{"id":305894,"date":"2025-11-25T12:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305894\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T12:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:26:08","slug":"from-byzantine-cottages-to-vulvic-stadiums-the-brilliance-of-female-architects-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305894\/","title":{"rendered":"From Byzantine cottages to vulvic stadiums: the brilliance of female architects | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

If one were to think \u201cBrazilian 20th-century modernist genius\u201d, one might alight on Oscar Niemeyer, but see also the Italian \u00e9migr\u00e9 Lina Bo Bardi<\/a>, who developed an Italian-style modernism with a Brazilian accent in her adopted homeland. Her Teatro Oficina, in S\u00e3o Paulo, was named by this paper as the best theatre in the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Five hundred miles away is one of my favourite residential buildings, A la Ronde<\/a>; an eccentric 16-sided home in Exmouth, Devon. It was designed in 1796 by Jane and Mary Parminter<\/a> (two \u201cspinster\u201d cousins, in the words of the National Trust) and relative John Lowder. The cousins, who were not professionals, had been inspired by their Grand Tour of Europe (an unusual undertaking for women at the time) and, in particular, the Basilica of San Vitale<\/a> in Ravenna, Italy. The critic Lucinda Lambton described<\/a> the cottage orn\u00e9 with Byzantine inflection as embodying \u201ca magical strangeness that one might dream of only as a child\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Magical strangeness\u2019 \u2026 A la Ronde. Photograph: Markfromexter\/Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

I thought of Bo Bardi and the Parminters when reading the recent report by the Royal Institute of British Architects (the RIBA)<\/a> which found that \u201cstark displays of sexism\u201d were pushing women out of the profession, stalling their progress within it, or putting them off entering it altogether. The RIBA\u2019s chief executive officer, Dr Valerie Vaughan-Dick \u2013 the first woman CEO in the organisation\u2019s almost 200-year-old history<\/a> \u2013 said that the report, which documented sexual harassment (including stalking and groping), unequal pay (a 16% gender gap<\/a>), unsociable hours, and pervasive power imbalances, makes for \u201cuncomfortable reading\u201d.<\/p>\n

It comes two decades after a seminal 2003<\/a> review explored an exodus of women from architecture. Clearly, the industry hasn\u2019t sufficiently renovated itself. More women are studying the subject at university, but just 31% of architects<\/a> registered with the Architects\u2019 Registration Board (2022) and under a quarter<\/a> of RIBA chartered members are female. Increasingly, the retention issue overshadows the recruitment one. In a 2017 survey<\/a> by Dezeen, just 10% of senior positions in the 100 largest architecture firms worldwide were held by women. The result is the unfortunate truth that the achievements of some of our finest architects are made even more impressive on the basis of their sex.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Kazuyo Sejima<\/a> and her confident but mercurial buildings which mirror the moods of their natural surroundings: aluminium coruscates in the bright sun and shimmers in the rain; the considered \u201creflective cloud\u201d<\/a> of her 2009 Serpentine Gallery pavilion (with Ryue Nishizawa) seamlessly integrated with Hyde Park. Mariam Issoufou<\/a>, a Niger-born architect works with sustainable local materials and resources \u2013 compressed earth bricks, rubber wood, palm leaves \u2013 to produce handsome libraries and housing estates in her native country and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Holding its own against flashier neighbours \u2026 The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, designed by Liz Diller. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Liz Diller\u2019s work is porous and community-focused \u2013 her greatest triumph, in my opinion, is New York\u2019s extremely popular High Line<\/a>, a 2km elevated linear park along an abandoned freight viaduct. Meanwhile, her Broad Museum in Los Angeles holds its own<\/a> across the street from Frank Gehry\u2019s better known Walt Disney Concert Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Architecture has long been considered one of the most misogynistic of fields, whether it\u2019s due to the stereotype of mathematics being for boys or women are solely suited to soft furnishings. This is reflected in day-to-day praxis: on-site PPE which is too large, rarefied cliques, and emails which begin with the salutation \u201cgentleman\u201d. As one of the best architects of the past 30 years, the late Zaha Hadid once put it<\/a>: \u201cI am not part of this boys\u2019 network \u2026 there are places men can go and women can\u2019t, like those gentlemen\u2019s clubs, or guys asking each other to play golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, buildings have long been built by and for men. Le Corbusier\u2019s famed Unit\u00e9 d\u2019habitation<\/a>, as stunning as the typology is, was designed according to his ideal figure of anthropometric scale. He called this \u201cthe Modulor Man<\/a>\u201d \u2013 inspired somewhat by Da Vinci\u2019s Vitruvian man \u2013 except Le Corbusier based his on a \u201c6ft British policeman\u201d (despite never building anything<\/a> in Britain). This imaginary PC Plod dictated everything from the heights of handles to the dimensions of staircases.<\/p>\n

Zaha Hadid\u2019s Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg. Photograph: Colin Walton\/Alamy<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just that buildings\u2019 functionality was designed with men in mind, but that they adhered to ostensibly inherently \u201cmale\u201d qualities of form and character \u2013 hard steel, austere wood-panelling, the rawness of B\u00e9ton brut<\/a>. The most obvious example is phallic skyscrapers<\/a>; certainly more common than Hadid\u2019s football stadium in Qatar which was mocked for resembling a vulva<\/a> (she disagreed, but honestly: it does. Then again, so does a stadium<\/a> in the same country by Albert Speer Jr).<\/p>\n

Accordingly, mainstream cultural depictions of architects are mainly hyper-masculine; the brooding Adrien Brody with sleeves rolled up in the three-hour epic The Brutalist<\/a>, for instance. The protagonist of Ayn Rand\u2019s The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, is an early archetype of the egotistical starchitect (or bro-chitect). Here\u2019s an excerpt channelling Roark: \u201cThese rocks, he thought, are here for me: waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hypothesis that unadorned concrete or clean lines are \u201cmale\u201d by default is, of course, reductive. Denys Lasdun<\/a> is one of my favourite architects, and this is not because I think of structural clarity as a signifier of a \u201cmale\u201d propensity to lucidity. I\u2019m afraid the (gorgeous) work of Mies van der Rohe does not call to mind the defined pecs of Doryphoros<\/a>. Likewise, though Oscar Niemeyer once said<\/a> his gorgeous, fluent curves were partly inspired by \u201cthe body of the beloved woman\u201d, I imagine a flesh-and-blood woman with the same proportions might topple over. Hadid, often called the \u201cqueen of the curve\u201d had her designs compared to the female form, even though she frequently referenced the abstract art of Kazimir Malevich<\/a> as an influence and not Jessica Rabbit.<\/p>\n

So does the sex of an architect even matter, aside from the obvious failure of equity? Yes. More women in the profession means that buildings and urban environments increasingly reflect the lived experience of women, style aside. In the 1980s, the women of the London-based activist collective Matrix<\/a>, tired of struggling with prams up steps or hurrying through unlit underpasses, campaigned for and realised a cityscape more attuned to the way women lived.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that childcare and shopping and domestic labour should be the domains of women, but while these inequities and disparities exist they should be acknowledged and catered for (and that goes for the needs of older people, or those with disabilities or neurodivergence, too).<\/p>\n

There is also research which shows<\/a> that companies with greater gender diversity on boards tend to generate higher profits. When it comes to architecture specifically \u2013 though it\u2019s salient to avoid the diametric of the gender stereotype that resulted in hard, cold crystalline surfaces supposedly reflecting the temperament of men \u2013 roundtables from within the industry do suggest<\/a> that women\u2019s key strengths include working more collaboratively and inclusively, and communicating in a more effective way with clients.<\/p>\n

In the past, even where female and non-binary architects\u2019 contributions have been foundational to acclaimed projects, their input has been overlooked. Two of the most recognised architects in the UK, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, cut their teeth with a firm<\/a> co-established in 1963 alongside three women. One of whom, as the only licensed architect at that time among the group, was the sole reason the firm was allowed to practice. But few know the names of Georgie Wolton, Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman (or assistant Sally Appleby).<\/p>\n

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the world\u2019s most lionised architects \u2013 for good reason, the guy built multiple masterpiece iterations of my dream home \u2013 but the Prairie School style was heavily reliant on his first employee, Marion Mahony Griffin. Half of the lithographs in Lloyd Wright\u2019s Wasmuth Portfolio<\/a> are the work of Mahony Griffin, despite Lloyd Wright\u2019s attempts to claim otherwise.<\/p>\n

The work of Georgie Wolton, who co-founded an early practice with Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. Photograph: Sophia Evans\/The Observer<\/p>\n

Eileen Gray\u2019s iconic E-1027 house<\/a> on the shores of Cape Martin in France, meanwhile, filled with her original and innovative furniture designs, was left to fall into disrepair \u2013 and not before Le Corbusier himself had vandalised it. (Le Corbusier and Lloyd Wright: excellent buildings, unbearable personalities.)<\/p>\n

In 2013, a petition<\/a> failed in its attempt to have Denise Scott Brown retroactively awarded the Pritzker prize; it had been awarded solely to her husband Robert Venturi in 1991, despite the fact Scott Brown had been co-principal at the practice for 22 years. (Just six women<\/a> have won the prize in its history, including Sejima and Hadid.) And I\u2019ve lost count of the number of people who think both of the Eameses<\/a> were men.<\/p>\n

Denise Scott Brown, photographed in 1978. Photograph: Lynn Gilbert<\/p>\n

The preponderance of women architects needs to improve then, not just to give due credit for, and make tangible, the aesthetic creativeness and beauty of their designs, but to facilitate the real-life actualities of half of the human population. The gradual culture shift within the field that fosters teamwork, better dialogue with clients and considerations of inclusivity, is testament to the fact that more women following in the footsteps of the great Norma Merrick Sklarek<\/a> and her fellow trailblazers is important. Women are increasingly advancing in other workplaces thanks to flexible and remote working, mentorship programmes, hiring reforms and the changing nature of networking events. Architecture must build on that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If one were to think \u201cBrazilian 20th-century modernist genius\u201d, one might alight on Oscar Niemeyer, but see also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-305894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}