncle would be very proud of my receipt of this high honour.”

“This award is especially significant to me because it recognizes and reinforces the work of the RAIC and the AIA’s past Chancellors,” says Sorrenti.  “Our collaboration has focused on enhancing Fellowship by increasing awareness of architects’ global responsibility.  This recognition also reinforces continuing this dialogue to strengthen the value of both Colleges within the architectural community.  Having an opportunity to work with my Canadian colleagues has been an amazing experience.”

To view original article - https://www.raic.org/news/raic-announces-2018-honorary-fellows

Crazy-Comprehensive Guide to the Toronto Design Offsite Festival 2018

Click here to view Designlines

Not surprisingly, all of our favourite winter pastimes revolve around Toronto Design Week. We love to mix and mingle with local and international talent, discover new products, and indulge our inner voyeurs at awesome exhibition and event spaces, otherwise hidden from view. What’s more, during the Toronto Design Offsite Festival (TO DO) and the Interior Design Show (IDS), our editors get to adorn the best stuff we see with our DL Loves tags. You’ll see them hanging in TO DO window installations and on newly minted products you’ll want to own after IDS.

Follow the action on our homepage as we spread the love, one day at a time. We’ll also be sharing updates via our Instagram under the hashtag #DLLoves2018. Be sure to tag your posts so you too can share in the fun.

Inside the hallucinatory installation at last year’s party. Photo by Rob Shostak.

1. TO DO Festival Party

True to its name, the Toronto Design Offsite Festival likes to party in unusual places. This year, the celebration migrates from the Church of the Holy Trinity to Lightform’sshowroom and warehouse. Here, Jordan Söderberg Mills bends the laws of physics with the installation, ‘String Theory,’ while the experimental ‘Feelbot’ by Toronto based Equal Parts Studio adds emotional depth to your live tweets from the dance-positive event.

LightForm Toronto, 267 Niagara St. 7-11pm

Tickets: bit.ly/TODO18FestivalParty

Architect Joy Charbonneau posted shining examples of Canadian design to Instagram every day in 2017.

2. 365 Days of Canadian Design

The culmination of an ambitious year-long project, 365 Days presents images of Canadian design as curated by KPMB architect, artist and designer Joy Charbonneau. Her Instagram account, @marianadesigncanada, shows an awe-inspiring number of home furnishings, ceramics, textiles, objects, and illustrations made by our fave Canucks. We can’t think of a better way to orient yourself before you plunge into the festival’s full program of events.

Artscape Youngplace, Hallway Galleries, 2nd Floor, 180 Shaw St., Jan 15 – 27

Opening Reception: Jan 16, 6-9PM

Mercury Bureau presents a range of compositional vases created with it-floral studio Flùr.

3. More Like Weather

Mercury Bureau joins forces with Flùr, leader of the indoor flora movement in Toronto, to create a collection of elegant vases fit for ikebana devotees. Take respite from the cold inside the shop’s resplendent interior by MSDS Studio (who stage an exciting intervention of their own at Aesop on Queen W) while enjoying some therapeutic greenery.

Flùr, 1087 Bathurst Street, Jan 16 – Feb 3

Opening Reception: Tue, Jan 16, 7-10PM

Intricate detailing, like this gold-threaded bird, is a mainstay of traditional Japanese textiles.

4. Diligence and Elegance: The Nature of Japanese Textiles

If you’ve been waiting for a social occasion at which to flaunt your kimono, this is your moment. Luxurious silk and gold textiles are presented alongside humble hand-dyed indigo cottons, representing a wide spectrum of textiles from 19th and 20th century Japan. Additionally, the festival invites Marta Turok to introduce the robozo, a rectangular shawl worn by women across Mexico, followed by an intimate gallery tour.

Textile Museum of Canada, 55 Centre Avenue, Jul 12, 2017 – Jan 21, 2018

Lecture: The Ikat Robozo from Mexico, Wed, Jan 17, 6:30-8:30pm

Tickets: http://bit.ly/2CedHUc

Gallery Tour: A Special Evening with Marta Turok, Thu, Jan 18, 6-7:30pm

Tickets: http://bit.ly/2zadke2

The creative force, made up of OCAD U students, behind the interactive group exhibition.

5. Hacking Black Futures

In 1870, Jules Verne predicted that electrically powered submarines would transport humans underwater. Now, a group of Black-identifying designers and makers are using speculative fiction to envision a better future for themselves and their communities. We’re excited to see prototypes alongside hacked technologies that engage ideas of food sovereignty, the maker revolution, and sustainability.

BAND Gallery and Cultural Centre, 19 Brock Avenue, Jan 17, 2018 – Jan 21

Opening reception: Wed, Jan 17, 6-9pm

Montreal’s Allstudio elevates office life beyond the ordinary with these planters/side tables.

6. Work/Life

Don’t hit the snooze button on this sure-fire exhibition, which showcases contemporary products for the home and office from 10 Canadian designers and studios we love: Allstudio, Area 91, Dear Human, F&Y, Char Kennedy, Jacob Mailman, Mercury Bureau, MPGMB, Geof Ramsay, Stewart Shum and Ange-line Tetrault. The show is a great opportunity to peruse the Umbra collection, and at the bustling reception, meet other design lovers.

Umbra Concept Store, 165 John St, Jan 15 – Jan 21

Opening Reception: Wed, Jan 17, 6-9pm

RSVP: bit.ly/TODO18WorkLife

Last year’s OCAD U expo offered fascinating design solutions to real-world problems.

7. Off Course

A showcase of prototypes and works-in-progress from students of the Industrial Design and Graphic Design programs at OCAD University, this is the place to get a leg up on the future of Canadian design. Identify tomorrow’s superstars while grappling with urgent questions to do with modern life. We’re still enraptured by Paolo Aguila’s balcony chicken coop from last year’s show.

Radiator Gallery, 358 Dufferin Street, Suite 103, Jan 16 – Jan 21

Reception: Thu, Jan 18, 7-11pm

Dear Human‘s mottled contribution to the annual materials-focused exhibition.

8. Matter

A conceptual exhibition with a tangible foundation, Matter asks us to consider the life-span of materials. View objects by 12 designers and artists that tread the line between product and sculpture, made from materials such as wood, ash and Styrofoam. We’re intrigued by James Michael Shaw‘s recycled plastic candle holder, which resembles a mound of melted soft-serve ice cream.

Urbanspace Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON

Spanish designer Jaime Hayon poses in front of his Ceasarstone creation at last year’s show. Photo by Liah Chesnokov.

9. Interior Design Show (IDS)

IDS attracts an impressive roster of bigwigs each year. To name-drop a few: Karim Rashid, Jay Osgerby and Snarkitecture, who collaborate with Ceasarstone on a range of kitchen islands. Other guests include celebrity interior designers Kathryn Ireland and Desta Ostapyk, who you may recognize from the Bravo TV shows Million Dollar Decorators and Love It or List It, respectively. We’re hoping Jonathan Friedman of Partisans, the architecture firm featured in our current This Creative Cityissue, will autograph copies of our mag onsite.

Metro Toronto Convention Centre, North Building, 255 Front Street W., 7-11PM

Tickets: http://bit.ly/2nZu2JH

Opening Party: Jan 18, 7-11pm

Afterparty: The Drake, 1150 Queen St W., 11PM

Dresscode: Karim Rashid’s 2007 Designlines cover look.

Kaitlyn Bourden created this tangled installation for last year’s hotel intervention.

10. Come Up to My Room

When breathtaking art installations and a magical party come together, you get CUTMR, one of TO DO’s best-loved events. The historic Gladstone is barely recognizable after a host of artists takeover four floors of the hotel. Best of all: the artsy backdrops stay up all night at the TO DO Love Design Party, which closes the festival.

The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street W, Jan 15- 21

Opening Reception: Sat, Jan 20, 7-10pm

Tickets: http://bit.ly/2ADq6nO

After Party: Sat, Jan 20, 10pm-2am

Aberrant Architecture brings their fire-engine red Tiny Travelling Theatre to Toronto.

11. In Place

Harbourfront Centre hosts a group exhibition by TO DO’s inaugural international guest of honour, Aberrant Architecture, and a coterie of North American studios from Winnipeg to St. Paul, Minnesota, who all present interactive works that highlight community and locality. Learn about Abberant’s Tiny Travelling Theatre, a public performance apparatus on wheels.

Artport Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, Jan 13 – Jan 28

Public Reception: Friday, January 19, 7-10pm

Jeneca Klausen of Saint John, NB shows her (pendant) face at the travelling exhibit dedicated to North American design.

12. Outside the Box

Unpacking this showcase is a delight for our editors. Objects that reflect the resources and inspirations of designers living across North America are shipped in Bankers boxes across the continent. Their Toronto Offsite Design Festival stop, at the Harbourfront Centre, forms a perfect complement to the show In Place (#12 on this list). Share your impressions of both exhibits with the hashtag #DLLoves2018.

Artport Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, January 13–28, 2018

This fiesta-ready installation celebrates the festival’s arrival at Yonge & St Claire.

13. #ohdeer by Gensler

What better way to end the Toronto Design Offsite Festival than to visit, and help dismantle, a towering deer piñata? The party favour looms large in a slick lobby at Yonge and St. Claire, paying tribute to the former inhabitants of Deer Park across the street. We love the community focus that architecture firm Gensler brings to the project.

2 St. Clair Avenue West, January 15–21

Female architects respond to gender survey: "It's getting better but far too slowly"

Click here to view Dezeen

After our survey revealed a lack of gender diversity in the world's biggest architecture firms, five prominent female architects from the UK gave us their views on what's gone wrong and how it can be changed.

The survey, which looked at the 100 biggest firms from around the globe, revealed that only one in 10 senior positions are occupied by women, and that 16 per cent of firms have no women in their management teams.

We shared the results of the survey with five high-achieving women who run their own small or medium-sized firms.

Sadie Morgan, co-founder of dRMM and winner of this year's Stirling Prize, said she was "disappointed" by the findings. "My hope is that it shows a lag in the rise of women to the top of our profession rather than a full stop."

"Women architects are not being recognised in these large commercial firms, which is a loss for both," said Angela Brady, director at London studio Brady Mallalieu Architectsand past president of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Dara Huang, head of architecture studio Design Haus Liberty, said the survey showed that large firms are "old-school in their thinking".

However Amanda Levete, founder and principal at AL_A said she was optimistic for the future. "Our government is led by a woman, as is our police force and our fire brigade," she said. "It can't be long before the conversation about gender in architecture becomes irrelevant."

"It is improving," agreed Jane Duncan, director at Jane Duncan Architects and past president of the RIBA. "There are more and more savvy young women architects coming into the workforce. Once some break through the glass ceiling they become role models for others on their way up. It's inevitable."

But things are improving at a glacial pace and larger practices effectively have a glass ceiling in place, preventing women from rising to senior positions, they feel. One of the key reasons for this is an outdated attitude to childcare, which women are expected to do alone, according to the architects.

"The most obvious reason for losing senior woman is their choice to leave work to have children midway through their career," said Morgan. "We have to be much better as a profession to offer a culture where women can return to work and balance childcare with a demanding professional career. It's totally possible and there are many good examples of practices who do so."

Yet all agreed that firms that do not strive to improve their gender balance will increasingly be viewed as out of touch and will lose out commercially.

"Men are not any better at design and management than women," said Brady. "Women are very good negotiators and listen well to clients to develop the brief for the best type of architectural outcome. Men and women working together and sharing their skills make the best architecture."

Key findings from our gender survey
› Just three of the world's 100 biggest architecture firms are headed by women
› Only two firms have management teams that are more than 50 per cent female
› Women occupy just 10 per cent of the highest-ranking jobs at the world's leading architecture firms
› The percentage of women falls at each ascending management tier
› 16 of the top 100 firms firms have no women at all in senior positions

What does our survey reveal about attitudes to gender balance in architecture today?

Sadie Morgan: I am always disappointed to read surveys that show such a disparity of female to male representation at a senior level. There is enough credible evidence now showing that a better and more diverse senior team makes for a more successful business. It seems counter-intuitive for practices to continue with an outdated mode of working and not try to address this issue.

Angela Brady: Women architects are not being recognised in these large commercial firms, which is a loss for both. The day-to-day business of architecture, particularly in these large firms, is very competitive and men are simply better at putting themselves forward in competitive situations, where being pushy is rewarded with salary increases and job promotion. They are regarded as more ambitious.

However research in the US has shown that having more women at board level and at the top of firms brings in more business and makes for a more friendly working atmosphere and, I would add, better and more thoughtful design outcomes. Certainly of the many boards and advisory panels that I have sat on, the level of conversation has been better when there have been more women.

Many of the men in these large firms leave the majority of the child rearing to their other halves, thus preventing the women from earning promotion. Men need to accept their fair share of child-raising duties. They need to be encouraged to do this by their firm and by society as this is one area that holds women back.

Firms need to recognise that for a very short period in the life of an architect, children's needs can make a temporary change to their work-life balance. But as an architect works for 40 years on average, and they get better with age, it is foolish not to support them for a short career break.

It is no wonder that most women choose to work for smaller firms with a better working environment or set up on their own or with a few colleagues.

Dara Huang: It doesn't surprise me that progressive cities with higher gender equality such as Stockholm show a greater gender balance, because there are more government incentives to help women go back into the workforce.

I experienced similar equalities working in China, where childcare is very accessible and there was no stigma attached to pregnancy. Also it doesn't surprise me that Japan leads the way in zero women at the top levels because again, culturally women in Japan are expected to leave their jobs when they are pregnant, and if they don't they are fired immediately. I use to live there and it's a very sexually segregated culture with huge gender discrimination.

I think that making changes in the workforce needs to start with a cultural shift and also government support, otherwise it's virtually impossible to be a working mother when the typical architect in London gets paid circa £40,000 and a live-in nanny is £30,000.

There is this fear that if a company hires a women in her mid 30s, she's going to disappear for a decade to have children. They don't realise that's because they have not set up a system that gives women more choices.

What management needs to do instead is to create flexibilities and build long-term relationships with their female staff. And men and women could be equally committed to childcare and receive equal pay.

Amanda Levete: My experience of being a woman in architecture today is an extremely positive one. I've been in practice now for over 30 years and seen huge changes for the better during that time. Personally, I've never encountered any barriers to practice and the women starting their careers at AL_A will never be prevented from fulfilling their potential. The message I want to project is that there is no limit to achievement in our discipline for anyone.

At AL_A, the gender balance is close to 50/50, as it is at director level. We've certainly had more women applying to work with us in the last few years, although interestingly they have been almost exclusively from the EU. I do think having a good gender balance in the office encourages more women to apply and having two female directors probably makes a difference too.

We always take the very best people, so widening the pool of talent available can only be positive. I'm proud of everyone who works here – as a studio, we've never been more productive and creative, and balance plays a part in that.

The majority of people at AL_A are relatively young – they are making London their home and starting families. So creating a supportive culture is very important, but it is a culture not driven by gender.

I'm optimistic for the future. Our government is led by a woman, as is our police force and our fire brigade. It can't be long before the conversation about gender in architecture becomes irrelevant.

Jane Duncan: I suspect it is no surprise to women in architecture that the survey has revealed such a dearth sure of women at the top of these large companies. It takes years, decades probably, for bright young women architects to be recognised and assisted to reach the upper echelons, and then only with the backing of proper proportionate equity policies, embedded within practices.

It also takes bright management to understand that their companies will prosper if these positive policies are not just created and nodded at but acted upon in mind, spirit and body by all staff.

Does the lack of women at the top of architecture firms imply there is a glass ceiling in operation?

Jane Duncan: Of course it does. In the past, and in some cases in the present, firms without flexible people-friendly policies inadvertently or blatantly discourage equity of participation and seek board members like themselves – i.e. men. This will change only when these firms see others with better attitudes doing better financially.

Sadie Morgan: My hope is that it shows a lag in the rise of women to the top of our profession rather than a full stop. Since I entered the profession 22 years ago, I have seen a steady increase in the number of female graduates, architects and women in senior positions. I would suggest that we need to find ways of accelerating that trend. If there is a glass ceiling in place, the best way to break it is by the sheer pressure of numbers pushing from underneath.

Angela Brady: To me, the lack of women at the top implies a prejudice within firms, which is easy to spot. So my advice to the larger firms is to redress the balance and add talented women architects to your senior levels. You will benefit in many ways. If you don't, you will be regarded as old fashioned and not great people to do business with.

Dara Huang: Yes I do think that there is an unspoken attitude towards women in the workforce. It's a ceiling that is set by the culture of each individual practice though and there are ways to break away from it. I noticed that practices run by men will have more men in the practice at various levels, while practices led by women such as mine or Amanda Levete's have more women.

What practices don't realise is that they can set examples. If they promote a woman who exudes confidence, this becomes inspirational for other women to step up and have their voices heard. I've had women who've worked for me saying that I've changed their perceptions of themselves. I have also have many female role models who have inspired me in my career, including Farshid Moussavi and Christine Binswanger [senior partner at Herzog & de Meuron]. These women walked, dressed and exuded confidence, which had a knock-on effect on me.

I try and set that example to the women I work with now because it's such a male-dominated industry. It's important to find that voice within and it does take practice – I wasn't always so confident in my twenties. We should embrace our differences as a positive force and learn how to be empowered by gender rather than being pushed back by it. I think we're coming to a point where personality creates a brand and it's much better to be unique and stand out than to melt into the status quo.

What are the reasons for the increasing gender imbalance the higher you go up a company's hierarchy?

Dara Huang: Probably because the top 100 practices are old-school in their thinking. For some offices it might take generations before we see gender equality taking place. It's not that women are less capable; it's a cultural attitude thinking that women and mothers are ineffective employees, are less committed or not as strong. This further shuts out women in the organisation.

Sadie Morgan: The most obvious reason for losing senior woman is their choice to leave work to have children midway through their career. We have to be much better as a profession to offer a culture where women can return to work and balance childcare with a demanding professional career. It's totally possible and there are many good examples of practices who do so.

Angela Brady: An old-fashioned attitude to women and equality, lack of judgment and prejudice against promoting women. As more women enter the profession there should be more in senior positions, but it needs a change of attitude and maybe a campaign to promote it.

Jane Duncan: This doesn't happen in all firms of course. But attrition has long been an issue preventing promotion. A long-hours and poor-pay culture just doesn't work for most people, and particularly women who still handle the majority of childcare or indeed any care. This results in huge numbers of women leaving the profession when they start having families, or ageing parents to care for. If they are not helped proactively to stay in touch, keep their skills up and be encouraged to step back in when it suits them, they will not return.

How can this be changed?

Jane Duncan: This is simply a business imperative. Firms spend fortunes training staff in their working methods, establishing collaborative working relationships with colleagues and clients. It costs huge amounts to find replacement staff and lots of time to train up successors. These firms just need to appreciate that staff who are appreciated and treated well, irrespective of gender or any other consideration will be loyal and productive.

Angela Brady: Promote women to board level. It's easy. Make more women associates and partners at the next office meeting. Workforce diversity says a lot about who you are as a practice and clients are taking notice of this. There are also more women clients giving out work than ever before.

It is no surprise that many successful small practices are those in husband-wife relationships where there is equality and mutual respect and support. Also women leaders like Grafton Architects' Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara or indeed Zaha Hadid, who fought hard to be recognised in a man's world by producing world-class architecture.

But things are changing slowly for the better, with more women graduating than ever before. Women now make up 25 per cent of architects in practice.

Men are not any better at design and management than women. Women are very good negotiators and listen well to clients to develop the brief for the best type of architectural outcome. Men and women working together and sharing their skills make the best architecture.

Ask for a pay rise if you think or know a man at the same level is being paid more than you. Don't be afraid to check this out and ask. Men have no problem asking. Shout about how good you are – the lads don't hold back! Help more women coming through the ranks by encouraging and supporting them. Be a mentor to boost their confidence.

If you feel you have been overlooked for promotion, ask a director for an explanation and threaten to move on if it continues and you will be appreciated elsewhere. If there is ever sexism in your office, confront it immediately. Report it and ask management to deal with it ASAP. There is no place for sexism in any office today.

Dara Huang: I think change is closer to us than we know it. We don't have to wait for laws to pass or generations of people to replace current management. Heads of companies should come up with strategic ways to make both sexes more equal in the three pillars which segregate us: childcare, pay and support.

Upper management is usually older and therefore either have families or will have families soon. Therefore it's more male-dominated because women had to make choices about their careers based on their family. If men and woman are entitled to the same paternity/maternity leave and the same pay, then change will inevitably happen. Also I think that women should have female mentors and be able to have someone in the field they can use as a role model. Perhaps more female organisations in large corporates and support systems is a good idea.

Sadie Morgan: As a profession, we need to set a precedent in which we highlight best practice. Embedding the importance of diversity at the early stage of every project, brief and commission in the studio. But it's not just practices that need to work harder. From speaking engagements to articles, juries to panels, the industry must make sure that all aspects are representative of a wider and more diverse workforce. We have to lead by example.

Do you think things are getting better or worse?

Sadie Morgan: It's getting better but far too slowly. Every new survey shows an inability for the profession to act quickly, we need to be light on our feet and adapt quicker.

Angela Brady: Things are getting better slowly. But in a recession, women get hit the hardest. So with Brexit on the horizon, improvements may slow again, although I hope not.

Jane Duncan: It is improving. There are more and more savvy young women architects coming into the workforce. Once some break through the glass ceiling they become role models for others on their way up. It's inevitable.

Dara Huang: If you look at history, it's obviously much better than before. But I'd be interested to see how steep the curve on progression actually is, because it does feel as if it has flat-lined. I wouldn't be pessimistic about it though because again I realise it's a culture that's been hundreds of years in the making, and it only takes a few progressive thought leaders to fix it in their own office environment, not just in architecture but in all professions.

Equity in the AEC Industry - Online event (Nov 16)

Click here to register 

Women are under represented in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Only 20% of registered architects in Canada are women, are 23% of engineering graduates and only 14% of skilled trades. The barriers to participation for women in non-traditional occupations are complex and the journey to a fulfilling career an be complex.

Join our panelists, moderated by Tanya Doran, Senior Sustainability Lead - Stantec:

• Hillary Carter, Director of Faculty– Blockchain Research Institute,

• Betsy Williamson, Principal – WilliamsonWilliamson and Board Member with BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto), and

• Erin Davis, Director, Corporate Talent Engagement – Stantec

for an online discussion of best practices for the attraction, retention and advancement of women to move the architecture, engineering, and construction industries to gender equality.

Organizer of Equity in the AEC Industry - Online event

Who is the Smart, Sustainable, Resilient Infrastructure (SSRI) Innovation Supercluster?

The SSRI Supercluster is a collaboration of industry, post secondary and not-for-profit organizations with a mission to provide:

• Technological leadership through collaborative demonstration and pilot projects;

• Facilitate partnerships to enhance large, medium and small firms across the multiple disciplines of the AEC Industry;

• Recruitment, re-training and develop highly qualified personnel;

• Access to shared resources to the development and commercialization new products and services;

• Positioning of the AEC industry in key global markets.

Partners include:  Stantec, PCL Construction, Ledcor, All Weather Windows, Manasc Isaac Architects, NAIT, SAIT, University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Athabasca University, Integral, Barry Johns Architecture, Connect Thermal Energy Solutions, Archineers Consulting, Terravent Systems, Fox Architecture, Earth Tube Systems, Dante Consulting, Matchbox Energy, Vanderstar Engineering, Prima, Canada Green Building Council, Alberta Innovates and Go Productivity.

Daniels: “Architectural presentations: what I know so far” with Shirley Blumberg

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Thursday, November 23, 2017 – 12:00pm to 2:00pm

Room 230, 1 Spadina Crescent

This event is a collaboration among BEAT, the Daniels Faculty Committee on Diversity and Equity and the Graduate Architecture Landscape and Design Student Union (GALDSU).

Shirley Blumberg is a founding partner of KPMB Architects and a Member of the Order of Canada “for her contributions to architecture and for her commitment to creating spaces that foster a sense of community.” Notable award winning projects include the Fort York Public Library, the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre at UBC, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation Campus (CIGI), recipient of a Governor General’s Medal, an American Institute of Architects Honor Award, and a Royal Institute of British Architects International Award. She was also the partner-in-charge for KPMB of major new student housing complex, Ponderosa Hub, at the University of British Columbia, which opened in 2016. Recently completed projects include the Global Centre for Pluralism for the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada in Ottawa and the the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building and the Louis A. Simpson International Building (formally 20 Washington Road) at Princeton University. Current projects include the Remai Modern Art Gallery of Saskatchewan, the Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Shirley is a member of the Toronto Community Housing Design Review Panel and established Building Equality in Architecture Toronto (BEAT), an independent initiative dedicated to the promotion of equality in the profession of Architecture.