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CONSTRUCTING ARCHITECTS; A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY

A DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

by

Carla Corroto, B.Sc., M.Arch., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 1996

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

L. Richardson

T- Curry " j f Adviser K. Schwirian Department of Sociology UMI Number: 9620004

UMI Microform 9620004 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Carla Corroto 1996 to Scottie

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I express sincere appreciation to Professor Laurel Richardson for her unwavering scholarly, intellectual, and emotional support. She enabled me to successfully determine what I came to Sociology to understand. Without her guidance, this dissertation would not have been possible. Thanks go to the other members of my advisory committee, Professor Kent Schwirian for his unique perspective on all of my work - and for reinforcing the idea that there are multiple ways to define one's direction, and to Professor Timothy

Curry for his time, suggestions, and creativeness - he helped me

"see" my work in new ways. I can never express enough appreciation to the members of 911! Dissertation Reading Group for helping me construct my path. Gratitude is expressed to (9) Dr. Amber Ault for carefully reading drafts and offering deeply meaningful comments, suggestions and support. Appreciation is offered to (1) Dr.

Stephanie Brzuzy for her unique Elvis inspired optimism. To (!) Kim

Davies I offer thanks for her assistance that took many forms, all of which were situationally appropriate, especially her sense of humor, housing and coffee. To Dr. Stacy J. Rogers, Betty Kerrigan

Winland, Dr. Elizabeth Segal, Dr. Shawn Schwaner, Melinda Otto

Corroto, Gail McGuire, Cynthia F. Pelak, Coal and Zoey Corroto, and the 1995 American League Champion Cleveland Indians - I thank you

for your willingness to support me in each of your unique and essential ways.

Ill VITA

November 12, 1958 ...... Born - Youngstown, Ohio

1982 ...... B.Sc., Architecture ...... The Ohio State University

1984 ...... M.Arch., University of ...... Illinois, Chicago

1990 ...... M.A., Sociology ...... The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Sociology

Studies in Architecture

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ill

VITA ...... iv

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. RESEARCH METHODS ...... 16

III. ENTERING ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL ...... 2 6

IV. FINISHING THE DEGREE ...... 64

V. GRADUATE SCHOOL ...... 97

VI. FROM THE OTHER SIDE ...... 135

VII. D I S C U S S I O N ...... 167

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 185

V CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

According to a recent report published by the administrators

of architecture schools and the American Institute of Architects,

architecture-the-profession is becoming "feminized" (ACSA News,

1994a). Something quite short of the "feminization of

architecture," I would merely call the profession less

occupationally segregated as it undergoes a modification in its

sex composition. Women constitute 10.63% of the total

architectural work force - which translates into 10 times more women practicing architecture today than in 1970 (AIA Firm

Reports, 1994). In addition, the Association of Collegiate

Schools of Architecture report that in 1994, women earned 27% of

the master's degrees in architecture and that one quarter of the

students entering undergraduate architecture schools were women

(ACSA News, 1994b).

While it may appear that women are making what would be

their initial inroad into architecture, the proportion of women

to men conspicuously lags behind other traditionally male-

dominated professions (Benokraitis and Feagin, 1995;

MacCorquodale and Jensen, 1989; Reskin, 1994). Further, research

indicates that women are much less likely to persist in the

profession of architecture than are men (Corroto, 1990; Vytlacil,

1989) and that their influence at the policy/design/theory 2 producing level (the elite level) is virtually non-existent

(Scott-Brown, 1989; Busserl, 1995).

The following ethnographic research began with the sociological question, "Why are there (relatively) so few women in architecture?" Subsequently, I chose to be particularly attentive to the ideological components of architectural training that are exercised as social control, simultaneously deterring women's full participation and reproducing men's privileged status within the field. This directed analysis illuminates the relationship between how architects construct students and teach them architects' "ways of knowing," and construct a corresponding culture that underpins professional practice.

Because of the topic - women and architecture - this research is unique. There is an abundance of sociological research that is descriptive, critical, and feminist in nature about the circumstance of women in such male domains as medicine, academics, law, science, and art, (e.g. Epstein, 1981;

Harding, 1986; Mohrmann, 1995; Statham, Richardson and Cook,

1991) but little has been written by and about women who are educated as designers of our built environment. Architecture blends the science of engineering, the creative world of art, and the business that directs the construction industry. Thus, this study will have a variety of implications and application for gender equality research in an increasingly interconnected and multi-faceted work place.

There are documented problems of adjustment when women enter any occupation that is traditionally male-dominated 3

(Kanter, 1977) . While many studies of tokenism situate their policy recommendations and measure progress by simply counting the increased number of women in the ranks as success, my research, exercised as a critical feminist ethnography, challenges the very nature of architecture's hierarchical and exclusive relationships (e.g. Zimmer, 1988; Blum and Smith,

1988). By choosing to study the discursive practices that constitute the taken-for-granted dominance of one form of knowledge over another, and one set of values over all others, I may more readily reveal the daily negotiated relationships of power and dominance that both structurally and informally act as barriers to women's persistence as architects. With this research I intended to ascertain if the few women who are marginally successful at assimilating, unwittingly reproduce the normative values of the culture of architecture that generally operate toward exclusion.

In general, architectural discourse is highly critical, analytical, and theoretically dense (Frampton, 1993). However, as a profession architecture is reluctant to criticize the

ideological components that constitute its normative knowledge and its criteria for measuring worth (Ghirardo, 1991) . Choosing

instead to examine intensively only the products of their labor

(drawings and buildings) has, to date, successfully erased

challenges to the dominant paradigms that maintain architecture's exclusive sex and social class composition. 4

LITERATURE REVIEW

Indeed, there is a legacy of sexism as historically women's entrance into the profession has been limited (Anderson,

1989; Vytlacil, 1989). What follows is a brief overview of women's recent past in architecture, reflecting upon how that history situated and informed women's position in the profession today and a review of the sociological literature that explicates the experience of women positioned as tokens in male- dominated and defined organizations.

Women's Access to Architecture

Although women are and have been involved with architectural design in a variety of ways - as practitioners, theorists, consumers, historians, critics, and as objects of representation - my review of the literature in "the" history of architecture, and of current theory and practice, finds no such evidence (e.g. Banham, 1989; Heskett, 1990; MacCarthy, 1989;

Pevsner, 1990). Women's participation, both past and present, is so consistently ignored that it is hard to imagine that these silences are accidental. Rather, they are the direct consequence of methods of denoting value in architecture which places "The Designer" as the central figure of architectural discourse. Women are not credited as designers, and as such their place in the process of architecture is effectively erased.

Research on the historical aspects of professional socialization documents a correlation between the desire of members of an occupation to gain professional status, and their 5

success in requiring college degrees as prerequisites (Olesen

and Whitaker, 1958; Street, 1993; Light, 1989). As architects

struggled to distinguish themselves from members of the building

trades in the late 19th century, formal schooling was their means. Their effort pitted the practicality of training

architects through the traditional apprentice system against

teaching them within elite universities. A form of that debate

is still raging today and it has particular ramifications for women. Resolving the obvious benefits of direct experience garnered from practicing architects and the necessity for university education, architects today require both processes

for professional registration. After earning a professional degree in architecture from an accredited university, an architect becomes eligible to take the licensing exam only after interning for three years with an established and licensed architect. Studies on women in architecture share the assumption that there is a connection between the progress of women in the profession and their access to architectural education (Dutton, 1992; Torre, 1978; Wright, 1977). Requiring both a degree and an apprenticeship poses a double-gated system that many women find particularly daunting.

For women, initially, the contrast between apprenticing and acquiring a university degree had very little significance, although most believed it would (Bethune, 1891). Apprenticeship

confronted women with the personal prejudices of individual men.

The seemingly objective standards of admission to architecture schools suggested that applicants would be accepted on merit, regardless of sex, class, race, etc., but this was not the case 6

(Glazer and Slater, 1986). Women faced quotas on their enrollment (Vytlacil, 198 9) and even segregation into "female studios" that led to the more appropriate feminine pursuit of interior decorating and design (Berkley 1990).

To further ensure professional status architects restricted membership and women were generally excluded - the more extensive the entry requirements, the more elite the membership (Glazer and Slater, 1986). Credentialism was established and like other occupations at the turn of this century, a college degree was a prerequisite for professional standing. By 1917 apprenticing with an established architect would no longer be considered enough education for the would-be architect, but for women, it made little difference, as gaining entry to colleges was not automatic, even with the prescribed preparation (Blau, 1986) .

Colleges funded under the Merrill Land-Grant Act of 1862,

(nine of which included architecture schools be 1900) were by law co-educational, but they pointedly discouraged women from their architecture programs (Wright, 1977). Private schools, with no such obligations to equality, openly refused to admit women into architecture programs (Vytlacil, 1989). Even through the 1950s, quotas were in place to limit the number of women.

For instance, the policy at the University of Pennsylvania in

1958 read, "Women students in Fine Arts, having completed the equivalent of the first two years of the five-year course in architecture, may enter the course in architecture upon successfully passing the examination to the upper school; the number of women admitted may not exceed ten per cent of the 7 total enrollment in each class" (quoted in Esherick p. 239,

1977). Until 1982, the proportion of women to men never surpassed 5% at the University of Pennsylvania school of architecture (ACSA Newsletter, 1982).

It was considered both improper and unhealthy for women to work under the conditions that men mandated and apparently accepted for architecture students. "All nighters" consumed by working on design projects in studio is the defining and most enduring component of the institutional culture of architecture.

This exhausting and exclusive focus on work is difficult even for those predisposed to privileging such activity.

As recently as 1965, the director of Harvard's Graduate

School of Design counseled women in an essay titled, "Should You be an Architect?" It began, "I cannot in whole conscience recommend architecture as a profession for girls. We are just too tough on them. It takes an exceptional girl to make a go of it. If she insisted on becoming an architect, I would try to dissuade her. If then she was still determined...she would be that exceptional one" (quoted in Esherick, p. 285, 1993).

Currently, architectural studies programs, which are based on the traditional "studio" model (Cuff, 1992), require that students work extremely long hours, hunched over drafting tables in architecture studios with no personal or academic interests beyond the art and engineering projects before them. Their desks are clustered together in one large space allowing for constant inspection by peers and instructors. This social context acts as an intense agent of professional socialization and control. For women, who are numerical tokens, perception is 8 heightened and their every action, reaction, or even absence, is noted.

Token Status

Sociologists have found that when women join male- dominated organizations there are typical patterns of interaction and reaction (Kanter, 1977; Reskin and Roos, 1991;

Zimmer, 1988). Theoretically, if men remain in these organizations, they may either welcome, oppose, tolerate, accommodate, or accept the entrance of this new category of participant. Kanter (1977) first noted the impact of work place structural composition as a factor that influences the relationship between the numerical minority (tokens) and majority (dominants.) Her proposition states that the effects of group configuration vary with proportional composition. When there is a skewed ratio (15:85), and one group is a very small minority, the interaction between the two is the most "altered."

In architecture, "altered" interaction means that the culture assumes a male/masculine participant, and is not redefined or expanded to include women. At the aggregate level, architecture experiences a skewed pattern. (In tilted groups (35:65) the consequences of proportional composition should be reduced.

Completely integrated or balanced groups supposedly eliminate the token-dominant dynamic.)

There are three perceptual tendencies associated with a skewed group composition. The first deals with the visibility of the token. Because of their small number and novelty, tokens are unusually visible in the organization, garnering a 9 disproportionate share of attention. This increased visibility brings with it heightened performance pressures leading to either under-achievement or over-achievement. In architecture, tokens' behavior has symbolic consequences as it reflects upon the entire category of "women." The actions of women students and women instructors in architecture schools become public information throughout the college - their weaknesses, mistakes, and personal lives are magnified, and non-achievement characteristics tend to overshadow performance.

The second perceptual tendency is termed polarization. As differences of tokens and dominants are emphasized and exaggerated, a line between the two groups is drawn. When the dominants are men and the tokens are women, heightened boundaries between the groups can produce an exaggeration of the dominants' culture. The evidence of such behavior includes

"masculine" activities and conversation, displays of aggression and affirmations of sexual potency - with this token/dominant interaction leading to the social isolation of the token. If women are included, they are subjected to loyalty tests to ascertain if they can fit into the dominants' culture. For example, women are expected to tolerate sexual innuendo, swearing, and "centerfold" photographs; to laugh at jokes made at their expense; and, generally, to participate in the exaggerated male culture and their peers' expectations.

Assimilation, the third perceptual tendency, refers to the stereotyping and then role entrapment of tokens. The pressure to conform to the dominants' culture within expected and limited stereotypical roles results in a double bind for women. Because 10

they are expected to portray one of a limited set of

stereotypical gender roles, from "mother" to "seductress," women

who resist are labeled "abrasive," "bitchy," or "cold." The

double bind in this instance occurs when women play their

expected "feminine" role in settings that require contradictory

"masculine" defined behavior.

The perceptual tendencies of token/dominant situations are not generalizable to all contexts. Pre-existing power dynamics

between women and men within patriarchal social organizations

have considerably more influence on relationships than group

proportion alone. Kanter poses a structural argument of group

ratios which is criticized for not resulting in consistent

empirical support (Blum and Smith 1988; Zimmer 1988). Zimmer's

review of the literature found that the effect of tokenism on

women's experiences in previously sex-segregated occupations and

professional training programs varied among organizational

cultures. More importantly, the theory does not hold when men

are introduced into feminine-defined and female-dominated

settings. The negative responses and barriers experienced by

token men are much less severe than those that women face

(Shreiber, 1989). Further, the token status is found to even

advantage male participants in most instances (for example, men

become principals in elementary schools or administrators in

social work programs) (Benokraitis and Feagin 1986; Floge and

Merrill 1986) . Because it does not apply to both women and men,

Zimmer argues Kanter's theory of tokenism is not gender-neutral

and accounting for the differences between men and women as

structural is incomplete, at best. At worst it masks the larger 11 problem of sexism by focusing our attention on tokenism and

superficial numerical composition. Therefore, for purposes of

this research the effects of tokenism experienced by women

architects and women architecture students shall be analyzed within the context of gender relations.

Employing Ranter's structural theory of ratios a

researcher expects that once there is complete integration women will no longer experience male peer resistance, nor sexist work- culture assumptions. However, based on job/school segregation

research, this is a deceptive premise. To achieve complete parity, the sexism embedded in the basic structures and cultural values of work and teaching environments must be substantially altered, along with gender role socialization.

The sexual division of labor has a long history (Hartmann,

1976). Bielby and Baron found segregation to be "...pervasive, almost omnipresent, sustained by diverse organizational

structures and processes" (p.245, 1986). Even though the proportion of women in the labor force has increased

continuously since 1950, job segregation has decreased only slightly (England and Parkas, 1986). Therefore, I believe the

inverse of the token argument - that ratios between men and women will become balanced in professional settings if sexism is

eliminated from the cultures that define those professions.

For purposes of this ethnographic research, visibility, polarization and assimilation are concepts used to describe the

extent of the "uncomfortable" environment and perceived career

limitations in architecture for women. What Kanter terms the

"effects of tokenism" I propose are the "effects of 12 patriarchy" - and that the more women enter male-dominated professional cultures, the more resistance they will experience from men. Indeed, some research has found that with increasingly more balanced ratios between men and women in higher education and in employment, backlash and negative reaction to women increases (Gruber and Bjorn 1982; Deaux and

Ullman 1983; Faludi, 1992).

There is a growing body of research in sociology that takes note of and theorizes about those occupations that are turning over their numerical advantage to women (Reskin and

Roos, 1991). For instance pharmacy, which was dominated by men, is rapidly becoming a profession in which women are entering and persisting. What organizations and professions that are attracting and retaining more women have in common, is their un­ attractiveness to men. Today, pharmacists infrequently own drug stores as pharmacies have become part of huge retail franchises that merely hire them as salaried workers. The pharmaceutical profession is less lucrative and autonomous and men are

"allowing" women to enter.

Similarly, there are many unappealing aspects to architecture which requires a serious dedication of purpose that is increasingly more difficult to make "pay off." Couple an arduous professional socialization program with token status, and we find women funneled into specific less prestigious segments of architecture.

Many of the attitudes toward work, time, and duty are what make majoring in architecture a difficult decision. As a point of special pride, architecture majors' claim to be "the hardest 13 working students on campus." Commitment to architectural design and study is the most often cited predictor of collegiate, then professional success (e.g. written statements required for application to architecture graduate schools ask applicants to include "evidence of your dedication and commitment to architecture," [instruction from Harvard's Graduate School of

Design 1995 application form]). Positioning women as tokens in architecture has resulted in few challenges to the military-like rigorous training that does not necessarily well serve even those previously conditioned for such experiences, and it co­ opts women in the process.

Professional architecture offices mimic the school studio setting with architects sharing one open space - requiring constant and direct exposure to architecture's dominant culture.

The interning architect - one holding an architecture degree while gathering the three years apprentice experience required for licensing eligibility - is expected to spend the majority of the waking day and many "all-nighters" in the office as is the tradition of the architectural "charette." Sociological research shows that the more the work place becomes a social arena, with co-workers forming primary relationships and spending large portions of time together, the more hostile the environment for women tokens (Kanter, 1977; Hartmann, 1989).

Maintaining a constant focus on work is a test of young architects' commitment to architecture, which not coincidentally, provides inexpensive labor to firms. Newly degreed architects, especially those working for the well-known or elite firms, earn slightly above the country's minimum wage. 14

Most under-paid architects reconcile financial hardship with supposing that the "experience" is worth the sacrifice. In addition, architectural ideology promotes the inherent value of designing buildings. Paying principals of firms to be "allowed" to design is not a far fetched notion fostered in the culture of architecture where inexperienced architects offer prestigious firms their labor for free. Beginning with the Romantic tradition, artists did not expect to be wealthy, let alone comfortable (Larson, 1984). The "art" aspect of architecture is advanced and valued in school and most students conceive of themselves as artists, looking on the field from a Bohemian perspective (Gutman, 1988) . I have heard older architects advise young men to "marry a wealthy woman" to support them while they practice architecture. In reality, architects generally come from social class backgrounds that allow for this

"gentlemanly" profession (Saint, 1987).

Barbara Reskin writes, "...men resist allowing women and men to work together as equals because doing so undermines differentiation and hence male dominance" (p.117, 1990). As I began this study, the administrators of schools of architecture claim that their field is becoming feminized, with more women than ever entering the profession. Architecture is extremely susceptible to changes in the economy, with the building industry the first to feel the effects of a recession, such that the profession has high and uneven unemployment rates (Blau,

1986; Cuff, 1992; Gutman, 1993). Architecture is also increasingly less appealing as more of the tasks become routinized through computer aided graphics (Busserl, 1995) 15

leaving over-educated architects to work beneath their ability.

Women may be gaining access to architecture schools, like pharmacy, because the work is loosing its appeal to men (Reskin

and Roos, 1991). However, as more women vie for the few

autonomous positions within the field, the more they will

experience resistance from individual men. Moreover, because of

architectural discourse and work practices, should women

entering architecture be even marginally accepted, they find

themselves repeating what the men have done before them - not

changing architecture and not enjoying personal recognition.

In the chapters that follow I present my research methods,

the descriptive and critical ethnographic data, and a concluding

discussion section. The discussion details three principles of

architecture's professional culture that I have located

inductively from the ethnography and analyzed from a critical

and feminist perspective. My findings have implications for the

persistence of women in the professional culture of

architecture. Chapter II

Research Methods

"Ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture," (Fetterman, 1989:11) and architecture is the art and science of building. To illustrate the gendered context in which university based architectural education enculturates participants and ascribes meaning to architects in-relation or in-opposition to: (1) the products of their projected profession

(buildings); (2) other architects; (3) the public for whom architecture is designed; and (4) the profession itself - ethnographic fieldwork research methods proved the optimum match.

Both architects as designers and sociologists as ethnographers ground their aesthetic visions in the requirements and rigors of their respective sciences. This project was an in-depth long-term engagement in a comprehensive case study

(Stake, 1994) that took advantage of an eight year observational experience in architecture as a "complete participant" (Marshall and Rossman, 1989; Adler and Adler 1987). The editors introduction to Adler and Adler's (1987) study of membership roles in field research counsels fieldworkers that, "There must be an almost hauntingly personal, deeply felt, emergent, and highly particularistic character for social research to count as authentic fieldwork." Such qualities are found in this study.

16 17

Data for an ethnographic portrait began with my complete- membership-role (Adler and Adler 1987) as student in an undergraduate architecture school program in 1977. Immersed fully in the group composed primarily of men, I shared a common set of experiences, goals, and feelings, eventually adopting belief patterns and values of the culture of architecture while earning a Bachelors of Science. Rather than negating familiar situations, Riemer (1977) advocated this type of complete- membership-research, calling for "opportunistic research strategy" wherein special expertise and group memberships are exploited for the benefit of the "sociological imagination." My mainly insider's perspective of architecture facilitated understanding at the everyday interpretive level where students and faculty made sense out of, ascribed meaning to, and created a professional social structure of their world through a process of continual interpretation and negotiation (Garfinkel, 1967).

I was uniquely positioned to interpret the precise situation of a white ethnic woman experiencing architect's training for which a man, an outsider, or generally, a researcher working from another level of participant-observation would have gained another sense. To genuinely understand the meaning of social action, according to a phenomenological perspective (Garfinkel, 1967), the following features of the surrounding context must be known to the researcher: (1) the identity of the actors; (2) the salient aspects of the actors' biographies; (3) the actors' immediate intentions and aims; (4) the settings where action occurs; (5) the relationship between actors and their audiences; and (6) how their action "follows" 18 previous action by other participants (Cicourel, 1974;

Garfinkel, 1967; Husserl, 1969). I have a close sense of the member's of this ethnography's history, their experiences at the time of this research, and how they anticipated future influences on their retrospective interpretations of objects and events (Adler and Adler 1987), allowing for an original participatory account of the gendered nature of educating architects.

Attending architecture school preceded my training in sociology. Geertz (1973) advises ethnographers that the way to most closely approximate or constitute the social world as members of their studies do, and thereby procure "thick description," is to relinquish their social science backgrounds.

Entering the research setting with pre-conceived methodological and theoretical frameworks is inherently problematic and prohibits understanding at the meaning level of the researched.

In this way, my biographical characteristics work to a research advantage. Further, training as an architect emphasizes fine attention to detail, keen perceptual awareness, and remembrance of place so that images may be conjured then re-created in the process of design (Musgrove, 1983). For architects, memory is an instrument to be continually refined and tested. That disciplinary directive aided the retrospective aspects of this research, as well.

The initial data gathering for this investigation may be called "auto-ethnography" - the cultural study of one's "own people" (Hayano 1979) . Considering the identification of differing types of auto-ethnographies (Adler and Adler 1987), my 19 work is similar to those authored by sociologists who acquired an intimate familiarity with certain subcultural or occupational groups (i.e. Becker, 1963; Light, 1980; Mitchell, 1983; Street,

1992;), and those who became formally or informally socialized, after indoctrination, into a distinctive group's knowledge or way of life (Hayano, 1982; Krieger, 1983). Researchers of auto­ ethnographies often hold qualities of permanent self- identification with a group and full internal membership, recognizable to other members of the group (Hayano, 1979).

The first two sections of this research describe the undergraduate and graduate architecture school experience and are auto-ethnographic in character relying on retrospective participant observation. I used various historical documents - drawings, notebooks, reports, letters, and student projects - as data. In addition, employing member check (Warren 1988), I interviewed seven former members of my college cohort asking about certain specific features of our shared education.

The final section was designed to take advantage of another complete-membership-role (Adler and Adler, 1987) with more traditional participant-observer fieldwork methods. I completed my general exams in Sociology in 1992 and became an

Assistant Professor at a university architecture school. I took detailed and extensive fieldnotes, intending to use the data for ethnographic description and analysis. The contrast in social status, from student to faculty, and in time periods, from the

late 1970s to the early 1990s, lends itself well to a holistic

(Marshall and Rossman, 1989) and up-to-date ethnography. 20

Complimenting, or perhaps more accurately, compelling this

research on gender and architecture is my position as a woman

negotiating her place in an androcentric context. Like other

women social science fieldworkers in male-dominated

organizations report, at all levels of architecture I

experienced not only sexual hustling, but also assignment to

traditional female roles and tasks such as mascot, go-fer,

audience, butt of sexual or gender joking, and cheerleader

(Kanter, 1977; Warren, 1988). In this way, my portrait of

architecture school is partially delimited by gender.

Although, my gender in this context is an asset in at

least two ways, as well. First, the social place of women in

Western society has traditionally been to stand behind men - as wives, nurses, secretaries, and servants - out of their sight

(Warren 1988). In male-centered organizations, women are

invisible workers designated as participating in secondary

"support services" that maintain men's primary "important work,"

even in those rare times when our roles are formally the same

as, or equal to, men's roles. I often went unnoticed as I

maneuvered through this male terrain, seemingly no threat to

their stronghold, gaining access to privileged conversations and

spaces. There were times when I felt sure that some members of

this study regarded me as nothing more than an inanimate object,

conversing about private, intimate, or offensive topics in my

presence, yet leaving my perceptions unacknowledged.

Invisibility has both a message and its advantages in

accessibility for social scientists (Rollins, 1985). 21

The second advantage of being marginalized because of my

sex in the context of architecture school was that it helped in

the recognition of gendered institutional patterns that are generally taken for granted. Although I intended to participate

as an "insider," at various times I was relegated to "outsider"

status as dominant expectations defined me as "other." As an

"outsider within" architecture as first, a student and then an

instructor, I experienced a "peculiar marginality" (Hill

Collins, 1990). From that standpoint I could understand and

identify heretofore unrecognized patterns of conflict in being

at once wanted and not in the culture of architecture.

I approached this ethnography from a feminist standpoint,

as well. Increasingly, feminist sociologists have made the

research process itself central, exposing the political

implications of thinking that positions the

fieldworker/sociologist as "truth knower" (Fonow and Cook,

1991). Mirroring research in critical feminist practice, this

ethnography takes the form of self-conscious criticism - self-

conscious in the sense that as a researcher I, "try to become

aware of the ideological imperatives and epistemological pre­

supposition that inform my research as well as my own

subjective, intersubjective, and normative reference claims"

(Kincheloe and McLaren p.140, 1994) .

Portraying the culture of architecture school in terms of

another, in an ethnography, "...rests on the peculiar practice

of representing the social reality of others through the

analysis of one's own experience in the world of these others"

(VanMaanen p.xii, 1988). That aspect makes ethnographic writing 22 particularly idiosyncratic, with choice of authorial voice a political factor in influencing how this social reality is conveyed. I do not claim that I have found "the truth" about architecture from my insider's position - or that one truth exists. Likewise, I reject the exclusivity of an abstract outsider claiming that a superior position is available through the "objectivity-as-discovery" position. Styles writes of the epistemology of participation and exclusion in ethnographic work, claiming that, "Insider and outsider myths are not empirical generalizations about the relationship between the researcher's social position and the character of the research findings. They are elements in a moral rhetoric that claims exclusive research legitimacy for a particular group," (quoted in Warren p.33, 1988). My analysis of architecture is not exclusive, nor is it ateraporal, universal, and general. Rather, analysis as experience is situated, local, and partial, but one story about gender in a context that serves multiple gendered analyses (Krieger, 1985; Richardson, 1994). Similarly, implications of race, class and gender are conflated in this

Euro-centric elite male-dominated occupational training ground.

However, I came to sociology to analyze those aspects of architecture school that were particular to the gendered context or expectations that intersected with my biography. Richardson

(p. 518, 1994) reminds us that, "Having a partial, local, historical knowledge is still knowing."

The narrative conventions of ethnographic writing have been cataloged and categorized by genres such that I may identify elements of those groupings that are found in my 23 writing. For example, as in realist ethnographies (Van Maanen,

1989), I present the routine events, descriptions, and common setting-specific language terms in an effort to describe the culture of architecture school in minute detail. However, unlike typical realist ethnographic descriptions (i.e. Becker,

1961; Malinowski, 1922; Mead 1928; Whyte 1955) I do not claim

"interpretive omnipotence" (Van Maanen p.53, 1989). Rather, writing in the first person I attempt to represent my participative presence in architecture, my rapport (or lack thereof,) and most importantly, that mine is but one interpretation of architecture in this context. Questioning the very basis of ethnographic authority, I reject the notion that the social world is out there full of neutral, objective, observable facts that any two sociologists would see in much the same manner. Fieldwork and the texts that follow are interpretive, not objective, acts (Agar, 1986) and a key component of any critical inquiry is the capacity or necessity for a reflexive relationship between the data and the researcher.

The narrative description is presented in a linear fashion, with events recounted roughly in the order in which they occurred, including all of the details associated with remembered situations. As in "impressionist" ethnographies,

(Van Maanen, 1989) the doing of fieldwork is documented rather than simply the "doer or the done." Here, the descriptive narration initiated an analysis of the nature of cultural understanding in the social world of architecture. The impressionist expression itself was a representational means of 24 exposing the culture and my way of knowing it, so that both

could be jointly examined (Van Maanen, 1989). Writing about my experiences in architecture was a "method of inquiry" - a way of

"knowing" - as much about investigating and analyzing as it was

"telling" about architecture's social world (Richardson p. 516,

1994).

I attempted to weave the subject and object, the knower

and the known as is the epistemological aim of much feminist

research (Olesen, 1994). Such framing requires personalized authority, a distinguishing characteristic of ethnographies in

the "confessional" genre (Van Maanen, 1989) and an empowering position for a woman who was often situated in the margins of architecture.

All of the aforementioned methodological decisions

function to make this project a "critical" feminist ethnography.

What distinguishes a conventional from a critical ethnography is

the letter's explicit political purpose (Thomas, 1993).

"Critical ethnography refers to the reflective process of

choosing between conceptual alternatives and making value-laden

judgments of meaning and method to challenge research, policy,

and other forms of human activity" (Thomas and O'Maolchatha p. 147, 1989) .

What distinguishes a "feminist" ethnography is the

explicit focus on a standpoint built on and from women's

experiences (Harding, 1987). Reflecting an established feminist

criticism of the absence of women from research accounts

(Fisher, 1988; Gilligan 1982) and in certain contexts (e.g.

Epstein, 1981; Lorber, 1975), my investigation of the relatively 25 low representation of women in architecture addresses issues of access and inequity. As I wrote in chapter one, merely adding women to the ranks of architecture school as students or faculty members does not redress deeper interactional and structural problems centered in the hegemonic masculine culture that is the study of architecture. Although sharing with my colleagues who were men an objectively similar social setting, this critical feminist ethnography allows me, a woman who attempted to negotiate a place within "man-made" architecture, to give voice to and make visible my subjective social experiences. CHAPTER III

ENTERING ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL

On the very first day of architecture school, the very- first words our teacher spoke to my cohort were, "look to your left and right: the students sitting next to you won't be with us this time next year." With that impossible yet revealing prediction, our careers in architecture began. What I could not have known then was how this ominous statement exposed the contradictory and dialectical foundation of the individual's relation to the study of architecture. It was not possible for each person in that studio to check either side for the untalented-soon-to-be-former-architecture student, as each of us was in another's gaze. No one could remain. The exercise made everyone center and simultaneously denied a center existed.

More mundanely, that directive set up a competitive environment with students posed against each other and against the teachers who seemed present primarily to evaluate and only secondarily to educate. On the first day, architecture students learned architecture's prime edict: every "man" for himself.

What I did know was how anxious those words made me feel.

Looking around the crowded to over-capacity studio, with its huge drafting tables and tall stools, it was obvious that there was not enough space for us all. It was a lonely and foreign feeling, and for probably the first time ever competitive

26 27

Structural mandates required that I define myself in contrast to my peer group. There were several women students scattered around the room, perched on the edge of the tables or leaning against the wall, but mainly there were young white men - everywhere. Every man for himself, quite literally.

This was "design studio," the centerpiece of architectural education. There are peripheral courses taken during the first year curriculum that include free-hand sketching, mechanical drawing, and structural engineering, but, design studio is where the real evaluation takes place - where a student can be elevated to near deity or, conversely, shown the door. That first day of school we were told that our architectural fates lay with our performance in this course. The other courses were important, but Architecture, we were informed, is about being a

Designer and the purpose of studio was to bring together the assorted "substance" of architecture that a student was learning. Total knowledge should coalesce in the "design project" that would reveal a student's commitment to architecture and her or his potential for success in school, a project that would serve as the final arbiter of next year's class roster.

Attending State University at this time allowed me, and others unfamiliar with either building construction or drawing, at least this initial access to architecture as a course of study. Formal entrance requirements were not permitted in undergraduate level core curricula, unlike most scholastic architecture programs, portfolios filled with examples of art work, mechanical drawing, and three-dimensional models were not 28 pre-requisite for enlisting in the major. We simply had to complete two quarters of calculus, two of physics, and three courses in general world history to be admitted into architecture, the major. The ability to draw was informally encouraged - but not systematically evaluated prior to the first day of design studio. On paper, it looked as if majoring in architecture was the same as choosing to major in sociology, business, or a language. I came armed with nothing more than a keen interest in buildings and cities, personal ambition, and the hope that these would be sufficient.

Coupled with State's open enrollment policy was a liberal discourse centered on the value of individual merit and of

"pulling-oneself-up-by-the-bootstraps." We were continually told that to prove ourselves worthy of becoming architects we must expend the proper amount of effort: commitment to architecture was of the utmost value.

It was obvious that some sort of selection process was imminent regardless of individual effort, devotion or desire.

On that first day of school there were about 12 0 students and half that many drafting tables for our use. Not only was space limited, but we soon found out from more advanced students that no previous cohort had seen more than 4 5 diplomas granted. How would they decide who remained? How did they determine commitment to the work? Was architecture predicated on

"talent," or could design be nurtured? Most importantly, how could our instructors spot potential? As students, we discussed the answers to these questions and worried endlessly during that first year. 29

The first day of class we were each assigned a three foot by six foot drafting table. Because we had such a huge entry level cohort, some students had to share their desks and coordinate elaborate schedules for its use. With a sense of ironic compassion our instructor "comforted" those doubled-up drafters assuring them that within this first quarter enough students would depart to allow for single desk occupancy. I shared my desk with a very nice, smiling young man named Tim who became part of the "attrition" count by the third week. He must have been to my left (or was it my right?) that first day.

Our personal studio space, defined by the desks' relationship to each other, became very important to us. The drafting table had a cupboard where we locked away our equipment and a metal stool that we were advised to chain and lock to the desk. There were not enough seats, and the good ones, the ones that did not teeter on uneven legs, were closely guarded. The desks had been used for generations; mine was tattooed with the date "1922."

If the drafting table had been completely functional, if it had not had uneven edges and missing connections, its longevity and the history it represented may have proved comforting, as if the study of architecture had time honored traditions to emulate. As it was, I simply found the equipment physically problematic. At just under five foot three inches, I am not unusually short for a woman, but the combination of stools that were too short and a desk that was high and in disrepair made drawing in studio a continual struggle. I frequently had an aching back and there was no way to get 30 comfortable while working. It felt like nothing fit.

Apparently, the men for whom the studio was designed were expected to exceed 5'-3" or else have strong backs that could withstand years of slouching and physically conforming to the facilities.

The studio itself was housed in one of the university's oldest and most neglected buildings. The room was dingy. Its walls needed to be patched and painted, and there were buzzing fluorescent light fixtures suspended from a ceiling that was sporadically missing acoustical tiles. The rest rooms were makeshift and often dysfunctional. Most of the windows were painted shut or missing glass and their shading devices consisted of army green blinds that could never really go up or down.

Many architecture programs have poor facilities. In a study that inventoried schools of architecture in the United

States, researchers found most to have inadequate work stations and buildings in sore need of renovation. This study, which called for more "scientific-type" grant producing work by architecture faculty, attributed these conditions to a lack of revenue generation comparable to that of other departments

(Preiser forthcoming). However, blatant neglect has meaning beyond the obvious economic explanations.

In reference to these relatively impoverished conditions the faculty advised us to regard the difficulties of our physical circumstances as an opportunity and offer our discomfort as sacrifice to the gods of architecture. We were, essentially, to "suffer for art." Our "calling" to abstract 31

lives in architecture was to elevate us above the material

conditions housing such study. Aspiring to this unique and

lofty pursuit, we would soon learn, required many physical and material sacrifices. Architecture schools held fast to their dilapidated spaces as witness to the serious pursuit of art housed within the crumbling walls. "Starving artists"

symbolically represent tortured souls willing to forego physical

comfort in order to immerse themselves in their inspiration day and night. The comfort that money could buy was never a goal demonstrated nor promoted in architecture school. We were frequently reminded that architects make very little money - and the financially marginal status was a valued symbol.

There were levels of irony invoked by such a symbolic mismatch of value systems. One of the first tasks of architectural education is to instill in students a heightened awareness of physical environments. Simultaneously, however, we were learning to overlook our immediate working space, to ignore the literal place of the body. Perhaps most men can work from such abstraction. Generally, women have no such luxury - if the ability to separate one's mind from one's body in such a neglected building may be termed a luxury - at our disposal.

From a woman's standpoint, defined for us as responsibility for the everyday maintenance activities that include all that makes the sustains the body, studying architecture here was next to impossible.

The fluorescent fixtures eerily illuminated just how carelessly the studio was maintained by casting an unreal blue pall over everything. Our space was perpetually filthy. When 32

I returned to my dormitory room, I would immediately and thoroughly shower in a way that reminded me of radioactive waste workers at the end of their shift. The grime and pencil lead seemed never to get washed out of my personal space.

At the end of each curriculum term the cracked vinyl floor disappeared as the discarded sheets of paper, modeling cardboard, and fast-food wrappers made a wall-to-wall mosaic covering. My fellow students never, ever cleaned up after themselves. They appeared to think nothing of sweeping rejected or used reams of tracing paper off their desks onto the floor.

These men seemed to expect abstract others to clean-up after them, whether it was their mothers at home or a custodial staff at school or work, magically their world would be cared for.

I recall an acute awareness of the duty or responsibility to place my waste in the proper container. In fact, I remember feeling as if I should be cleaning up after everyone. We were often working late in studio when the maintenance workers came through with a cursory effort that included emptying garbage containers and cleaning toilets. Reflecting larger social patterns, the staff was generally composed of women of color, while most of the garbage producing students were, of course, white men. These social facts - coupled with my classmates' imperception of their privileged position vis-a-vis their expectations for servitude - were quite discomfiting on several levels. Aside from my problematic position in the maintenance of a stratification system, I was unsure of my place as a woman here. The status of "professional in training" that had people clean up after it was incongruous with being a woman who was 33 aware of such things. It was also inconsistent with being a woman who had to squelch notions that she should be cleaning up after other students herself. At the beginning of that first term when all things seemed possible, I thought of this studio as having a "messy vitality."

The introductory project we were assigned as first quarter architectural design students was to choose an existing outdoor space on campus and document it. This got us out of the studio and immersed into "real" architecture somehow. As instructed, each student would consider his or her selected space for qualities such as function, aesthetics and form. The project was described to us on Friday afternoon at five and it was due on the following Monday at one.

I immediately ran to my favorite spot on campus with a sketchbook and drawing pencil. Choosing a spot halfway down a stone stairway that descended onto a stone walk circling a small pond, I took in all that my senses would allow. It felt exhilarating, this becoming hyper-aware of what makes "space."

I was studying architecture! To this day, I still treasure my initial misconception of the professional socialization process for architects.

As directed, I took extensive notes about such things as formal and informal boundaries, changes in the surroundings caused by changes in the light, and how people actually used this area. We were directed to spend literally 24 different hours in this one place over the weekend to get a complete picture, an accurate day-in-the-life of the space. This 34 directive resulted into solo architecture students scattering throughout campus, sitting on benches, huddled under trees or crouching on building steps until dawn. This became our first required "all-nighter" - a rite of passage. I placed a canister of mace, given to me by my "overprotective" roommates, on the step next to me while I held a flashlight to my notebook throughout the night.

The Thomas Theorem reminds us that situations defined as real are real in their consequences. The crime watch that alerted women students to travel in groups and never appear unescorted across campus at night - whether there was this constant and immediate a threat to our sex or not - left an impression. Feeling like a martyr in the study architecture, I believed I was placing myself in some sort of physical danger.

During the long, cold, creepy night outside, I witnessed assorted couples walking around the lake, several groups of students traveling from what sounded like parties to their dorms, and lots of shadows cast by rustling branches. There was less formal awareness about aesthetics and more about spatial function, specifically, how unknown others were using "my" area.

This fear factor gave studying architecture as a career choice a more important aura after I "survived" the night watch. I was beginning a large life obligation, "giving up" certain aspects or personal comfort that could be measured on a quality of life scale.

After staying outside all night, I took a nap in the morning and then went back for the noontime observations.

Daylight transformed the area. There was plenty of movement 35 through my chosen space in the bright sunshine as students and alumni walked past the picturesque lake to the football stadium.

At this university, varsity men's athletics, is traditionally cause for community wide celebration, but due to the extent of the required documentation, I gave up my seat at the game to work on this architecture project. As I sat making sketches at the site, I could hear the roar of the crowd and garbled tones of the public address announcer from the stadium. This really made me feel martyr-like. Known as an enthusiastic fan of sports, I saw all of my (non-architecture) friends pass me on their way to the game with looks of disbelief. Before architecture, I had never passed up this Saturday afternoon tradition and I desperately missed feeling part of the group

fun. Soon, I had begun to think of all my life in terms of

"before" and "after" architecture.

That evening in my room, after finishing 24 hours outside,

I began to organize my thoughts and compose a booklet that thoroughly described my chosen space. Again, I stayed up all night drawing and writing about the architecture of my lake-side space. I was not aware of what others in the class were producing for the assignment, since this was the first week of classes and we were not yet familiar with each other or our studio setting. What left a huge impression on me was the competition-based rhetoric used by our instructors. After acknowledging this challenge to study architecture - I decided I would not be cut from the program for lack of effort. I worked on this first project until I literally could not stay awake any 36 longer. It was the only thing I thought about or did all weekend.

In comparison with the work of the rest of my classmates, my output was almost double theirs in quantity. Our instructor docked my score 5% because the colored pencils I used left a blotchy texture. He said it was "messy" and that I should have realized the pencil I had used would not work on sketch paper.

He said this in front of the entire class when he handed me my graded project. Having taken only one course of rather poorly taught art in high school, I had no practical knowledge of colored pencil applications. Another student who could draw exceptionally well received a perfect score. The remainder of the class got marks of 80% or below. We were privy to this

information because the projects were returned ritualistically: the teacher called our name, and then our score, out loud. A stratified class began to emerge during that week - an early lesson in degradation ceremonies.

At this university, students generally began architecture

courses in the second year, after prerequisites were met. Our course, sophomore design, was headed by an individual man whose position as assistant professor of architecture enabled him never actually to appear in studio nor have direct contact with

students. He developed the course direction or ideology,

created design projects, assigned readings and delivered

lectures. Working for him were six white male graduate teaching

associates, each given a studio filled with students to instruct

directly. The teaching associates were graduate students paid a moderate stipend and given tuition to be "studio critics." 37

They were four or five years older than most of the students, younger than a few "non-traditional students."

Design Studio met Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons

from one until five. Usually, the professor began the day's

session in an auditorium, lecturing to the entire class on various topics in architecture and explaining instructions for design projects. The class then dispersed into smaller groups within individual studio rooms with each "T.A." to work on proj ects.

During studio hours the directions stood to work on

assignments at our drafting tables and to wait for the T.A. to

come by for a "desk crit." It was mandatory (although not enforced) that students stay in studio during the entire

session, but we often went briefly to the bookstore for art

supplies or maybe to the library. Sometimes, the "less serious"

students would leave after they had their crit.

The teacher would travel from desk to desk making comments on drawings and clarifying the design process. It was a one on one interaction that could be overheard by other students

sitting nearby. While this was a very informal atmosphere -

radios were playing, students were quietly chatting and laughing

- there was a certain tension spun around the outcome of the

crit itself. After the T.A. finished with one student's

critique, it was not uncommon for fellow students to go to the

desk to see how the work fared. "What did he say?" "Did he

like it?" they would ask. Gaining approval from the studio

critic was just about all that mattered. 38

After our T.A. returned the first assignment, thereby establishing an initial pecking order, he warned several students at the bottom to "work harder, or else..." We knew what that meant. If a student did not pass this course, considered the center of the curriculum, becoming an architect

(which increasingly seemed an important goal) was that much farther out of reach. Dropping this course meant setting back one's studies an entire year as it was a series course, offered only during the autumn quarter. The tension grew exponentially for the cohort with each scored project.

The second assignment involved something called an

"extrapolation." This was a rather poorly developed and explained project, but at its essence was the concept of

"directed inspiration" whereby architects choose, or have assigned, from where their artistic motivation is derived. We were to use our site from the previous project as inspiration for a lead pencil and charcoal stick drawing that was an extrapolated, then abstracted, detail from the space. We were not taught how to draw with charcoal, nor shown examples of this product. This detail drawing was assigned when the first project was submitted that Monday afternoon, and we had seven days before it was due.

Immediately after the Professor explained what an extrapolated drawing meant in lecture, he sent students back to their studios to begin working. Through the questions asked of our T.A., it was obvious that no one clearly understood what was expected of this design process nor the design product. It was 39 also apparent that the T.A. did not comprehend the assignment either, as he evaded our questions gracelessly.

The assigning of projects without an expected or a

"correct" product is common in all aspects of the learning and teaching of architecture. Encouraging individual architects-in- training to have unrestricted imaginations, could be a successful pedagogical tool in that it promotes innovative works. Moreover, an approach that focuses less on cookie cutter solutions and more on embracing diverse responses acknowledges the "potential" cultural diversity of classroom participants.

We may assume that students with multiple social experiences and social statuses would produce a vast array of artistic and architectural ideas.

However, the combination of unclear expectations and few guidelines with grade-based competition was anything but creativity enhancing. I spent the first few days after the extrapolated detail project was assigned in a circle of counter­ productive anxiety. The fear of failing at this ambiguously described drawing was paralyzing. I did not even know how to get started. In studio, students asked our T.A. a string of questions that were answered with confused double meanings or a bemused response of "draw until the answers come to you." That phrase became our T.A.'s "mantra" for the year.

The teaching associate strongly urged us to work in studio on all of our designs, saying we could learn from each other.

He said working in studio is an architect's responsibility, is tradition, and that successful students would be found there.

As a group who perceived the in competition with one another. 40 most students worked individually at their drafting tables,

stealing glances at neighbors' sketches. Although students got

the message about where to work, knowing that we were battling

for the scarce resource defined for us as a place in the program made most students wary of cooperating with studio-mates.

Perhaps, somewhat naively, I shared all of my attempts to interpret the project instructions with classmates who stopped by my desk. I expected reciprocity, and hoped for cooperation.

Although I was insecure about my artistic ability and would often introduce someone to my drawings saying, "this isn't very good, but,..." I nevertheless exposed my work. Having emerged from the first project with a high mark and because I was

"approachable," it seemed many of my peers enlisted me in their attempts to interpret instructions. My reputation became that of a "hard worker," both because my first project was extensive, and because I spent an exorbitant amount of time toiling at my drafting table in studio. My initial experience as a token in architecture closely followed Ranter's (1977) research on women tokens in organizations. Women in such positions frequently over-work in efforts to achieve and they are gender stereotyped into familiar roles such as confidante, counselor, and cheerleader.

At one level, my "impression management" was quite effective. Given my highly visible position as one of ten women beginning the program, my time commitment to architecture was always noted by both students and instructors. "Desire" and

"seriousness" counted for that abstract "something." Further, I 41 was initially very enthusiastic about architectural design and worked tirelessly at assignments.

But, at another level, acknowledging personal reservations about the quality of my work was probably not wise. What I intended as an honest appraisal of my current ability went counter to the norm in this male culture. "Never show weakness and always exhibit confidence," were the cultural directives. I had no prior experience with this concept of promoting yourself by promoting your work regardless of its quality or your insecurity. Expressing doubt about personal ability, in my previous social world, was usually met with peer reassurance and support - humility was even encouraged and then rewarded.

However, the roles accorded to women in settings composed primarily of men tend to be an exaggeration of what it means to be feminine. As Kanter (1977) has documented, women are stereotyped within familiar images ranging from "mothers" to

"seductresses." Accepting a self-promoting woman student would violate within narrowly defined expectations. What I then considered as primarily peer recognition of my work ethic related to the study of architecture, was more likely a

combination of other characteristics that made my desk a

comfortable stopping place for many students who were men.

Most of the students in my cohort muddled through this

abstract assignment and submitted some sort of a pencil and

charcoal drawing on the requisite 24 inch square canvas. My

sketch was an extrapolation from the corner of the stair on my

site, emphasizing the juxtaposition of disparate materials.

Wispy strands of green ivy cascading from plantings lining the 42 walk, hung over the intersection of a cool gray stone tread and a warm wood trimmed riser. With these various textures I was

"inspired" to create an architectural drawing and sign my name

in the bottom left hand corner, as directed.

While the content of most assignments was ambiguous, the

form for submission was strictly described and uniform. Size of the board, extent of the border, drawing implements, place for our name, the drawing title, when it was due, and every other

imaginable detail was never, ever left to chance or individual preference. Following the rules was training in itself. We learned to accept uniform architectural authority that directed students to very similar project submissions.

On the Monday afternoon the extrapolated drawing was due,

T.A.'s collected the boards and disappeared into their offices.

After design lecture, students returned to studio and found a number of our freshly submitted drawings exhibited around the room. As an entire group we were then introduced to a senior architecture professor acting as a "visiting critic" in our studio that afternoon. The professor was a small, white man with gray hair. He wore a herring bone tweed wool jacket with patches at the elbows and had several paint brushes sticking out of his pocket. There was a colorful silk ascot twisted around and under the collar of his wrinkled blue buttoned down oxford shirt. He looked like he was supposed to in filling his role.

As students sat on the floor or on stools arranged as

theater seats gathered in front of the displayed pencil drawings, the Professor walked from sketch to sketch making

comments. We were being indoctrinated in the ceremonious 43

anonymous public crit. The critic did not know whose drawing he

was discussing and the student could not respond to the

comments. I had my notebook ready to write down comments,

thinking this was meant as a learning tool.

What followed, however, was more fast-talking, quick­

witted entertainment than pedagogical exercise. His off-the-

cuff comments could be compared to a public "roast" the purpose

of which is to "make fun of," or humiliate the drawing's author.

It was a degradation ceremony (Garfinkel, 1956), students were

formally stigmatized. Referring to all of the architecture

students as "fellows," the Professor would make comments like,

"look at this fellow's board, it looks like he drew it with a

Clark candy bar." We students knew whose artistic ability was

in doubt, as the author was one of us. Many students turned

their heads to catch a glimpse of the "burned" students to see

how they were reacting to these harsh words.

To my horror, my project was chosen for a crit, too. When

the Professor got to my drawing, my heart was racing and my palms sweaty. I was so nervous, I could not swallow. Opening his jacket to show off the label, the critic said, "This fellow wants everyone to know who he is : the most important aspect of

his drawing is his name. Sir, you'll have to remember to check

you ego at the door." Aaauugh!

Well, indeed, I had printed my name in very dark black

lead on a white background, at the required letter size of 1/4".

It was the point of highest contrast on my drawing, the place to

which the eye is first drawn. This is a study in contrast, a

primary lesson in composition that I had not yet learned. I did 44 not even think of my name as part of the drawing; it was the final mark I made on the canvas, immediately before it was due.

Certainly, his words did not teach me lessons in composition, but taught me, among other things, not to count on my first attempts at visual communication to actually represent anything about myself or my architectural ideas. The notion that I had an ego that needed thwarted could not have been farther from my reality.

The ironies inherent in the professor critic comments about my project were almost laughable. Because my first name positively identifies me as a woman, his attributing my excessive need for notoriety to a "fellow" male student is a direct contradiction to his accusation. If I had been successful at gaining my purported desire for fame, would he have recognized, then acknowledged, my female-identifying name?

Or, was this a particular tactic for publicly humiliating a woman in the class full of men?

After this "anonymous crit" I became even more self- effacing. It was not difficult, nor was it dishonest of me, to express insecurity about my potential for success in this architecture program. My labeling myself as "marginal" did not make me so. But, it certainly multiplied my already marginal status as a woman and handed ammunition to competitive students' fire, perhaps stigmatizing me in the process.

Although this was very early in those aspiring architects' careers, there had been enough time to develop notions of who was in competition for the top spots and now I appeared serious with my "unchecked ego" enough to garner attention. Students 45 gossiped incessantly. After I was told where to leave my ego, even those in the cohort I had not yet met by name made a point of acknowledging the comment. One student put a sign on a coat hook hanging in the studio that read, "Carla, hang your ego here." They "ribbed" most of the students who had gotten the

"anonymous" crits. For example, the student who was told he drew with what looked like a Clark bar got enough chocolate candy dropped on his desk to make it look like Halloween.

At this point, I desperately wanted to fit in and ultimately to become an architect. There was just something particularly unacceptable about being noted as a woman who was

"full of herself." I should have had a reputation for something

less surreal - that was how foreign a notion having self- confidence was to me. Making a concerted effort to rid my persona of the senior Professor's stinging critique, knowing

full well a "cocky" woman student would not be tolerated, I virtually ritualized my silence. Certainly, I was a jovial peer who played along with studio jokes and conversation, but when it

came to discussing architecture and our assignments, I simply did not participate for fear of being "wrong," or worse, being

thought of as someone with a large ego who thought she knew the

"right" answers.

The remainder of the projects assigned that first quarter

were further tests of our artistic abilities coupled with

environmental awareness. Visual communication was strongly

emphasized, apparently, as some of the highest grades went to

the "prettiest pictures." For each project our grade, which was

a number out of 100, was written impersonally in the corner of 46 our submissions - "78/100" did not explain what was of value or what was lacking in the work. The projects were returned to students in hierarchical order with the highest grades first and the lowest grades last. In comparison, the most valued projects were always the ones that demonstrated the "best hand," or from students who could "make the pencil dance." In this case, grades abstractly communicated what was the necessary skill or knowledge important for future architects to hold. The right grades would enable some of us to maintain a position in this academic program, as well. Although, this course was called

Architectural Design Studio, the ability to 'design' was rarely- evaluated, while artistic ability was of the utmost value.

Of equal consideration in evaluating students work were so called "process packages," - portfolios filled with conceptual sketches intended to show the grader how students developed each project. On this measure, it seemed the highest grade for the process package went to the most extensive submission. Not the most thoughtful, nor the process that demonstrated the most development, but the portfolio filled with the greatest amount of paper earned the highest mark. Students would make jokes about "weighing in" their process packages, like prize fighters, knowing that the heaviest would make the best showing.

Evaluations had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the work, and everything to do with the testing of loyalties. Those who committed the longest amount of time as witnessed by the

heftiest amount of work, scored a knock-out - or at least

demonstrated the ever abstract notion of commitment. At least

this is what I assumed, as again, grades for the process 47 packages were merely numbers affixed to the corner of each

submission. There was no explanation or reason given for the mark.

This initial studio quarter was also about forging social bonds among peers, as familiarity led to wary friendships formed during long hours spent in studio. One can carry on a conversation while drawing, so there was almost constant chatter. The other architecture courses that first quarter also had long in-class hours and were composed of the all same students. We were together every day, from the morning

"structures" class to all-nighters in studio. I barely saw my friends who were majoring in something other than architecture and I absolutely never took a day or a night off from school work for any reason, fearing my reputation as a dedicated worker would change.

As predicted, some students simply did not find the major to be what they anticipated, broadly speaking, and changed schools or left college altogether, while other students fell behind in their work in design studio, or alternatively worked so hard in studio they fell behind and dropped out of architecture. Our sophomore design professor, who was teaching this course for the first time, did not have a systematic means for narrowing the ranks, apparently favoring "natural attrition." Students from the junior and senior classes commented upon our cohort size and told us we were being "toyed with" as a class. Going into the second quarter of that first year we still had an unusually large cohort of approximately 80 students. 48

The focus of the following term was visual communication and composition, and only very indirectly architectural design.

The other architecture courses were also series courses and we progressed to the next level in drawing, engineering mechanics, and construction detailing. Design studios rotated; rooms, instructors, and classmates changed. Because I knew almost everyone in the cohort from the previous quarter's interaction, it all felt the same. Again, I was the only woman in the immediate studio setting. There were approximately 8 women at the sophomore level left studying architecture.

The first assignment in design this quarter continued with that frustratingly ambiguous line of instruction that resulted in numerous hours of sputtering doodles. Students were told to take a phrase from a popular song, and compose a

"representational abstract collage" that expressed the feeling of the lyrics. The lines were also to represent the designer

"himself" as a student in architecture. Again, we had no examples of "correct" collages from which to draw ideas for this project, nor were we sure what this had to do with learning to design buildings.

One of the student projects deemed successful, held out for special praise and attention, and given a high mark borrowed a line from Carol King's popular song, "Tapestry:" "My life is but a tapestry of rich and royal hue." The words were imprinted upon a collage composed of colorful magazine photographs of cheerful, attractive, young, white people engaged in a variety of social activity, all of which appeared to me to come from cigarette or beer advertisements found in sports magazines. The 49

images were cleverly arranged in a pattern that could be found

on a handmade or crafted quilt tapestry. The rather shy student

designer of this collage looked uncomfortable while his teaching

assistant told the class about the depth and maturity of this

project and his almost divine ability to express feeling in

visual representation. He was also rewarded for choosing such a positive message, as "studying architecture did indeed make a

for a rich life," the T.A. offered. I myself couldn't remember

the last time I had been out of studio long enough to

participate in any of the activities depicted in the tapestry,

and 'rich' was about the last way I would have chosen to

describe what had become of my life.

I remember being constantly anxious over the inexplicable numbers assigned as grades and how those scores might determine

if I was "good enough" to become an architect. My collage was not successful; and it was not positive nor enthusiastic, because I was not feeling those things. I chose the lyrics to a popular song titled "I feel like a number," that (I did not particularly care for but that) expressed my angst at being this kind of an architecture student, "To teachers I'm just another

child, I feel like a number," by Bob Seager. I folded paper

then cut out strands of people which were connected by their

feet and hands, like those made in childhood. The chains were

cut out of pages from the phone book, anonymous names and

numbers formed patterns of paper people who all looked the same.

In response, I received a number for a grade. It was out of 100

and entirely meaningless to me, save for the idea that it was

not very good. I was not sure how this reflected upon my 50 potential for success as an architect. Had I not represented, abstractly, the feeling of these lyrics? Was the form or the content the problem?

The Teaching Associates had no office hours and questions from students were actively discouraged via pointed joking or meaningless responses. I could not have imagined asking about grading procedures at this time in my studies. Although students talked as if the scores were direct indications of a designer's worth as a future architect, I imagined the scores were more indirectly indicative of professional success. High grades gave students confidence in their work, kept them in the program, allowed them to apply to graduate schools, and earn prestige from peers. Without systematic or obvious criteria for evaluation, I was continually frustrated with what appeared to be haphazard scoring influenced by factors that, as a student, I did not easily recognize.

This winter quarter followed the same script as the previous quarter. The lecturer assigned projects peripherally related to architecture and students attempted to discern the purpose and the desired responses. There were a series of assignments unrelated to one another, save for the incredibly

large amount of work routinely expected of each student and for the mystery surrounding grading procedures. Among the disparate projects was a color workshop directed by an artist who had worked with Joseph Albers. Another guest, an expert in programming - which is a modernist concept of organizing the

functions of a building - lectured, illustrated examples of his work, then assigned a project. Most students seemed relieved 51

that this programming section, at least peripherally involved

buildings, if not designing them.

Students organized their lives, eliminating all

responsibilities not related to class work, to progress from one

assignment deadline to the next. We "pulled all-nighters" at a

rate of about once a week that quarter: the night before a project was due it was "given" that students stay in studio until morning classes. Socially, students grew more familiar with one another, sharing many painful hours working under

stressful conditions. Alliances were formed and competition generated between seemingly like minded social groups forming

subcultures within architecture.

There was a core of personally ambitious students. Their bonds to one another originated from their mutual success,

shared intellectual interest and seemingly single minded focus on architectural design. Seizing leadership of this cohort,

they were the students upon whom others depended to clarify assignments and approach the instructors with problems. The

Graduate Teaching Associates, in positions of authority, also

recognized these students as the 'exceptions' which lent

legitimacy to their self-definition. In my cohort, this central group of "stars" was loosely composed of about six men and one woman. Their bond was impersonal and competitively dependent upon individual success, rather than a cooperative alignment of

forces that may have been even more beneficial to each one of

them. Being included in this inner circle meant being thought

of as a "player," someone who would do whatever it took to

succeed, no matter the consequence. These students were 52 considered ruthless by the remainder of the class, not trusted nor necessarily well liked in this context, just envied.

Members of this "star" group generally received the highest marks, grabbing a great deal of attention from the rest of the cohort which speculated endlessly about grading procedures. Once stratified, it appeared that top students' scores were often generated more through reputation than consistently outstanding or high quality work. Realizing early in his career what was the most advantageous impression to put forth, one extremely ambitious student was particularly aggressive about ensuring he got noticed in studio. The ever important desk crit was the location where students could demonstrate both their hard work, in the form of numerous drawings, and their design ideas. Our studio star would usually have the longest crit, capturing the T.A's attention and holding it for what seemed like the entire class time. He was very persistent and pushy, yet decidedly popular with the critics.

He looked like the teaching associates, used their vocabulary, their drawing style, and probably reminded the graduate students of themselves when they were undergraduates. Whatever the origin, those in authority appeared comfortable with this domineering personal style, which put off most of his fellow students.

Other cohort groups were less goal-oriented, centered more on common scholastic interests. There was a group of students who were oriented toward engineering and were completely devastated to find that architectural studio focused on the art of architecture, rather than the science of architecture. These 53 students, all men, excelled in the engineering mechanics courses which carried very little prestige, but were functionally important - students must pass these difficult courses to get the degree. At this university, the school of Architecture was within the College of Engineering, resulting in a degree called a Bachelors of Science in Architecture, a rather misleading label.

Another social group formed of men that were interested in architecture as a means of entrance to the business community.

Although students were regularly reminded by faculty that,

"architects make no money, none, barely enough to even buy lead for their pencils," this group took all of their electives in business and worked just hard enough so that their degree would

"pay off" in the future. Many of them had fathers (not mothers) who were architects, contractors, engineers, or developers and they knew there was ready made employment for them after graduation. Some belonged to greek fraternities when they began classes in architecture, but due to the excessive time commitment, they had to drop out of the social organization; they resented the fact that they were loosing business networks and an active social life.

Thinking of architecture as a means to personal financial fulfillment was uniformly considered a moral failing by those with the privilege and authority to define professional values.

Our sacrifice, our study of architecture was for devotion to beauty, to art, to the ageless search for meaning in form.

Those who indiscreetly spoke of fees or wealthy clients leading 54 to exciting vacations or flashy cars were unceremoniously dismissed by other students.

Having an architect for a father was actually a penalty in this social system, for a number of reasons. One member of the

"business" student subculture's father was the State Architect responsible for, among other state subsidized work, a variety of controversial modernist campus high rise housing projects. In lecture, these buildings were frequently held up for criticism and castigated as work done by "hacks." The son drove a foreign sports car and initially belonged to a fraternity.

Somehow these characteristics - architecture designed in a style not currently in vogue and associated with what was labeled a

"high profile" lifestyle overlapped, creating a stigma that discounted whatever advantage in professional experience that being an offspring of an architect may have offered.

Four of the remaining eight women in this sophomore class had fathers who were architects or structural engineers, but they were not included in the business subculture because of their sex. Indeed, these women were generally loners, working outside of studio and not participating in student interaction while in class. Most of the cohort dismissed their work, hypothesizing that their "daddies" helped them finish their projects.

Another student subculture was composed of those who thought themselves "true" and authentic talents, whether they were graphic, philosophical, or literary artists. Studying architecture was merely their vehicle for expressing personal genius. These students tended to be nonconformist in 55

orientation with pronounced personal eccentricities - one, for

example, wore a long cape to class while another only spoke

French. One student, who signed all of his work with first, middle and last names (e.g. Frank Lloyd Wright) and who

described himself as "gifted," was very good with painting and presentation drawings. He spoke often of not being able to

finish this degree program because he and his parents were building a sailboat in their backyard to sail around the world.

He never enrolled in the engineering or construction classes.

Others in the arts subculture identified alternately as

sculptors, poets and cultural theorists employing architecture

to investigate their individual interests.

While this "arts" group held many of the ideals presented

as acceptable for architects - especially devotion a higher

calling - their personal characteristics held them out as misfits. The image of the architect in this era was decidedly

tough, clean cut, even "preppy," a man who pursued architecture

itself as a vocation, not as a vehicle to humanist understandings. Most in this group did not follow this traditional mold. Perhaps, more importantly, these students

rarely completed their assignments, although even partially

finished, their work was usually interesting and unusual. It

seemed they were bored, distracted, disinterested in

conventional means for defining success - a direct challenge to

architectural authority. Teaching Associates gave them the most

obvious shorthand label - "lazy," but their situation was probably something more complex than the personal defectiveness 56 associated with weak wills, indeed, it was probably the opposite given the structural constraints they faced.

A "blue-collar" subculture was formed by men who had extensive experience in the construction trades. They had been roofers, carpenters, electricians and plumbers - generally during summers, as part time employees or helping hands renovating homes their families owned. Many in this group had also worked as mechanical drafters for developers and engineers, professions not renown for their emphasis on creativity or design. Constructing meaningful collages was not what they anticipated from architectural design, and they routinely expressed disgust with the artistic focus of this architectural education.

In labeling this student subculture as blue collar, the social class reference is both descriptive and given its stigmatizing implications, symbolic. Architecture the profession has long attempted to put space between those who identify as Designers and the workers who construct their ideas.

Indeed, by definition, any profession is based on theoretical knowledge not recognized in manual labor. The craft of building is devalued and designers are elevated. Within the first year of school, students intent on pursuing architecture as defined through the art of construction - the beauty in the connection between materials or the elegance of a well crafted joint - were quite aware of their misplaced or devalued interest.

This was a very clear class distinction that extended from ideology to praxis. It was presupposed that one would not hold outside employment while studying architecture, there simply was 57 no time to do both well and anything that took away from The

Commitment was frowned upon. Those few students who did attempt such a feat, knew not to broadcast what they were doing when not in studio. Eliminating many students who may not have the financial background to exclusively attend college, architecture is the major of elites.

There was an uneasy interaction between members of each subculture and the boundaries between them were palpable. In this competitive environment students held fast to their architectural value systems, focusing on engineering, business, arts, or construction; but success was awarded and stars made by qualities that were not constitutive of any of these peripheral areas. It appeared that every student, even the most

"rebellious," wanted to be at the top of the class.

Speculation about what "they" wanted, in the form of projects and student performance in studio, was debated endlessly. We were aware that having a positive desk crit was very important, and that this was the only opportunity to receive directives on the work. However, students had the impression that members of the star subculture received more attention than those from other groups. They also discussed how unfair, yet understandable, it was that the attractive women students got longer desk crits, as well. There was very pointed hostility that developed over this imbalance in attention, but, the negative reaction to the stars was based on frustration grounded in the yearning to be included in this elite group.

The out-groups wanted to be "in" and they soon began to mimic the star subculture in an effort to be similarly successful. 58

Frustration toward women students labeled as attractive was grounded, not in the women's envious status, but in their

(fortunate?) genetic makeup. This created a confusing double bind for women students. If women received high marks, men students attributed such success to extensive desk crits given by male graduate students who were assumed to be heterosexual and sexually interested in the women. This was a shorthand way to dismiss women and our work. Moreover, as one of these women, I remember being confused and saddened by the notion that my architecture was somehow connected to my appearance. Should

I spend valuable time fixing my hair before studio? What would it make me if I did exchange some abstract level of my femininity for architectural criticism and positive evaluation?

Being privy to my classmates' conversations surrounding studio asymmetry felt humiliating and it was the source of much self­ doubt. How could I get a real crit?

Lacking a formal means to obtain equal access to necessary evaluative information, students adopted informal mechanisms and tactics meeting with various amounts of success. Appealing directly to the T.A.'s was out of the question: they seemed unapproachable and unpredictable to the lesser groups. No one wanted them be on their "bad side," perceived as a source of trouble. Some students petitioned the elites to speak to the critics on their behalf. But the stars either did not see the imbalance in attention as a problem because they did not experience this situation as such, or they were using the attention to their advantage and did not want it changed. 59

Several students in the various non-privileged subcultures resorted to humor as a tactic in acquiring Teaching Assistant attention. Out of desperation, one student put a brown paper bag over his head with writing on it that read, "unknown crit."

This ploy was in reference to a television game show spoof that featured an "unknown comic" who wore such a bag to conceal his identity thereby allowing for deflection of bad jokes. Another student jokingly threatened to set fire to his desk to get some attention. Yet another male student came to class in "drag," hoping that if he were "attractive" enough, a critic would spend time on his desk crit. Although entertaining to most of the cohort, our class clowns proved unsuccessful in their aspiration.

By the third and final quarter in the first year of design studio, the lines were clearly drawn between the stars and rest.

The most successful students, in an example of anticipatory socialization, began to speak exclusively about architectural design, to dress like the T.A.'s who dressed like architects, to carry portfolios, T-squares and heavy cardboard tubes to hold rolled-up drawings. They were never seen on campus without an article identifying them with the school of architecture. It was a status symbol in the eyes of architecture students, linking them with studies that they professed were highly valued.

Unlike previous cohorts, this year's group still had not been whittled down to the allotted university size. There were still not enough drafting tables and the T.A. to student ratio 60 was higher than it had ever been. The inadequate facilities could not tolerate such a large class.

When school broke for summer recess, most students were still committed to architecture for a number of similar reasons.

However, if a student were vacillating, the unusually large amount of energy dedicated during this first year of school was persuasive and it added to the place of increased importance for architecture in our lives. There was something exclusive about being an architect. Only exceptional people are architects, some came to believe, and if successful those students would be thought of as special, as well. Others expressed the seemingly paranoid commitment that, "they are not going to get me out of here," a personal challenge by individual students against individual instructors, displacing a student's hope of getting mastery of the skills needed for architecture. Either way, the presence of restrictive, elitist, competitive, hostile and otherwise dubious motivations for remaining in architecture were unfamiliar to me.

I still wanted to become an architect, although this first year had been unpleasant overall and uncomfortable in some situations. I chalked the negative scholastic experiences up to my lack of skill and my need to catch up to those in the class who knew so much more about architecture and building than I.

In the beginning of the year, when given a list of supplies to purchase for mechanical drafting class, I had found all of the tools, wit the exception of "eraser" unfamiliar. I bought a T- square not knowing it had something to do with straight lines.

Similarly, I looked at the lead pointer/sharpener and could not 61 imagine what it was or how it was used. Having never drafted before, never heard the word "joist," or "elevation," or "mylar paper," or encounter any of the other thousands of tools, concepts, and skills I now use almost everyday - was an extreme handicap. The stuff of construction, assumed to be a normative part of a common cultural heritage, was certainly not part of m i n e .

If this university had prerequisites for entrance, I surely would not have been able to study architecture. Some of the students were particularly disappointed that they found themselves in school with those who were at "another level."

They viewed their knowledge as "natural," or as information that should be gotten informally, believing it absolutely inappropriate for a university to be involved with such remedial matter. It follows that if this information were natural, something one is either born with or imbibes as part of their socialization process, then the person who does not know even these basics was extraordinarily lacking.

I became increasingly aware of such attitudes during that first year as I struggled with the business of catching up. In an instance that left a huge impression on me, an older male student was offering me unsolicited advice on a drawing while we were working in studio one night, determining that I should use a "sepia ink" to achieve my desired outcome. I had never heard of such an ink. With disbelief that I could be so ignorant, he began to speak in a loud voice insuring that all in the studio would hear his opinion about allowing "hacks" into this program.

I felt humiliated and leery of any further "free advice," afraid 62

of more outbursts and afraid that others would see even more weaknesses in me. This cut me off even more profoundly from getting the assistance that others took for granted.

I got the impression that there was only one authentic

kind of architect. HE had some mysteriously obtained pre­

existing knowledge and talent foundation on which to build a

career. The proto-typical designer was described as a "great man" heroic figure found in journals and magazines such as

Progressive Architecture and Architectural Record that students

had begun to scrutinize. He could free hand sketch, draft,

watercolor, and build Strathmore paper models without the glue

showing. He could produce an unlimited number of conceptual models on paper to demonstrate his commitment to architecture.

He implicitly understood how buildings go together and why one project was better than another. Of these above enumerated

qualities, I possessed none, and I knew it.

What else I knew was that I had found architecture

fascinating. It was about places and art and history and it

seemed worldly and capable of transforming the ordinary. If one may "fall in love" with such an abstract concept, I did. In

response to what I lacked in "god given" talent I decided to

work harder than anyone else ever had at architecture. And I

believed I did.

The uncomfortable atmosphere that derived from attempting

to negotiate my "exceptional" gender status was a substantial

burden. I identified this obstacle at an abstract level, with

no language to address it. But, even if I had been familiar

with concepts of gender analysis there was no one with whom to 63 discuss the situation, in any realm of my life. I quietly decided to "get on with it," leaving the odious aspects of studying architecture unacknowledged. CHAPTER IV

FINISHING THE DEGREE

During the summer between the first and second year in architecture school I attempted to find work in the construction

industry in my hometown. Having sent letters to every contractor in the area with no response, I resorted to enlisting

informal contacts to speak on my behalf. Friends and relations helped me get hired, at minimum wage, ($2.10 per hour) on a construction crew that was making wood framed houses. I was handed a heavy push broom and told to sweep up after the laborers. Much like architecture school, I was the only woman around.

The first thing one of the young workers asked me was,

"what nationality are you?" This was a traditional, white ethnic, pro-union working class city, that had recently witnessed the loss of its steel industry, where women of Italian descent simply did not join construction crews, much less become architects. I supposed that I was an anomaly whom the workers could not categorize, but I soon realized that the laborers were generally divided by ethnic identification and this was actually a question asked with the intention to help me assimilate.

Italians ate lunch with Italians, Irish with Irish, and so on.

64 65

I "over-heard" enough comments about my physical characteristics and sexuality that first day on the job to feel even more uncomfortable than I anticipated. However, developing a strategy to deal with the situation proved unnecessary. At the end of the day, the owner of the contracting company appeared and said he had to "let me go" for three reasons: (1) I did not keep up the required pace with the broom; (2) I should know I was taking jobs away from deserving men who had families to feed; and (3) I "distracted" the REAL workers. He gave me a current Construction Dictionary and an antique Building Trades

Handbook dated 1899 - I assumed as placating parting gifts - and asked me to say "hello" to my father from him. I was both relieved, disappointed, and confused. The following day I went out and got a secretarial position at the County Engineers' office, where my primary responsibility was to answer phones while tallying golf league statistics. I also signed up for summer courses at the local art school.

When architecture classes resumed in the fall, I was more determined than ever, but even less sure of how to participate effectively. Realizing that our cohort was about to be thinned, most students in the class were unsure of themselves and the situation. Our next design professor was from the "old school" of architectural education, believing that studio class was not a pursuit for the feint of heart. This professor was nationally connected to Star Architects on the coasts and at Ivy League universities and he referred to them like they were old buddies.

The class seemed very impressed and intimidated. 66

Again, our studio was directed by the one professor and four graduate teaching associates who acted as design critics.

The course was conducted without the "luxury" of a syllabus.

There was no organizational guidance, no anticipation of projects, and, therefore, no contract between students and the professor. Assignments were presented in lecture, by the professor, with no fore-warning and no pattern.

The studio itself was housed in a dilapidated one room former mechanical equipment building called "the annex" situated next to the main architecture school. It was an original campus structure built in 1870, then unceremoniously turned into a design studio by cramming drafting tables into the room. The building had only a few clerestory windows, and it bothered me that I could hardly tell if it were day or night while inside.

This Junior year/autumn quarter started quickly in

Architectural Design class. On schedule as well were

Architectural History and Wood Structures class; my social science elective was Linguistics. These were background classes. This studio was much more intense than the previous year's Design course, making marginal other classes and certainly other normative aspects of life in college.

Our first project was a building analysis exercise that would be broken into ten parts and would last the entire quarter, threaded between more extensive design assignments.

Each student chose from a list of houses, designed by one of twelve internationally renowned contemporary star architects, for dissection and analysis. Like the sport of diving in the

Olympics, the house had a "difficulty factor" attached to it; 67 the more complex a plan, the higher the number that would multiply a student's score. This factor was to compensate for the extra time and effort required to draft the more intricate buildings. I chose the Hanselman House, designed by the office of

Michael Graves of Princeton New Jersey, with a 1.75 difficulty factor, assuming that I would need the augmented point score. I also chose the more difficult assignment because I had already understood, if not internalized, the ideology that this professional school socialized its students to "know" - above all else, architects demonstrate that they work hard. Drawing and analyzing an intricate rather than a straight-forward structure was witness to my desire to become one of them. There was only one house with a higher difficulty factor than the one

I chose.

On the first Friday of the quarter, we were told to draw all of the plans, two sections, and two elevations of the house on vellum, in ink, by Monday afternoon. Vellum is like tracing paper, thin and porous, and ink cannot easily be erased from it.

The ink was dispensed from a set of "technical pens" which are arduous, finicky instruments for the novice. Considering the number of drawings assigned, the drawing format, and the general skill level of the cohort, it was impossible to complete the assignment in one weekend, although the Teaching Associates assured us that our assignment was "cake," because this was merely a drafting exercise; we were not designing after all.

After using the library to locate graphic documentation of our houses, students had to reproduce these pictures to the appropriate scale for presentation. All houses were to be drawn 68 so that one eighth of an inch equaled one foot. The method of

"drawing to scale" is painstakingly repetitive and achingly dull. Like most students, and as we were encouraged by faculty,

I worked on the assignment at my drafting table in studio all weekend. I went home only to change clothes and catch about four hours of sleep over the weekend.

I toiled "on the drafting board" as if someone were holding a gun to my head. It was an intense feeling of urgency wherein every single minute had to be productive and accounted for. Becoming adept at drafting through the reproduction of a house that is held as a current architectural "masterpiece" certainly had a pedagogical purpose, but it is not directly intellectually stimulating. It was a peculiarly inconsistent feeling - I wanted the time to pass both quickly (because I was bored) and more slowly (as I needed more time to complete the work.)

By the time this exercise was due, I was exhausted. The final step was to have blue-line reproductions made of the drawings and then turn the prints in to the instructors. Having worked in studio with my classmates all weekend, I knew of no one that completed the entire assignment. The morale of the cohort was quite low.

Although most students had not slept for a couple of days, we had to sit through a dense design lecture delivered by our

Professor after the drawings were submitted. He spoke about the

"new" avant-garde Post-modern theory in architecture. As it was presented and at this point in our education, the topic was over my head. The professor did not lay a foundation for his 69 monologue and it did not build upon the content of a previous class. He never paused for questions, although students were probably too intimidated to ask, nor did he seem concerned about undergraduates comprehension. The professor's eyes would look down at the podium toward his notes or at the ceiling, never at his audience. Most students felt he was lecturing exclusively to his graduate teaching associates and to some of the other faculty that attended. It was painful to try to pay attention to a lecture that was so out of reach while I was so tired.

At the end of the lecture, a new design project was assigned that was due in five days, on the following Friday.

The drawing requirement for this project was so extensive that it, like the previous weekend's work, was difficult, if not impossible to complete by the deadline. Combine a studio full of sleep deprived students who were in competition to remain in the program with yet another overwhelming assignment and we had a group of architecture students unconcerned about course content. I had replaced my enthusiasm for architecture-the- discipline with general loathing for architecture-the- curriculum. Those feelings increased as the year went on.

This latest design project required students to read the book WinesburcT Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and then design a town square for the described community. Most of us went home after studio that Monday, slept for a few hours then got up and read the novel. I remember thinking that it was dull and that my town square design would not gain inspiration directly from the text. I also tried to read, then draw as fast as I could. 70

By the end of the week, many students in the design course had skipped their other classes, spending all of their waking hours on this project. I did not like to miss class, especially the Architectural History course which alone served to ground my very being in architecture-the-discipline. I felt something special in history class when the lights went down in the lecture hall and slides came up on the screen with images of ancient architecture. The lecturer would tell stories about how the temple, or pyramid, or aqueduct was built, and about the historical significance of such a structure. I felt I was being told the secret basis of far off exciting civilizations and that

I would derive great personal power from such knowledge. More than any other class in my academic career, the history of architecture offered clues that helped de-mystify architectural knowledge. At this point in our professional education, it was the only aspect even indirectly reminding me of why I was enrolled at all.

I attended my classes but would run back to studio in between each session to draw. Becoming more and more efficient with the necessities of life, I ate a full meal only once a day in the fast food restaurants that bordered campus, either alone or with a friend from studio. I slept about four hours a night, needing no alarm clock to arouse me. It became routine that if

I went to sleep at 3am I would bolt upright in bed at 7am filled with panic. My home was a rented house just off campus that I shared with four women friends I had met in the dormitory. None of my roommates were in architecture and I would go for days without seeing them. 71

Most everyone "pulled another all nighter" on Thursday, the night before this Winesburg town square was due. Because there was so little time, no desk critiques were offered on our designs. We just submitted reproductions for evaluation on

Friday, five days after getting the assignment.

I was not happy with how my design was depicted in the drawings, but I thought that the design ideas formulating my town square were interesting. More importantly, I found the process of designing architecture, in general, fascinating. The evening before this project was due, I was so enthralled with the creative process that I uttered, "I want to do this the rest of my life." My studio-mates remembered this statement and would remind me of my sentiment at the most inopportune times - when we were pulling all nighters or sitting through inaccessible lectures. They made me feel foolish for my spontaneous enthusiasm.

As students submitted their Winesburg project, the previous weekend's drafting exercise was returned with notes of evaluation affixed. Of each individual drawing, either a passing score was declared or it was marked with a "revise and

resubmit." The instructions were to completely redraw each plan, section or elevation that earned an R & R, as velum cannot be altered or corrected in even a small way. The revised

drawings, any incomplete drawings, and a new house drafting

exercise were all due on the following Monday - again.

"They," those critical others, were wearing us out

physically and wearing us down emotionally. Week two's house

analysis drafting work was due within three days and was 72 assigned after most students had been awake and drawing all night. I had to complete a couple of plans left over from week one, plus I had earned two revise and resubmits. One of my documents that had been rejected was an elevation, mistakenly drawn without a heavy base-line that should indicate how the structure met the earth. The Teaching Associates who graded the print used a blue marker in making lines to simulate waves beneath the facade, as if the house was a boat on the sea. They were making a visual joke to teach me that an elevation should not "float" on the page. I was embarrassed at my apparent foolishness and angry with myself for making such an error.

The second weekend of the quarter was another filled with rushed drafting work. Again, I slept for only four hours over the span of three days. By Monday morning, whenever I blinked I would see bright white bursts as if from a camera's flashbulb.

Experiencing such exhaustion, I did not have the energy to worry about my health, just enough angst to obsess over the completion of my work. I barely finished all of this weekend's house analysis exercise. From what I could tell from others working around me in studio, I was one of the few who did.

The previous week's scenario continued. Fatigued students, after turning in their drafting work, would struggle to maintain consciousness through lecture, receive another assignment, sleep a few hours in the evening and then return to studio in the middle of the night to initiate work on that next project. The meaning of time completely changed. There were no days and nights, mornings and afternoons, no recognition of cyclical biological needs for food or sleep. The rest of the 73 world recognized a daily newspaper, the nightly news and other shared social experiences that marked the increments of time, like the dinner hours or Friday "happy hours." We were disoriented, then re-oriented to time marked exclusively by project deadlines and class meetings.

Thrown into the equation this week, the professor presented a list of books that we were required to read that quarter, promising an exam over their contents. Without a syllabus, we could not anticipate when to study for the test or know if the books were in a sequence that would follow lectures and assignments. I purchased the seven monographs right after studio, before going home to sleep.

The second studio lesson was called a planning

"intervention." We were to re-design our university campus and illustrate it as one master plan in a watercolor painting. The professor called this week's work a "charette." He told us that during the Beaux Arts period in Paris, building project program would be distributed on a single day to all architects competing for commissions. Seventy-two hours later, the magistrate would go about the city gathering drawings from the various offices. The three days and nights of working non-stop was called the "charette." One winner was eventually chosen who would then be required to elaborate upon this initial effort in designing the structure.

Our charette was not presented as searching for a single winner, although students behaved as if that were the case. No one shared information or let others look at their drawing board. I would have been more cooperative if I had come up with 74 anything to share. This was a confusing assignment. What about the campus needed to be redesigned? What was the goal - to add new buildings that worked with the existing geometry or provide a new order? Because we were to produce one watercolored canvas as proof of design intervention, I allowed only enough time to finish that single sheet. We had Architectural History and Wood

Structures (engineering) midterms that week. I spent my time studying for the tests.

The watercolor was to be painted on a huge sheet of parchment measuring 48" x 36". Due to the time constraint, I ended up creating my "final" design directly on the large paper, having done no preliminary studies. I thought what I had produced was awful - imposing a new order to the campus that consisted of an axis plowing through historically significant structures. However, with this rather pretty painting I earned my highest grade of the quarter. It was very confusing.

I also scored well on my midterm exams in history and structures classes. As with the studio design course, our other architecture courses returned graded material publicly so that every student knew of the other's scores. It was a practical and tactical choice that I had made to study for the tests while most of my cohort worked on their design project. I thought that if I was forced out of architecture because of poor design skills, I would at least have good enough grades to transfer to another department. It seemed I had made some favorable decisions that week, and the entire class knew it. I felt self- conscious . 75

Coming off of another all nighter, students handed in their watercolor campuses and received a new house analysis weekend project. We were to draw a 30/60 degree transparent axonometric of the house and redraw the revise and resubmits from the previous two weeks. For many students, this meant as many as twelve drawings to complete over the weekend. There was very little chance for them to keep up with this work - several students withdrew from the course that very day knowing that they would not pass.

This quarter's studio assignment pattern was established and carried through until the end of the term. The weekends were filled with house analysis drafting work while the weekdays were set aside for project design work and lectures. There was never enough time allotted to produce thoughtful work, just barely enough time to complete the drawings.

"Attrition" was accomplished through the backlog of revise and resubmits. Some students managed to accrue such a large number of drawings for re-submission that they were encouraged to withdraw from the class before the seventh week of the quarter, thereby receiving a rather harmless "W" on their record. If they were stubborn and tried to redraw that which was rejected, they risked falling even farther behind and failing the course. I had several friends fall out of architecture through this process. There was no time to miss them and barely enough time to acknowledge their loss. Most vowed to retake the course next year. Friendship seemed fleeting in architecture and I knew that there would not be time to maintain ties without direct contact in class or studio. 76

This house analysis work that was functioning to thin the cohort was evaluated by Graduate Teaching Associates looking for formal drawing miscues, not necessarily mistakes in content.

The criteria for acceptable drafting was "museum quality" work.

They meant that the drawings were to be flawless in their form.

Corners that indicated where walls met floors, or cornice moldings met ceilings had to be consistently crossed and line weights impeccable. Throughout the quarter, any personal time for the necessities or attendance to relationships outside of those with immediate design studio classmates was limited. I bankrolled one of my roommate's laundry, supplying her with quarters so that she would include my laundry with her own. On my birthday I came home from studio during the middle of the night to find a cake, cards, and gifts left on our kitchen table. I forgot that it was my birthday and that my girlfriends celebrated such events, because we had a project due. I ran into one of my non-architecture friends while walking across campus and she acted strangely. When I pressed her for details of her social life or how classes were going, she responded that she found it difficult to talk to me - that all I did, apparently, was architecture work. I felt lonely, but took solace in the idea that I had a "purpose" in architecture that would supplant the need for such friendship. Besides, I thought that I was making new friends within the discipline who could share and understand my life now.

We "lived" in studio with several constants. The idea of a charette became meaningless as we were constantly aiming toward short deadlines on the other side of all-nighters. There 77 was interminable clamor from a radio generally tuned to the

"hard rock" channel blaring over the studio, filling every corner with chaotic white noise. The inane jabber from disk jockeys, music from such groups as AC/DC, Styx, Foreigner, Tom

Petty, and Bruce Springsteen, and the continual chatter of men's voices made it difficult to think clearly. Students used plenty of humor to relieve whatever pressure they were experiencing, to entertain each other, and to reinforce group boundaries - among other reasons.

The only time it seemed that students stopped talking in studio was at sunrise when most became painfully aware of the dreaded impending deadline and the need for sleep. This campus was home to a very large number of starlings who would awaken at dawn and begin their resonant chirping. As if on cue, the men in studio would stop their conversations and the birds would take up where they left off. I hated the sound of those early morning birds. Physically, I usually got some sort of second wind at that hour, while emotionally I was at my lowest. Some students would climb under their desks, lie down and ask someone to wake them after an hour. I could never sleep in studio where there were others around, (I barely slept in my room,) and everyone counted on me to wake them up.

The only time it seemed that students needed their "wits" about them was in studying for their "other" classes, those that were not Studio Design. Sometimes, before History or Structures exams, the Design professor would give us a break in projects so that we could study. Because I had done well on the initial quarter midterm tests, many students asked me to help them. I 78 was especially pleased that the "popular" or successful design

students asked to study with me, thereby acknowledging my value.

These students were all men and their attention made me feel uncomfortable and used yet, socially rewarded. Eventually, the

Design Studio revise and resubmit system whittled the class down

to what the faculty called "a manageable size." Remaining in

the cohort was a woman who was new to Architecture this Junior year. She had an undergraduate degree in Art Education as was

returning to school to pursue architecture. With her past drawing experience, the administration placed her in our Design

Studio while she took the Sophomore level Structures and

Construction courses. Lisa and I became friends and her presence was very important to me, as the few other women in

Architecture were not overly friendly and it bothered me quite a bit that they did not seem interested in being friends. Lisa and I shared many of the same values and we were both very determined to become architects.

During the seventh week of the ten week quarter the Design

Professor decided to give an exam covering the course texts. He announced this on Friday afternoon during lecture, startling the exhausted class into hyper-consciousness. We had the weekend to complete more drafting work on the house analysis and to read the seven monographs. Checking with my classmates, I discovered that no one admitted to having read even one of the books throughout the quarter. I knew that I had not "kept up" with the reading - if one can keep up with something that has been assigned without a schedule. 79 the cohort was a woman who was new to Architecture this Junior year. She had an undergraduate degree in Art Education as was returning to school to pursue architecture. With her past drawing experience, the administration placed her in our Design

Studio while she took the Sophomore level Structures and

Construction courses. Lisa and I became friends and her presence was very important to me, as the few other women in

Architecture were not overly friendly and it bothered me quite a bit that they did not seem interested in being friends. Lisa and I shared many of the same values and we were both very determined to become architects.

During the seventh week of the ten week quarter the Design

Professor decided to give an exam covering the course texts. He announced this on Friday afternoon during lecture, startling the exhausted class into hyper-consciousness. We had the weekend to complete more drafting work on the house analysis and to read the seven monographs. Checking with my classmates, I discovered that no one admitted to having read even one of the books throughout the quarter. I knew that I had not "kept up" with the reading - if one can keep up with something that has been assigned without a schedule.

The reading was impenetrable. What were we to "know" from various texts such as The Ten Books of Architecture by

Vitruvious and Mathematics of the Ideal Villa by Colin Rowe?

Lisa and I, along with two men from studio, decided to divide the reading between us, then work cooperatively to study. We knew it would be impossible to complete both our drawing exercise and readings in three short days and nights. We were 80 very tired to begin with and the addition of the reading was overwhelming. After finishing the drawings, we set out to study for the exam.

The men we were studying with suggested that, as an antidote to our exhaustion, we try an over-the-counter nasal spray to help us stay alert to study. I indirectly knew of the routine use of amphetamine drugs that many lethargic students were exploiting in studio throughout the year. Using this inhalant did nothing for my weariness and I refrained from such activity after one try. My colleagues kept it up all night, as we reviewed for what was a disheartening and impossible task.

I appreciated the jovial company this collective effort afforded and it was a relief to feel as though we were all on the same side in this feat of college cramming. We had interesting discussions motivated by the readings and these served to make me even more sure that being an architect would be a wonderful way to spend my life. We started studying sometime on Sunday afternoon and went clear through until it was time for class on Monday.

After submitting the required drawings, we sat through a two hour essay and multiple choice exam on that Monday afternoon. It was an impossible test calling for the

recollection of specific details from the readings. I remember watching my study group and other classmates actually fall asleep during the test. It was horrifying to me that they could not stay alert and I spent much of the two hours vigilantly

notifying the Teaching Associates so that they would nudge the

nappers awake. My decongestant inhaling study-mates felt very 81

sick as the day went on, their complexions taking on the color of green grid paper that was covered their drafting table.

It all felt like torture; I kept wondering what I was

learning through this process. We were being trained to be architects who designed buildings for people in communities, yet as students of the discipline we were completely cut off from any sort of participation in civic life. I genuinely missed being a "normal" college student with a more well rounded or routine life. As the quarter drew to a close, I was happy (I think) that I remained in Architecture, given that almost half the cohort had been forced to drop out, but I was unsure of why

I was still involved.

The Design exam may have been graded but it was not returned to students. Nor was the house drawing exercise ever returned with a grade. So, although I chose a house with a high difficulty factor and actually finished all of the drawings for it, I had no sense of closure or valuative determination. In a way, I regretted having chosen an intricate house with a difficulty factor since it appeared not to have counted or to have been taken into consideration. We usually received grades on design projects, but even that work had no consistent criteria for evaluation, except its well drawn completion.

The winter quarter of this Junior year had an ominous beginning. The drafting tables had been arranged and assigned to students - for the first time we could not choose where and with whom to sit in studio. It would be easy to call the tenor of the cohort "paranoid," as the group immediately began to look

for a reasoning or pattern in the desk placements. Many of the 82 students from the star subculture were placed together toward the back of the big room, but it was difficult to discern any further pattern.

In Design lecture the professor told us that the most vulnerable students - those with the greatest risk of failing the course - had their desks conveniently placed closest to the door. Conversely, the best and the brightest were clustered snugly and permanently at the back of the room. There was little subtlety in the spatial metaphor. Rather dramatically.

Architectural Design studio was used almost exclusively to determine who could become an architect.

Stratifying the class as such led to quite painful interactions among students and reinforced the notion that the previous quarter's Architectural studio assignments could predict success as designers, although very little architectural design was conceived. But, the students spoke about each other as if this descending order of the drafting tables was real, rather than a creation of Professor and Graduate Teaching

Associates to further class size reductions.

As class members looked at each other's work, two separate individual's drawings that appeared very similar were regarded as either "good" or that done by a "hack," depending on where their desk was located in the room. Working in studio, we were encouraged to rely on each other for desk crits and it was a reflection of one's positive reputation that other students asked for help. No one appeared to ask those whose desks were positioned close to the door for a critique. My desk was fairly close to the back of the room, conferring preferred status on my 83 potential for becoming an architect, but very few classmates asked me for a crit. Instead, most of my male classmates continued to speak with me about their relationships, their fears about school, or to seek help with our History and

Engineering courses. I would have rather had their attention in the much more prestigious area of design acumen. My friend

Lisa's drafting table was clear across the huge room from me, but we continued to rely on each other for crits and emotional support.

This quarter's design assignments differed from the previous in that they were longer in duration and required that students have what was called a "Big Idea." We were to write a sentence on our presentation drawings that explained what overriding idea we used as framework for our designs. As example, the Professor told us that Renaissance architects were attempting to reveal the "man as measure and center" in their architecture. Similarly, we were to develop our own Big Idea that would propel each project's design and then literally spell it out on the presentation. The architecture projects included an addition to the student union on campus, a 30' by 30' abstract cube, and a museum. There was an emphasis on presentation drawings and we were encouraged to spend two weeks

"on the boards," after working out conceptual designs, delineating the architecture in traditional Beaux Arts style watercolor paintings. "On the boards" referred to the drafting boards, where it was expected that students would occupy themselves full time creating masterpieces. 84

For the first time a Strathmore cardboard model of each building design was also required. Of all the skills I had hurriedly learned since entering architecture school, I was the least successful at model building. Apparently, students were expected to simply know how to create these sculptural masterpieces because there was no class on model making nor any guidelines presented. I purchased the white, 4 ply, expensive

Strathmore board, foamcore board, Elmers glue, a metal straight edge, and X-acto knife blades and a blade holder after my classmates advised me of the equipment needed. Eventually, I also bought band-aids as I was constantly cutting my fingers.

The Graduate Teaching Associates joked that I would not get extra credit for having blood on my model, but it was not a joke to me. I simply could not create a museum quality model on no sleep and with little time. Most of my male classmates had been making models of planes or houses since childhood and did not suffer with these constructions in the same manner that I did.

The rest of the Junior year was a blur of all-nighters and a strong emphasis on presentation drawings and models. Grades continued to be distributed as impersonal numbers on the back of boards, with no justification. How our Big Ideas took form or the acknowledgement that architecture was for people to inhabit, that buildings had requirements such as toilet rooms, or that structures were made out of real material, not just cardboard was not mentioned. The more elaborate the drawings and models, the better the grade. Elaboration took a lot of time and commitment to architecture. 85

The world outside of the architecture studio was becoming ever more elusive and distorted. Weeks after the event, I heard that the U.S. hockey team had beaten the U.S.S.R. for the first time in the Olympics. I had forgotten that the Olympics were even occurring and I came to understand that much of the nation had shared this televised event. There were American hostages in Iran and their time had been marked by the media in terms of days in captivity. Someone in architecture had a roommate who hung a sign that read "Architecture Hostages - Day 186" on the door to our studio. I did not know to what this allusion referred. A photograph of the sign appeared in the student newspaper with the explanation that architecture was a strenuous major.

Feeling secluded, set aside, better than, was part of the socialization process. Architecture students were superior to the rest of this university's no-pre-requisite-for-admission general student population. Or at least, that is what we were repeatedly told by the professor. This idea worked to further distance me from my other friendships outside of architecture -

I was not an average college student looking for an easy go of i t .

During the Spring quarter, Lisa was transferred to another

Design Studio level. We were not in any other courses together and I rarely saw her. My primary group was composed exclusively of men and men dominated the studio culture and its discourse.

I heard about what they valued as far as women and sex and friendships - and it was overtly sexist, and demeaning to women.

Each day, I was surprised and usually dismayed over some aspect 86

of how they interacted. I did not like being privy to this

culture. In a precarious position as one of the few women who was supposedly working side by side with these men as their

"equal," I was concerned. Being what I thought most of them considered their "gal-pal" - was I one of them, the women they

contemptuously described, one of the boys, or something else?

By the end of Spring quarter Junior year, there were four women left in a class of 48 students. Everyone was exhausted and depressed and determined to see this degree program through no matter how awful and painful it became. Along with several other faculty from around the country, our Professor was teaching a summer architectural design program at a Washington

D.C. university. Although it counted as graduate school credit, he invited about ten students from our Junior studio to attend.

We got transfer credit so that the graduate summer semester counted for two Senior year Design Studios.

I was shocked that I was invited to this Design Program.

Even though I was consistently seated in the back of the studio, my grades in Design that year were not very good, a steady C+.

Applying for a student loan, I went to Washington with eight other classmates, happy that I would be supplanting an entire two quarters of studio my Senior year with this one semester.

It was not the trade-off that I had expected. The pace of this studio also proved to be impossible. Having gone directly from a final exam to the first day of summer studio with no rest made for a physically painful experience. There were practicing professionals, graduate students, and a few undergraduates from around the country vying for attention from the faculty. Some 87 wanted jobs with the firms the teachers owned, others wanted

letters of recommendation, and all of us saw this as direct

entree into the star system of architecture.

There was another woman in studio, and the two of us

shared a room together in an apartment with three other men who were students. After over three months of almost 24 hours a day

contact, I knew nothing about her or what she thought about this

school or studying architecture. We simply did not share

confidences or really become friends, although I was not uncomfortable in her company. Generally, I thought that if she had a personality, she kept it well hidden from me, although she had several male friends.

This summer semester was a whirl of drawing and of wishing

I could steal away to see more of the city. I had never lived

in a real urban environment and the little time we got out of

the studio I spent taking the metro to every neighborhood, museum, and monument. How different it was to design architecture when there was such wonderful historical

inspiration outside the door.

The in-studio sessions were relentless. We began at noon

and sometimes went until nine or ten o'clock at night. Unlike

our huge undergraduate classes, this design studio had only 25

students and we "pinned up" our work for public evaluation,

rather than submitting the work for a more private review and grade. The class met four days a week with each student hanging

their work up about twice a week. The other three days were

spent drawing and designing in preparation for the critique.

The faculty would trade off with each other, so that their time 88 in studio was limited. At the pin-up, two or three faculty members would sit on folding chairs in a semi-circle facing the student and the drawings which were hung on the wall. The other students would sit behind the faculty, on drafting stools aligned in uneven rows, watching the presentation.

Theoretically, students were on equal footing with faculty, told that they should participate in other's critiques. However, in practice, this rarely occurred. The student whose work was under consideration would give a brief verbal description of her design work, pointing to the drawings on the wall, then she would field questions asked as means of elucidation. "Is that a wall there?" "How do you access the fourth floor from the third?" "Does the axis of your building align with the tower of that building?"

After all clarifying questions were addressed, the critics would launch into suppositions. "What if she moved this piece over here and then twisted the entry to face the street?" "Do you think that the entire facade is more suited to ribbon windows rather than punched openings?" Faculty would usually talk with each other, assuming that students were "over-hearing" their conversation.

Students' projects had the latent function of acting as vehicle for the critics' launching into general conversations about architecture. They seemed to enjoy their inwardly focused

discussions, dropping names and passing on gossip, along with more direct talk about architectural form and theory. Often,

critics would advise students that they should study "moves" made by historically famous architects in designing buildings 89 found in western European cities. I was in school at the height of Post-modernism's influence on architectural design, and this translated into a reconsideration and recycling of western historical styles.

The summer assignment was to redesign the campus and then add a residential college building. The building had few program requirements - dormitories, a cafeteria, and class rooms

- but we were not strictly held to these specifications. If the

"aesthetic requirements" of the structure were better suited to eliminating one or two functional requirements, then so be it.

We made the buildings look good.

This was the most extended period of time that I had as a student to spend designing a project. It was also the most direct attention I had received for design work and drawings, and it was valuable if for no other reason than to give me credibility. My project got just about as much time in consideration as the other students' work, and for a time I felt a new kind of validation, coupled with anxiety. I was visible.

My work represented what women could do, not just what I could do. According to a variety of remarks from other students and faculty. When choosing the rotation of students presenting for the week, our Professor would refer to me and the other woman in the studio as "the girls." "We'll have one of the girls go next." This made me very nervous and I worked especially diligently, concerned about my image as an architect.

The drawing requirements were extensive and we were given a first or second year architecture student to help us complete them. It was intended as a reciprocal relationship - senior 90

students would critique junior students work and teach them

drawing techniques, while they would help us finish our

presentations. This was the traditional architectural mentor/apprentice relationship established at the Ecole des

Beaux Arts in Paris.

Two first year students were assigned to my project. They

seemed bored and then resentful of having to draw on my boards, and although they received college credit and my help, these two men let me know that they would have rather not participated. I had a problem with being in an authoritarian position in this

situation. Instead of just giving them critiques and drawing advice, I labored on their drawings as well. I wanted them to

like me. The men in the cohort did not seem to have these same

issues and I spent a greater amount of time with my junior

students than anyone else seemed to. Further problems plagued me by having these "helpers," as one of them spilled a bottle of

ink on one of my boards three days before it was due, causing me to double my efforts and redraw the entire panel.

Three weeks before the end of the semester, the instructors told the studio that they had arranged a final jury panel to review our summer's work and that we should begin drawing our presentations. Three weeks on final boards was a long time and they said that they expected spectacular work.

The jury consisted of all the current hot stars in architecture and most students were very excited about the prospect of having them in studio. I was surprised that these important architects would have the time to sit on jury for a student summer design course. 91

During the two day marathon jury/critique session, I began to understand that the most famous of the famous coming to this university had less to do with reviewing student work and more to do with networking among stars. Rather than even pretending that the jury was a pedagogical tool, these men barely acknowledged student drawings. They were there first to promote themselves and second to indict each other's work. The few times that they did speak directly to students about their designs, it was to tell us that the project should not have been assigned at all; that our work was awful, but that it was not our fault, but that of the incompetent professors who assigned i t .

A star who was affiliated with an Ivy League school looked at my drawings, and with mock admiration said that they were finally seeing a study that reflected the true nature of the project. "She obviously did not even try to re-design this campus," he said, disregarding the 13 weeks that I had spent moving buildings around and creating order out of chaos. I did not understand his remarks, but they got a huge laugh out of the rest of the jury. They proceeded to hammer away at our summer instructors for assigning this project. I stood in the front of this room with my drawings pinned to the wall for almost an hour, listening to their assaults and remaining silent, hoping that it would be over soon.

That summer had been troublesome for many reasons. For the first time in my college career I took drugs to stay awake.

Amphetamines were abundant, and after the first year students had dropped ink on my drawings, some of my classmates left the 92 pills on my desk. Everyone knew I could not possibly sleep if I wanted to complete the drawing assignment. Generally, I had more endurance than anyone else in studio, but with the help of

this drug, my productivity was enormous. What I gave up in physical discomfort, I got back in positive reinforcement.

Others in the studio would stop at my drafting table and make comments about how they wished they could draw as fast as I could and that I was obviously committed to architecture. This bolstered my determination to do well and to continue taking the speed. It worked.

I felt particularly visible in this environment with so few students, and I was uncomfortable every day. Although every student felt pressure from the star studded ensemble, I felt an added burden of being just one of two women who received added attention just because she was a woman. I was not a graduate student or a professional like most of the rest of class. I lacked experience. We understood that our performance reflected upon our instructors' reputations and they let us know that we were expected to produce magnificent drawings. Presentation was everything.

Returning to my university after this summer was a relief

in that there were only 4 more architecture courses to complete -

Autumn design studio and a year long series architecture course on mechanical systems. My primary focus was on creating a portfolio of my design work to use in application for graduate

school. I worked on the document every minute I could. After

the graduate credit summer session, getting a master's degree 93

seemed inevitable, although I wanted to work in the field first

and not go directly on to another school. I knew that I needed practical experience.

I got my first job in a "one-man" office drafting for a mechanical engineer part time while I went full time to school.

After studying all summer, money was an issue - I earned $5.00 per hour. This "old timer" taught me drafting secrets and told me stories about working with inept architects. I quickly understood that engineers and architects have adversarial relationships. He had hired me for the duration of a specific project for a Detroit auto manufacturer, and I rarely knew exactly what I was drawing up, I just followed his instructions.

When this project was completed he had to "let me go."

Before I left, he told me how disappointed he was in the "other guys downtown." He said that when another engineer had hired a

"looker" secretary they all dropped by to get a peek at her.

Although he had spread the word that he had hired me, few of them stopped by his office to get a good look. He attributed this disinterest to the fact that men thought a woman drafter would be "manly," while they knew how good a secretary could look. I was embarrassed and confused by these comments but said nothing.

He advised me to specialize in specification writing, that all firms needs spec, writers and in this way I would always be assured of a job. This is the most routine of architecture jobs, not to mention the lowest on the prestige scale. I never for a minute considered that advice and, collecting my final paycheck, I left his office. 94

After this part-time position was finished I started with the A's in the phone book, calling every architect in town to see if they needed student help. I eventually got a job with a small firm that began with "M," working about 25 hours a week at

$4.5 0 per hour.

On my first day in this architecture firm I was sitting at my drafting table with a small assignment before me. Like the typical studio setting, this office had all of the drafting tables (seven in total) in one room with the secretary in another room and a bigger conference room adjacent. One of the architects sitting behind me was on the phone, apparently speaking to the person who had left the firm, and whom I then replaced. He said, "Tom, we hired a girl....yeah she is sitting in your seat." By the tone in his voice, he could have described the situation as having a martian or a two headed gorilla sitting on the drafting stool in front of him. I felt eccentric and suspicious. Adding to this peculiar situation were photographs of women in bikinis reproduced on blue-print- like paper hanging all over the walls. When I made a comment about these "documents" one of the architects said that he had personally taken the pictures at a swimsuit competition. He seemed proud of his accomplishment in graphics. I was uncomfortable.

After working at this firm part-time for about four months, they lost a significant client and had to "let me go."

I felt that the owner of the firm had genuine remorse about this situation and he tried to find me another position. I continued

to participate on their dart team for fun and a social life that 95 was outside the university and I stayed in contact with the office until I graduated.

My next potential position with a firm required that I ask our star faculty member for a recommendation. With me sitting in his office he got on the phone and told the architects a glowing report of my abilities. I was not sure he even knew my name up to that point and was quite surprised and embarrassed that I was privy to this conversation about my skills. He compared me to a recent "legend" at the school of architecture - a woman who had been accepted to an Ivy League graduate school.

I totally discounted his recommendation, thinking that he did not really know my work at all and if I was "so great" why had I gotten only C+'s in his studio? I thought it peculiar that I was compared to another woman student, as if we were in categories and comparing a man to a woman was inconceivable. I nevertheless got this job and took it with gratitude, if not confidence.

This office was set up in a Victorian home that was rehabilitated so that the ground floor was a reception area, conference room and an office, while the upstairs bedrooms were turned into drafting rooms. I was the first employee of these two men who had recently formed a partnership in architecture.

It was constantly uncomfortable to work in their "house." There was only one rest room and it was literally wall papered with centerfold photographs from magazines of naked women in provocative poses. After working there for a month, I jokingly asked them to remove the pictures saying that, "it was like a woman's locker room with half dressed women in a toilet 96

facility." But, they disregarded my request with some comment about their "bachelor pad."

Each of them was married with newborn children and they spoke to each other about topics I would have preferred not to have heard. They spoke about how milk from their wives breasts tasted and about sex after delivery. It was as if I was not there at all, as if I was not hearing these "private" conversations. They did not look to see my reaction, like my male studio-mates often did. I was as animate to them as a desk or another object. Or, perhaps to them I had "become a man" except they could not or did not include me in their conversation.

When the work in the office began to pick up, I suggested that they hire more students to help out and I gladly recommended my classmates. I desperately wanted company in the office with whom I was comfortable. They interviewed several of my friends in architecture and also a secretary. After deciding to hire a man from my university and a woman secretary they took down the centerfolds acknowledging that now that there was a woman starting to work there, she may not like the

"competition."

After a month I was "let go" while they kept my "friend" on. The gossip in studio at school was that he had stabbed me

in the back and sabotaged my position. Save for the bad rumors and loss of income, I was glad to get out of that office.

I finished my course work and graduated while working part-time as night security guard in the dormitories. CHAPTER V

GRADUATE SCHOOL

Applying to graduate schools in Architecture was not a choice, per se, as my cohort experienced limited options after earning Bachelors of Science degrees. The economy continued its recession, and I knew of very few graduates who were successful at finding employment in architecture. To become eligible for licensure, our degrees required that we continue on for a

Masters in Architecture, because a four year undergraduate program was not considered a professional degree. These two structural factors, along with a nagging sense that I did not know enough about architecture to be competent, and that the several experiences I had in offices were quite oppressing, helped me "decide" to prolong my formal education. Somehow, staying in school seemed safer, even though it was distressing in many ways.

Submitting applications to one Ivy League school, one school in the midwest with a growing reputation for producing designers, and another with rather low prestige gave me a "long shot," a "maybe" and a "sure thing." I got into my second and third level schools, electing to attend graduate school in a

large midwestern city with a strong architectural tradition and a newer, up and coming program.

During the Spring preceding my enrollment in the Master's

97 98 program, I made a visit to my new school for an interview. The school had funding for two or three students and I was under consideration. The Graduate Chair was conducting the interviews and as I waited in his office, I was introduced to the Director of the School. He was a confirmed architectural Star, one of the biggest names in the country, with a monster of a reputation. I could not believe that I was meeting him, and that he was one of my future Design Studio instructors. I was not sure of what to say, or how to address him, or what kind of impression to make.

He first spoke to me to ask which undergraduate school I attended. When I told him, he asked if I would send the Junior year design professor at that university a message from him. I assured the Director that I would gladly be a messenger, relieved that I did not have to initiate conversation, and somewhat honored that he would consider me for such an interaction - from one important man to another. He then raised a finger, the middle one on his right hand, and said, "tell M. he can sit on this and rotate." With this comment, the Director turned and walked into his office. My interview with the Chair that followed this vulgar interaction was rather tense and awkward. I did not get full funding the first year.

That Autumn, the two-year Master's Degree program began, tailored for those who had earned a four year architecture degree - "four plus two" they called it. There were nine students in my cohort and we were put in a studio course with other students who were in the last year of their three year

Masters Degree program. There was one other woman in my 99

immediate cohort, and two women in the other group with whom we

were sharing studio.

These others working on their Master's degree were

generally older, more diverse students who had undergraduate

degrees in something other than architecture. They had been

together as a group for three years and had established

relationships strong enough that it was not an easy transition

to integrate the two sections.

The awkward merging of studio personalities came through

in our designs. Our first project was to create an entire town,

each student randomly commissioned for a different building to

design and given a site on the town grid. I was pleased that I got to design the town school, located adjacent to multiple-

family housing and diagonally across from the Creative Arts

Center. Although the studio was "making a community," there was

absolutely no community or co-operation among the cohort. Yet, we were critiqued by our two studio Professors on post-modern

criteria of contextualism - buildings should speak to each other, consider site and style and the relationship between

forms. I was completely frustrated with the process. When

the designer of the Creative Arts Center rotated the central

axis of his building 11.5 degrees (the tilt of the earth on its

axis, he said,) the instructor told me to respond in kind.

After making major adjustments in the geometry of my design, I

superimposed a grid system on the school's site and rotated a

clock tower. I questioned the hierarchy that allowed for such

serendipitous rotations or "moves" warranting response. The

instructors offered no rationale that satisfied me. 100 intellectually, just that a "stronger" student had "made a move" and I was required to match it. Was this a chess game or wrestling match?

Each student constructed a rough model of her or his building and placed it on a huge base model of the town. We updated our models on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which was every day that studio met. With each new round of study models most of the men in the group would argue vociferously about the design solutions and the appropriateness of such buildings as the Transportation Center or the Non-denominational Church design.

Fearing that I would say something "wrong" or that someone might not like me, I would generally debate the issues with one or two other "safe" students off to the side of the main discussion. As in undergraduate school, I treated this situation as though I were running for "Miss Congeniality."

While many viciously gossiped and made disparaging remarks about students' "talent," their designs, or their inability to draw -

I generally made only positive comments to others about their work, saving any deprecating remarks for K., my closest and most trusted friend in studio. K. and I had gone to undergraduate school and to the design program in Washington D.C. together and shared similar viewpoints about architecture school.

The student who was assigned the town hospital created a building that was 15 stories tall, allowing it to tower over the rest of the city's two and three story structures. His was the most controversial work. In defending the design's size, the student claimed that hospitals have functional requirements that 101 necessitate huge square footage allotments. This was the

(classic) modernist notion of "form following function."

However, we were not given programs (functional requirements) for our buildings and our instructors verbally rewarded students for aesthetics, along with holding "meaning" as more worthy of Post-modern consideration. What was the meaning of having the hospital as the most visually dominating building in town?

While the instructors preached Post-modern contexualism, in practice it was the dominant students who rarely succumbed to conforming group pressure, that were rewarded. Those students who saw their buildings as objects within the boundaries of the site, consequently ignoring neighbors' formal arrangements, and who successfully completed the project's drawing requirements, got the highest marks and the positive public review.

I completed my presentation boards for the school design using watercolor and airbrush in what I thought was an interesting and complex format. A man who was one year ahead of me in the top Design Studio in the school volunteered to help me with this unfamiliar airbrush technique for my drawings. As I told him that I could not possibly accept his help because I was sure that he was too busy, he had set up his compressor machine and filled it with paint. I felt like I had no control over this situation: I was not sure why he was helping me; I suspected his motives, and I was embarrassed at having the help.

I was deeply conflicted by this experience, I surely did not want the ambiguously experienced help of this male stranger; yet

I could recognize how extraordinary my drawings were. 102

I worked with the group to design a school that was

"contextual," produced beautiful drawings, and designed a conceptually and aesthetically complex school building, and I got one of the lower grades in the class. I was very confused.

Success in architectural design was a continuing mystery for me.

Different from undergraduate studio - with its loud and competing hard rock radio stations blaring from every corner and young men shouting and laughing about sexually explicit topics deprecating to women - was working in this graduate school studio with some women and older students. The atmosphere was generally quieter and more serious. The students were more respectful of other's space and of the work at hand. It was not perfect, and there continued to be a male-dominating presence, witnessed in the centerfolds and occasional "dirty" jokes at the expense of women, but overall it was an improvement.

Helping keep the silence was the advent of the "walkman" radio/cassette player. Now each of us had our own portable and privately earphoned musical world to escape into. The change for me was immensely constructive. When conversation around me entered areas that I did not feel comfortable with, for instance when it was about sex or women's physical appearance, I either turned up my radio or pretended not to hear what was said. In undergraduate studio the heighten masculine culture was often presented for an audience of women. The walkman took away the audience, denying gratification to the men who did the posturing.

Along with Studio Design, first year Master's students were enrolled in Architectural Theory I and an Urban Planning 103 course. Theory class met on Saturday afternoons and Planning on

Tuesday and Thursday so that Sunday was the only day of the week that we were not formally in class. We were in studio everyday working on design assignments; as usual, Design was the focal point. But, Theory I had added significance because the

Director of the School of Architecture - the major star of the school - taught the theory course. In addition, due to the high level of stress and the amount work generated in this course, it took on the proportion of design studio in the culture or lore of this architecture school.

It is not accurate to characterize the star architect's behavior in Theory class as "teaching," as his presence in the classroom was primarily to disapprovingly evaluate. He verbally harassed students and made intimidating and personal comments on our performance.

The course format was arranged so that debates between students made up each class session. On the first Saturday that the course met, every student randomly drew a "name or concept" from a hat that corresponded to a side of a debate. We were informed that the topic for each debate was "architectural detail." Drawing the second debate, I was to take the position of Plato - on the topic of architectural detail (?). The first debate, held one week after school started, was "the Hebraic vs. the Hellenic" that reflected our instructor's writing on "Post-

Modernism is a Jewish Movement" (Tigerman, 1932).

Students who were not participants in the debate had to do research on the weekly topic as well, as each was required to ask a question of one of the participants during the debate. We 104 were given one full minute to make our inquiry - and the question had to be long enough to sound complex - while the instructor held a stop watch in his hand, loudly clicking it on and off and calling "time" if someone went over. Then he would open his grade book and, with a flourish, make a mark - ceremoniously evaluating our questions. We were never told our marks for the questions, so we would watch his hand moving over the grade book trying to detect what letter he wrote. Was it, one vertical line with two loops (a "B"), or one half-moon loop

(a "C")? The final course grade was made up of our weekly questions, our debate outcome (usually an 'A' for a win or a 'B' for a loss,) and a 20 page term paper due at the end of the quarter.

We took this course three quarters in a row, with the exact same format and topic, yet it never became routine. It was two hours of stress and humiliation on Saturday afternoons, with the star instructor chastising students, calling us

"geeks," or "idiots," and our questions "lame." His words were vicious, generally causing me to try and console the "worst hit" after class and hoping that someone would do the same with me.

I cannot over-rate how important it was for the students in the class to please this man.

For my first debate, the first quarter, I had two weeks to prepare, and I worked with my debate partner to try and figure out what Plato vs. Aristotle had to do with architectural detail. Neither of us had ever taken a philosophy class, primarily because we had gone to "professional" schools that emphasized vocational rather than academic curricula. Along 105 with not understanding how to link this philosopher with architectural detail, I was not sure what Plato wrote or represented, in general. I went to a Professor in the

Department of Philosophy during his office hours to ask for any kind of help. He looked both amused and confused about what an architecture school was doing with Plato and Aristotle and he told me to read Plato's Republic.

For the debate, we were required to read a 3 0 minute position paper, then ask each other four, one minute questions that had two minute answers. It was odd to have such precise time allotments for such an obtuse assignment. My new friend/competitor and I prepared our questions and helped each other to prepare answers, so that there would be as little public embarrassment as possible. After witnessing the degradation of "contestants" in the first debate, where the star ranted and raved about the low-intellectual level of the new cohort and the dimwitted debaters, we were intent on deflecting public disgrace.

We had gotten an idea of what the opposite sides broadly represented during the first debate - form vs. content, the syntactic vs. the semantic, positivism vs. relativism, science vs. meaning - although it was not quite that clear at the time.

I became woefully behind in studio, barely working on Design while I prepared for this event. On the Friday evening before the debate, "Aristotle" and I rehearsed our questions and answers until dawn, nervously helping each other form meaningful responses. We were dreading this event. 106

In the middle of enacting our choreographed debate, the

instructor erupted in a tirade of verbal abuse, calling us, among other things, "fucking bookends" for not being competitive or vicious with each other. He took away our pre-written notes and demanded that we ask each other real questions. We barely knew what the topic was, let alone the core elements or opposite sides of the debate. After the debacle was over, the class voted on the winner (and inversely the loser) with anonymous ballots. But, the instructor said we were both losers and that neither of us would get the "A" for winning the debate. I was embarrassed and felt hopeless about being successful in architecture.

I continued to work relentlessly on my weekly questions for the debate participants in Theory. Inevitably, each week, no matter how thoughtful my question, the teacher would make a comment about my disappointing lack of "balls." Apparently, he believed me too soft and nonconfrontive. The following is an example of a one-minute question posed to a debater representing

Oswald Spengler's position on architectural detail:

You (Spengler) wrote that space could be seen as the essence of architecture only if each important feature of a building may be seen as a feature of the space which surrounds it. An example of your position would be the way that a wall may be seen as the enclosure of a space, and a door as an aperture into it. A feature which cannot be translated in this way is the nature or choice of building materials - a column made of grey sandstone is different than one built of wood and their qualities cannot be defined using the properties of space. Can you analyze the meaning inherent in the 'spatial' differences of a bas relief carved into stone and one modelled out of plaster?

Immediately after I posed that question, the star called me

"Gumby" and said that I needed to, "get a spine." But, my 107 questions were comparable to those of others in the class, as

far as content was concerned. I surmised that it was my rather quiet tone or less-than-forceful voice that he was describing as weak. I tended to worry more about constructing complex questions that sounded "smart" than making my questions mean- spirited. I saw his tormenting me as a game - one which he always won - but a game that I could live with. Better that I be interpreted as "too nice" rather than described as "not very bright," as he accused several other students.

At the end of the quarter, after finishing Design drawings, I hurriedly wrote out in longhand on notebook paper, a

5000 word essay on "Platonic Conceptualization of Architectural

Detail" and hired a typist. It was the first paper I had written since the one or two composed for high school English.

Needless-to-say, this term paper was an untenable task.

The graded paper was returned to me with a note reading

"save for Keystones," which was the department's journal publication. I knew that this paper was not worthy of publication, much less the "A" attached to the top. If our instructor had read even a segment of the essay he would not have given such praise. But, if he read my work and thought it was good, he was a fraud. I knew he would not write encouraging words on my paper to, in effect, encourage me. Much like architectural Design Studio, Theory course was a class wherein success was predicated on gaining and maintaining a reputation for being "smart." In any event, my idea of graduate school in architecture and its star ensemble was irreparably damaged. Why was success so important to me in a system where value was 108 determined by men I detested and standards to which I could not conform?

Architecture school continued to be a game based on rules that I did not understand or seem to have access to. In studio winter quarter we designed a Lutheran church, with no program and no site requirements. Our teacher was the second biggest star in the school, a man soon to be named Director of an Ivy

League graduate school of design, a most prestigious position for an architect. He was also participating in the Lutheran denomination's national congress meetings focused on splitting the church. Apparently, he wanted the class to work out, through architectural design, ideas he had about the sect's future. This professor seemed approachable, and I felt more comfortable asking him direct questions about what made good design solutions and several other architectural mysteries, although I was still very concerned about his opinion of me and was careful not to push too hard. For example, I was not enthusiastic about designing a church for an organized religion and I wondered about what commissions an architect rejects based on ethical or political convictions. He dismissed my inquiry by telling me not to "think that hard."

Our first assignment that quarter was to read a passage from the Old Testament in the bible and design a structure that was described there in detail - measurements called "cubits" marked off precisely how to draw the specific tent structure.

This assignment was investigating the origin(s) of Christian church typology. But, we were not looking systematically at the historical development of Christian churches, nor specifically 109 at how Lutheran churches diverged architecturally as the sect splintered. After reading this one bible verse and drawing what was found therein, we leapt forward to the design of our contemporary Lutheran structure. I wanted either more or less of the prototype research, but this one passage seemed inapplicable. My drawing based on the bible verse was abstract and when criticized for not taking a literal interpretation, I flippantly replied, "I thought it said 'cubist' not 'cubits."

While members of the cohort found this amusing, the instructor seemed unappreciative of my glibness and labeled my presentation

"profane."

I felt frustrated with the entire term's religious focus, especially since we were not given a church program or a site or any other tangible architectural requirements - the assignment was apparently entirely within the symbolic realm. Considering the meaning of architectural form as symbolic interpretation was interesting, however, I did not understand how to evaluate a

"good" church design from one considered otherwise. The professor, apparently, had no problem determining a grade for the work. At this point grades determined who garnered prestige

- and being accepted because of the quality of my work mattered to me very much. Further, reading the bible is not what I had in mind as research source in architecture school.

I worked dutifully on this Lutheran church design, conjuring a romantic story about building an assembly in the ruins of a "found" ancient stone cruciform structure. Toward the end of the quarter, the star Design instructor told me that

I was finished designing and that I should start on my final 110

presentation boards. He cautioned me not to "fuck it up." This

admonition made me nervous because he made me doubt my

judgement - that I could unknowingly take what was considered a

good design and change it to a bad design with subsequent work.

His choice of words made me uncomfortable, as well. Most every

instructor cursed routine and I found myself as attentive to what I heard as harsh words as to their meaning. I never got used to hearing expletives used as part of the regular

discourse.

The last two weeks of the quarter are traditionally spent

on final presentation boards. The goal is to have completely designed the building on a type of paper referred to as "trace"

or "bumwad" (inexpensive rolls of yellow or white tracing paper) before committing the scheme to finely crafted final drawings.

But, because of time constraints and "last minute" critiques,

students often found themselves in the inopportune circumstance of "designing on the boards." This particular quarter I was in

the enviable position of having the design completed before considering presentation technique and composition. I chose an off-white colored board and led pencil with heavy shading presentation to emphasize the concept of an old stone church within a new Lutheran church. As I began the last two week push

on the boards I experienced a very severe case of the flu.

Certainly, this was an untimely development but I attempted to work through it in studio. Several nights before the project was due, I became ill and went into the women's rest room. A

studio-mate followed me to make sure I would be alright, but I was not. As I became nauseous and feint another student I had Ill never seen before came into the lavatory. She asked my

acquaintance, "what is she on?" During the final week of the quarter, narcotics were heavily circulated throughout studio and apparently my illness was mistaken for an overdosage of an amphetamine.

Drug use in the early 1980s probably signified something different from drug use in the 1960s. At this point the word

"YUPPIE," which represented young urban professionals, was becoming part of the generation's lexicon. Yuppies were known

for, among other things, making fast money, working long hours, valuing urbanity and for using drugs, especially cocaine.

Cocaine was an expensive drug of choice.

Almost every student who was successful in this program

"did" cocaine at least once while in school and they made sure that the other students knew. It was fair to say that many graduate student architects at this urban university envisioned themselves as soon-to-be-yuppies. The only aspect of yuppieness that architecture students did not foresee was the financial.

I managed to finish most of my work for Design. Someone must have informed our instructor that I had become ill and he stopped by my drafting table in studio on the night that drawings were due to ask if I was alright. I found this personal attention very embarrassing and shrugged off his question. No matter the situation, I did not want to be different or appear sickly and weak or have attention called to anything outside of my school work. I was also afraid that

those in authority would mistakenly believe that my diligent work habits were partly due to artificial means. Some students 112 would joke with me about the unusually long hours that I could spend in studio and attribute it to drugs. But, mostly I did not want attention called to my health because I knew that

"wimps" could not take this abusive schooling. Real architects were not wimps.

At this school, instructors often had end-of-the-quarter drawings due at midnight. Juries would begin the following morning. The idea behind this nocturnal deadline was for students to get some sleep before sitting through hours of critiques. It was embarrassing for these star instructors to have invited prominent guest critics - only to spot students struggling to stay awake through the bestowing of what were intended to be words of great wisdom.

As we turned the Lutheran church in at midnight, our instructor, who had a thriving architecture business and who was a visiting studio critic that semester at an Ivy League school, was there to accept our work. I was surprised that he would have the time or inclination to be present at that hour to simply collect drawings.

For our Theory class this Winter quarter I had drawn

Antoine Laugier and I debated Michel Foucault's position, again on the topic of architectural detail. During the debate, I presented the requisite 3 0 minute paper and had four questions prepared to ask my opponent. For his part, the Foucault

"character" played his guitar and served "twinkies" - as symbolic of this side of the debate. I was not sure what he was doing, or what it all meant, but it seemed like a performance 113 art piece. Our instructor, the Director of the school, was amused but not persuaded. Unsure of how or why, I was voted the winner of the debate, while my opponent received a standing ovation.

It was a long cold winter. We spent every available minute in studio, as is the norm in the study of architecture.

Most of the students in my cohort lived in the same part of the city and we tended to leave studio in groups so that we could accompany each other home on public transportation. I did not like being dependent upon other's schedules, but I thought it not safe to depart alone. Our university was on the periphery of the urban core or central business district. It was a campus composed primarily of poured concrete buildings and walkways imposed on a white ethnic neighborhood as part of the 1960s

"urban renewal." The School of Architecture was on the very corner of the campus. It was a convoluted building made of twisted cylindrical volumes of smooth grey concrete capped in milky opaque skylights, but had no windows. There was no hierarchical differentiation between rooms or circulation pathways. Our studio was somewhere in the middle and it was made of a concrete floor, concrete walls and steel desks. It was freezing cold in the winter and broiling hot at the end of spring quarter. There was no fresh air. There was no color.

There was no life there.

Students worked in studio, even though this was essentially a commuter school with most students living a good distance from campus. Three male undergraduates who were 114

Strapped for money literally lived in studio under a stairway.

They had futon mattresses and sleeping bags, flashlights and a

hot plate. Their most valuable accouterment was a mouse trap.

At night, rodents constantly scurried from wall to wall looking

for food. I kept my feet up while drafting at my desk.

Before Spring quarter began, I had financial difficulties myself. Instead of giving up my apartment and moving into

studio, I tried to get a job in an architecture firm, to no

avail. One of the men from another studio who was working as a bartender at a popular restaurant in town got me a job as a waitress. It was a lucrative position, but my hours were long

and late, because they held a 3am liquor license. I liked that

I got out of studio and away from a world that spoke exclusively

of architecture. What bothered me about working wasn't that I was tired that was routine but that I was constantly behind in my work that Spring quarter.

For the third quarter of Theory class, I drew the first

debate, taking the position of historian and critic Manfredo

Tafuri, on the topic of architectural detail. This meant that I

had only one week to complete research for the debate on a

writer of whom I had never heard. In addition, this quarter the

instructor required that the 20-page term paper - typically due

at the end of the quarter - be submitted on the day of each

individual's assigned debate. The students who had the tenth

debate had ten weeks to complete their papers, but the teacher

was not taking the amount of preparation time into consideration

when assessing grades. During the one-week preparation time 115

I would go to my night job at the restaurant and then sleep a couple of hours, before hitting the library. I did the bare minimum for Design Studio and did not attend my other course at all, Tafuri was difficult to read because the translations from

Italian to English left a lot to be desired. Adding to my misery, I learned that on the day that we were to present our debate a star architect from southern Switzerland would be in class. This all made me very nervous.

While doing research for the debate at a local museum's library, I inadvertently came across a publication called "The

Feminist Arts Journal." It was early in the morning when I turned the first page, but I did not leave that library until it closed and I had read every copy of the FAJ they had, skipping my afternoon Studio class for the first time, ever. It was the most comforting day of my architectural life. For the first time I felt that I was not alone nor crazy for feeling so alienated from this male-defined physical and philosophical environment.

From the evaluation and comments attached to the first and second quarter's work, I understood that the papers we wrote may be only tangentially related to our assigned topic/theorist.

Our star instructor kept pushing us to write experimental or provocative papers, to "take a fucking stand about this architecture bullshit." So I wrote a "term" paper about the future of architecture from a decidedly feminist perspective, predicting that the next great architecture would emanate from women and that it would not be about stylist innovation but about architecture that empowers. I got all of the ideas for 116

this paper from the "Feminist Arts Journal," - adding an

introduction intended to catch attention, at least, and, more ambitiously, to inflame. The teacher seemed to like it when theory class led to heated exchanges and the ideas expressed were "on the fucking edge." He thought of his own written and built work in those terms. I thought he would finally think me not a spineless wimp.

The first line of the paper read, "I am thankful that I was not born male."

The teacher apparently did not read the papers until the final week of the quarter. He read parts of mine out-loud to his Design Studio class composed of 14 men and one woman, adding sarcastic side-long glances and a running commentary about

"bitchy women." These students were my senior, each in their last week of a Master's degree program regarded as the upper echelon of the school - the best (design) students. I was generally intimidated by them.

While working in my studio I could hear roaring laughter emanating from this top level studio next door. After class, many of the men made it a point to let me know that they, too, were glad that I "was not born male." They quite liked me physically as a girl, thank you. That is how I learned that my risky writing had been turned into comedy relief. I was completely mortified. I did not again raise a conspicuous feminist finger in the school.

The instructor's comments on the paper graded "B" were,

"...good paper poorly written and inadequately reinforced from a scholarly point of view. Obviously deeply felt, at times. 117 movingly written." There was no request that I save this essay for the department's journal, as with the two previous poorly conceived papers, nor any acknowledgement that it would have been impossible to reinforce, with references, my position in two short weeks.

He nonetheless recommended me and another two students in the class for the one graduate assistantship in the Art and

Architectural History department for the following year. After interviewing the three of us, the History Professors hired me to be their research assistant, financially allowing me to quit my restaurant serving job. At the interview I volunteered that I intended to practice architecture for only a short while and then I wanted to pursue an advanced degree in History. Although

I was not directly fabricating my future goals, as I had no real plan per se, I said this with the direct hope that it would help get me the position. At this point I would have said just about anything to "win" this position from my two studio-mates for whom I had real disdain. They liked this response and felt it an open opportunity to inform me of their ardent dislike for architects. "Their egos are bigger than the Sears Tower and their scholarship could fit in a doll house." I too disliked architects.

I desperately wanted to understand more about women in architecture.

The summer between the first and second year in graduate school I worked for an upscale retail development company. I needed the money. Or, at least, that is what I told my friends who were working for more design oriented architecture firms for 118 about $5.00 and hour. I further rationalized my higher paying summer job by noting that the company hired "signature" architecture firms to design their urban malls. I was learning about corporate design review while earning enough money to live in this city.

What made this position palatable was that I was one of only seven architects, working in a beautiful high-rise office, with a hundred other office workers who were attorneys, secretaries, leasing agents, managers, accountants, etc. I liked the relative diversity and that there were other women around. I liked that this was a "clean" environment without paper and led pencil droppings smearing my shirt sleeves. I took the subway to work at a regular hour and left the office in time to "have a life." It seemed close to what other white- collar professionals were doing. This felt "normal." This was not being an architect, however. It was being some sort of business person that we were trained to resent for being artless, lazy, and motivated by money.

When school began again in the fall, I missed how civilized my summer job felt. I returned to the dirty, bleak, cold and ugly concrete hell with dread. It was to be an entire year of Studio Design with the Director of the school, the

Theory class instructor from the previous curriculum year. He had invited a different star architect per quarter from outside the university to co-teach the course with him.

The Autumn quarter the guest critic was a famous partner from an historically famous corporate firm renowned for its innovative high rise structural systems and building forms. He 119 was a white man in his late 50s who came to studio in a suit and tie and with an entourage of younger associates from his firm.

I do not remember him regularly speaking directly to students.

He usually talked to our star instructor about student's projects, as if we would not understand him and we would need the teacher to interpret. Another architect that was part of his architectural "support group" usually critiqued the projects more directly.

The project for design was a multi-use high-rise located on a boulevard in our city - at the base was retail, the middle held a hotel and at the top were condominiums. Although we were not told this at the time, it was a real project in negotiation in his firm and the class's ideas operated as conceptual design development. The architects who accompanied the partner to our class were there primarily to mine our ideas for the design of this skyscraper.

What we were told was to work on this large project in groups and ordered to "choose sides" on the first day of class.

It reminded me of selecting teams for a pick-up game of some sort. The lesser "athletes" fearing that they would be the last to be chosen or end up composing weaker teams.

Again this year the 9 students in my 2 year Master's degree cohort, referred to as 4 + 2, were integrated with other students from the Option-1 program. The new students were those holding a 5 or 6 year professional degree in architecture returning to school for a Master's degree. The three men and one woman joining our class were there for a variety of reasons.

Two of them wanted to teach architecture and thought that this 120 design degree would help their chances and expand their design

skills. Another student fancied himself a fine artist and wanted to work on his architectural design skills to help him

"self-actualize." The last student wanted to establish an architecture practice in this city, having moved from the deep

South, and thought a nine month degree program with the stars would be fine entree. The three men were licensed architects, with years of professional experience. The woman student was an enigma, as she offered no personal information outside of which undergraduate school she attended. The studio was full of rumors about her, from the gossip that she had divorced a horse rancher while living in Eastern Europe to which star instructor in the school she was currently dating. The men in my studio seemed to be very interested in her personal life. If I was hoping for a woman architect to whom to relate, she would not be the one; she was disinterested in any studio friendship.

The instructor sat down on a couch in our studio with a pen and paper ready to log the names of the team members, shortly after he told us that we would be working in groups.

There was no time for backstage negotiations nor opportunity to talk with each other to determine who wanted to work together.

As the all important group composition took shape the new

Option-1 student that I and another student had informally spoken with before class said, "I'd like to be in a group with

Carla and K. if they will have me." I was not at all sure about participating on a team with this man but could not think of any gracious way to beg off. Working with my best friend K. would be pleasant but probably not the best match of our abilities. 121

The instructor assigned each team a "parti" (an overall plan configuration or building footprint.) Our team was to design a building that was an "H" formation, while other teams were given a courtyard parti (a building shaped like a donut,) an "I" plan, and so on. Left alone to work in studio, the three of us began to generate a conceptual design ideas and then to share the work of drawing them up for presentation. We seemed to enjoy one another's company and actually had fun while working together. We were given the project at 5 o'clock on

Thursday and told to have something to show the next time the class met - at 9 o'clock the following morning.

Unlike previous years, where we mainly had desk crits, all of our critiques were to be "pin-ups," for public comment, for the entire year. Each day was like a jury. When I heard this,

I felt sick.

It seemed ridiculous to everyone that we had so little time to get acquainted with the project before having to show drawings for critique. My group produced the initial design, delineating it on yellow tracing paper, pulling an all nighter with the rest of the studio on the first day of classes.

Working in the group we kept our attitude light hearted, using humor to maintain harmony when we were obviously tired. Looking around in the morning, we determined that our work was comparable to the others' and we consoled each other that pin-up was better in a group as responsibility was dispersed. The

Option-1 student volunteered to speak for us.

The critique was ugly. Although the Option-1 student presented our project, the critics asked each of us questions 122 about the design. Our star instructor took up where he had left off the previous school year, calling me a "spineless wimp" and

"a fucking disaster" when I could not answer questions about the number of elevators, location of all entries, and other details we had no time to work out. It was humiliating and uniquely positioned our group as the first day losers.

The new student was shocked by the outbursts. This was his introduction to this star he wanted so to impress, and K. and I could tell that he was devastated that as a group we were not effective. He told me that he was used to being a star, the best student in school and a general success at architecture.

After this first day of critique, this student asked to be moved to another group, in just the same public manner he requested that we become a group. The star granted his request, noting that no one should be expected put up with "hacks" like K. and me. I thought that if I intended to survive this final year of architecture school, I would have to become a very thick skinned person.

K. and I genuinely enjoyed working together but our efforts were continually undermined. The quarter fit a painful emotional and physical pattern for us. We would work from

Sunday through Thursday afternoon when we presented our design.

After being told that what we had accomplished was wretched and to start over, we would stay up all night and present again on

Friday morning. Again, we were castigated and told to make revisions for Saturday morning studio. We would pull a second consecutive all-nighter in studio drawing up alternative designs. After studio on Saturday, we would go to our 123 respective homes and sleep and then return to studio on Sunday to start the sequence over again. Our studio-mates said that they felt sorry for us as no one else was so consistently "beat u p . "

When we were presenting at the pin-up, the instructor would let us know that it was our turn by calling for the "pussy cat" team, referring to our rather mild demeanor. We presented first almost every day. He would sadistically trick us up - asking us alternatively about details that we did not have time to work out then shouting that we were "wrong!" Everyday was a greater public humiliation. I would just hold my breath until

it was over and until we were told to totally redesign the project.

Toward the end of the quarter when teams were making preparations to begin final presentation drawings, K. and I had only fragments of a building designed. We were named "poster children for designing on the boards," by the others in studio who took up a collection of speed (the amphetamine) for us.

They created a mock telethon for us, with one man acting as

Jerry Lewis presenting us with the package. I never took the drug, but appreciated the humor. During the quarter we thought some of our design concepts had merit, even though we were given no encouragement. So, recognizing the fact that we were required to present a full set of drawings at the finals week jury to pass the course, we returned to some of our

original ideas, and then drew as fast and as well as we could.

For just over two weeks, I slept only three or four hours every

other night. I would bring a change of clothing to campus with 124 me and shower in the physical education building's locker room,

as I did not go home every day. K. was not as hardy nor as

relentless as I and he would take the subway home each day to

fend off depression and exhaustion. He felt guilty about that, even though I said that I understood and was familiar with and accepting of his work habits.

K. and I spent Thanksgiving in studio, as well, consoling ourselves that our families lived far away and that we could not have gone home regardless of the work before us. To cheer us up, one of our studio-mates and his family came into studio with dinner. They also brought comical stuffed animals that they had bought from a second had thrift store to keep us company.

Setting up a makeshift table, K. arranged the animals as if they were dinner companions and we ate our meal alone, together. For dessert we went back to the boards.

Juries for our Design Studio were the centerpiece of the school's program. The big event was treated like an art opening at a gallery, with wine and cheese and beautiful guests dressed in black. Our drawings were hung in the department's white walled gallery space, one after the other, so that the walls were filled with huge, colorful architectural drawings. The stellar list of guest critics, all white middle-aged men, traveling from both coasts and from large cities in the midwest, read like they were off the pages of the latest architecture magazine. Before the "show" began, students from all over the school and various practicing architects from the city walked through the room to see the work. 125

We drew right up to the critique, allowing enough time to go home and change into "dress" clothes. Out of the six projects, ours was to be reviewed third. The star instructor told us that he would start and end with the strongest designs, burying the worst projects in the middle. We considered ourselves literally and figuratively buried. K. and I prepared an oral description of our work, making jokes about talking and then "flinching" or "ducking" or at least protecting our heads if they threw things at us. We took solace in the notion that we still had senses of humor and that our drawings actually looked impressive, if not completely finished, delineated to emphasize the strengths of the project. We drew as much as the teams that had three members and many students in our cohort expressed surprise at out progress. I think that I lost any perspective or ability to evaluate architecture presentations and design - I could not tell if this was a good or a bad representation of the quarter's work.

The first team, composed of our own "studio stars-in-the- making," presented their high-rise to the jurors in an uncharacteristically quiet way, pointing out their design's conceptual strengths and walking the audience through the project. They appeared either nervous or respectful of the critics' reputations, as usually this group was rather arrogant in attitude.

They were destroyed. The critics abhorred the design and told them in no uncertain terms that the effort lacked integrity. Our studio instructors leapt to their defense, leading to a verbal sparing match with the guest critics 126 deflecting some of the harsh words away from the students. I realized how much of his own reputation our star instructor had

invested in his students work. Our architecture reflected his worth. He wanted the guest architects, as critics, to be impressed with how he had inspired and driven us and how we had furthered the form of Post-modern architecture. As students, we were to project the place of this school on the front edge of architectural design and discourse.

With the second student project presented things went from bad to worse. This was the Option-1 student who requested that he be removed from a group with K. and me and when no other group agreed to add him, he presumably worked on this large project alone. But, the cohort knew that this was a two- architect project. As an example of a rather new twist on the two person heterosexual couple career - he worked at home on the boards where his architect-wife helped him draw. He even confided in me that she took a week off from work to assist him.

She could not help when the jury lambasted her husband's project and he became defensive and belligerent. The more he protested the greater the architects rejected his design decisions. The last thing they said about his project was that, while the multi-use building may be functional, its elevations were just plain ugly.

K. and I were resigned to the notion that if these better projects were failing, that ours would be a disaster of magnificent proportions. As our turn approached we looked at each other, took deep breaths and then read from our note cards.

I was too nervous to just casually talk about our design as the 127

Others before us had and I did not want to leave any necessary

information out of my description, knowing that once I was finished speaking I would not get another chance.

The first thing that one juror said was, "now this is a handsome facade!" He liked the elevation that I designed and I was dumbfounded. With that positive comment the other critics took his lead and praised our work. We received the only positive review of the day, but our star studio instructor did not acknowledge this or concede that perhaps we were not as hopeless as we were led to believe. So, while we surmised that we had "won the battle" we knew that inevitably our problems were not over. We had two quarters of design left to persevere.

After the big design jury was complete, two of the local stars approached K. and me about working in their offices during our four week winter break. They handed us a business card and told us to call. We both accepted a six dollar per hour job in the most prestigious of the firms and began work the day after final exams were completed, without taking a day off. K. and I were put on the same housing project, still considered a team in this office. As I sat on my drafting stool the first day behind

K . , I was unable to put my pencil to paper at all. Everyone else belonged there and they seemed to have so much confidence.

I had no faith in my ability. At the end of eight hours, the project architect came over to see what I had accomplished and when I explained that I was "burnt out" he suggested that I take a few days off. I resigned over the phone the following morning, embarrassed and panicked about what was wrong with me.

They sent me a paycheck for $48.00. K. worked at this office 128 for the next 12 years, resigning to open his own firm with his architect partner/wife.

Our guest studio instructor during the Winter quarter was an architect from California with three names (a la Frank Lloyd

Wright.) He was a white man in his thirties heavily steeped in what he called "Italian Post-modern architecture" but what was more understandably some sort of retro or literal or representational neo-classical style that utilized the Roman orders in a pastiche of facades. I thought his work was unusually ugly - with awkward proportions and heavy handed interpretations of style. I thought that it was indicative of his aesthetic sense that he did not have many clients and all of the work that we students saw was in drawing form. Except for his own home, I did not think that he had any architecture actually built, but he was considered a Post-modern rising star.

We were not assigned a big quarter-long building to design. Rather, we were given a new project each week. The first week we had to design an arsenal that was written about in

Greek literature. The following week we designed a bath, Roman style. Each week was another study of the Classical orders - doric, ionic, Corinthian and so on - using Beaux Arts style water colors. Students who were from undergraduate schools that actually designed buildings with programs, sites, and other

functional requirements largely resented this work. If this was architecture for the latter half of the 20th Century, they wanted no part of it. After years of the profession teaching 129

modern architecture's form following function formula in North

American universities, this was revolutionary. We just did not

experience it as such.

I anticipated the end of architecture school with glee; graduation could not come fast enough. The final quarter was not going to "get" me, I vowed, either emotionally or physically. It was a relief when we learned that the New York architect scheduled to guest star for Spring quarter canceled his visiting appointment at the last moment. Our instructor

replaced him with a lesser architect from the faculty with whom he could get along. One had the idea that our pompous and mean

spirited teacher the school Director school had few friends on

faculty.

The first day of the final quarter in Design Studio, we

learned that we were to design two buildings - one was the urban

corporate headquarters for a U. S. meat "manufacturer" and the

other was an abattoir. I had never heard the word "abattoir" and thought it some sort of French prototype, such as the Roman

coliseum or Greek temple. I felt sick when I learned that it was a slaughter house.

The second day of studio we took a bus trip down state,

into the heart of farming country, to visit a real working

slaughter house. It was not organized as an optional excursion, but as a requirement of the course. We had not visited an

arsenal, a bath house, or a Lutheran church when we designed

those. Why the realism now? 130

The day we visited the killing floors they were slaughtering hogs. The ordeal went as follows: outside of the building the animal was stunned with an electrical shock to the skull so that the workers could clamp a hook and chain on the hog's back leg, lifting the squealing animal into the air and up into an opening in the structure where a man with a knife awaited to gouge a hole into the suffering animal's throat. As it bled to death, gravity took the animal down a line of assorted butchers who hacked off the limbs, the tail, the ears, the coat, the snout, and so on, until the live animal was carved into package sized meat products or to a manageable sized carcass for shipping.

It was a holocaust. Every one of my senses was shocked and sickened. Something here was horribly wrong. The live animals were being kicked and viciously prodded as they were forced into progressively smaller pens. Their shrieks of suffering got increasingly louder and more pathetic until the loudest one of all came as their throats were slit. The air smelled of death and what I used to think of as manure. I could feel my stomach turn and my head was spinning. Could I believe my eyes? These poor creatures were treated as if they could not feel, treated as objects, as commodities, as products.

There were sheep that looked like fluffy stuffed toys in pens next to the hogs awaiting their fate, as well. They would stick their tongues out toward us as we walked by and make soft noises. I thought they were thirsty and looked around to get them some water. A man in my class said my actions were ridiculous as the sheep were to be cut up the following day. 131

Was it that they should spend their final night suffering from thirst? I wanted to free them. It was too late for the hogs, but the sheep still had a chance...

Inside the building, we watched as the laborers used huge knives to cut up the still warm and bleeding animals.

Everything was blood red - it saturated their aprons, splattered on the walls and ran down the drains in the floor. All of the workers were men and they were putting on a show for what was probably their first tour group. They smiled and leered at us as we gawked at their actions. The self-actualizing fine artist student objectively took polaroid photographs of the killing floor. What was he doing? He treated this like we were on a field trip to see a monument.

Just as in studio, radios blared rock and roll music from a.m. stations as the working set about their tasks. We could still hear those doomed animals screaming above the din as they were being dismembered. When we walked by, the men whistled and hooted after the other woman in the class and me. They shouted that they liked "the one in the blue coat" or "look at her." A male student thought it was funny to tell me, "that guy over there wants you." When I turned to look, I saw a man covered in blood and holding a knife, throwing mock kisses, making catcalls and wiggling his hips at me. He was a gyrating

Elvis, using the knife as a microphone. A partially vivisected animal swung between him and me, obstructing his view. He

lunged at the creature with his butchers knife, savagely slashing it. Men every where were laughing and looking for my

reaction. 132

We were paraded into every nook and cranny of the slaughter house. We saw freezers stocked with cows and closets of body parts and shipping docks. Our final stop was the suit and tie wearing manager's office. It had a carpeted floor and wall-papered walls and hung above the wood desk and upholstered chair was a center-fold poster of a naked woman lying on her side. Her gaze was seductively aimed at the camera, but the photo of her body had been dotted off into parts. The sections were labeled, "flank steak, shank, rump roast, breast," etc.

She was meat. I thought that I was next, that they would electrocute me and string me up and slit my throat. Many things that I already knew, that I needed to learn, that I could not escape - converged that day.

Again, we were given no site for our project so I placed the slaughter house that I designed at the exit of a freeway that ran through sparsely populated farm country. Depicting the four corners that would result from a cloverleaf off ramp "in the middle of nowhere," I positioned a farm at one corner, a cemetery at the other, and a McDonald's fast food restaurant across from the abattoir. This-not-so subtle metaphor was intended to dissolve hierarchy and promote eco-feminism - that the slaughtered animals were hamburgers sold at McDonalds to

"man" who lived on the farm and raised the crops grown from the earth where humans was buried, decomposing into soil. There is no nature/civilization split, no man at the apex of a food chain as at this exit all sites were of equal size both symbolically and physically. 133

The abattoir itself was also intended to represent

equality, wherein people and animals had broadly conceived of

similar experiences. Animals were stunned, the workers punched

the clock. Noting the privilege of social class distinctions with the separation of management and labor, the white-collared workers' offices were walled in glass and placed on the line across from the butchers dismembering the animals. The office workers were forced to face the slaughter.

The hours of work were further abstracted as time was

replaced with a paycheck. The animals were abstracted as they were partitioned - a cow's life was taken and then labeled beef, steak, or Big Mac. Every line that I drew fit into the story, including how architecture itself was a colonizing activity.

To design this slaughter-house required students to suppress any sense of social conscience. It required us to devalue our own sense of "humanity" (broadly defined) for the sake of a grade. In fact, I realized that this is what I had been doing for six years.

The instructors and the students hated this work. My classmates took turns giving me advice about changing my design.

They alternatively told me that I was either insulting them, so

I should change my work, or that they were worried that I would fail the course, so I should change my work. I was deeply offended by this sudden attention paid to my architecture and responded by turning up my walkman until it was so loud that I could not think, only draw. I listened to Joe Jackson singing 134

"Look Sharp!" and the Talking Heads, "Stop the Music" over and over.

The other woman in the cohort took me aside and spoke to me about my attitude and my slaughter house design. She told me that as an older, wiser, more successful and experienced woman she recognized that I "needed some help." She suggested that I was acting immature and "over the edge." She went on to say that my abattoir was not functional: I did not have proper drainage for the killing floor and certainly not enough refrigerator space. It was the very first time that she spoke directly to me.

I did not understand her, although, I understood her architecture. Her work was always functional, well drawn, complete, and unassuming. She worked out this slaughter house in minute detail, so that Oscar Meyer Corporation could have taken her drawings and built a functioning house of pain. I could not have designed that building. I did not want to. For me her work symbolized the maintenance of the status quo - the acceptance of treating sentient beings as objects of treating me as an object.

The star-studded jury at the end of the quarter Big Event listened to my architectural story and asked a few questions, but no one would discuss the philosophy that underpinned my structure. They gave me pointers on how to formally resolve an awkward intersection of the vivisected animal and human circulation path.

I graduated. CHAPTER VI

FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Before I began studying Sociology, I intended to return, formally and full-time, to Architecture - as though time without the culture and constant presence of Architecture were only a detour. My identity was still defined squarely within the ideas of Architecture. Throughout sociology graduate studies, I continued my practice, taking the odd design job during the summer or between quarters, but usually not working for a firm with colleagues.

I put together a professional portfolio, compiled writing samples, and successfully applied for architecture faculty positions. However, newly equipped with a Sociological perspective, life within the culture of Architecture was now quite different. In Architecture, I identified as a Sociologist who understood interaction and macro processes in ways that my colleagues did not. I immediately recognized the negative climate for women and the general culture of exclusion.

THE INTERVIEW

Via the fax machine, I received a detailed schedule that noted, to the quarter hour, with whom and where I would interview. On the correspondence my name had been misspelled in several different ways, and there were many grammatical errors.

135 I remembered that architects do not pay attention to such things and I guessed that the author of the memo, the chair of the search committee, was probably an accomplished artist.

My interview began with a breakfast meeting with two of the three women architects on faculty. As the three of us sat over orange juice and muffins, I got the sense that the women, who were roughly my age, had not spent very much time together.

When I asked them about the availability of rental housing, one woman asked the other where she lived. That was the only time they spoke to each other, while alternating turns talking with me about their very separate areas within the department - one was in Interior Design and the other taught Computer Aided

Design. Understanding that women are often pitted against each other as if in direct competition for limited "female" spots in male-dominated organizations (Ranter, 1977) , I was immediately concerned about the their communication dynamic.

The next meeting was scheduled with the Dean of the

(various disciplinary) Arts Department. As I got to his office, the Associate Dean met me with the news that the Dean was ill and that I would spend the next 3 0 minutes with her instead. We had a pleasant interview staged as a conversation until the

Director of the School of Architecture arrived to bring me to his office. He passed along the Dean's sincerest apology for being called into an important conference and reported that the

Dean regretted not meeting me.

My "job talk" was about the prevalence of gendered expectations in society in general and in the practice of architecture, specifically. I showed slides of my professional

136 137 architecture work and used humor to deflect attention from the politically challenging nature of the topic itself. When it

came time to take questions, I was asked about what I thought of

their department - e.g. how to integrate interior design and architecture instruction - and about the discipline of

sociology. No one addressed the topics covered in my lecture.

The next meeting was with the search committee. As we sat around a conference table, the group took turns asking me pre­ determined questions, that I learned were asked of all candidates. What courses would I want to teach? What areas - college service, research, teaching, or community service - would I emphasize? The Chair asked, "why do we teach students to considered their parents' home decorating as embarrassingly kitsch or "profane" as a substitute for our concept of real architecture?" My answer to this question focused on process and "taste" vis a vis class as a means of social control, and it set off an impassioned debate among the members of the committee.

A woman on the architecture faculty brought the meeting back to my interview. The Chair asked, "How do we know that you will finish your Ph.D?" I was scheduled to take my general exams two months after this interview and to be ABD when/if I began this job. Rather than assure him that I would complete my degree, I questioned his motivation, "Are you holding me to standards that are higher or different from those of other applicants?" A doctoral degree was not a requirement for this

Assistant Professor position because Architecture schools are professional degree granting institutions, the faculty need only 138 hold an undergraduate degree and demonstrate (situationally defined) "professional success." The Chair of the department who questioned my future accomplishments held an undergraduate degree. No one on the search committee had more than a Master's degree in architecture. I have a Master's in Architecture and in Sociology and am a registered/licensed architect.

When I questioned the potential for unequal standards applied to candidates, another committee member held up my vitae and said that it demonstrated my commitment and ability to complete goals. "I don't think we have to worry about her finishing." My earning the degree was not the point; dual standards was. The woman on the committee acted as referee, saying that they had agreed to ask all of the applicants the same questions and they had already strayed far enough from the agenda.

The remainder of the day was spent with various groups of students and with the Director of the school who was supposed to have taken me on tours of the university and surrounding neighborhoods. Handing me a map of the campus, the Director showed me the door and told me to return at my leisure. When I got back from my self-guided tour, I asked the Director a series of questions about the university, the department and the school of architecture. He assured me that I would have access to adequate computer equipment and other support services if hired.

I learned of their benefit package and retirement plan.

ACCEPTING THE ROLE 139

Several weeks later, when the Director called to offer me the job, I accepted. When I was in architecture school, I wanted to be an instructor someday. I thought that I would treat the position differently, that I would do "better" by the students.

To accept this position, I was moving to a city where I knew no one. I called the department and asked if they had a housing service, or at least could give me some direction for neighborhoods and apartment rentals. The secretary said that she would leave the Chair a message but to her knowledge, they offered no such assistance, and none was ever offered.

Weeks before classes began the department had contacted me, so I called them to find out what I was teaching, when the classes met, and how I ordered text and other books. The Chair answered my questions and then asked me about the choice of assigning books for my seminar on Architecture and Social

Responsibility. He said that generally, for seminars, the instructor puts together a reader full of articles that he chooses, and has them copied for students to purchase. I told him that I was also assigning a reader and without knowing the extent he said, "Oh, that is too much reading."

I also found out that I was team teaching Sophomore architectural Design Studio and took the initiative to call the

Professor with whom I would work. He set up a meeting to familiarize the team - another full, tenured Professor, a graduate teaching associate, and me - with the curriculum and student expectations. On the day we were to meet, I arrived on campus early to move some of my belongings into my office. The 140 only person around was the department secretary, who unlocked my office door. The space was a mess. My room had been used by the 12 graduate teaching assistants as an office, and they had discarded semi-empty pizza boxes, hamburger wrappers, reams of paper, notebooks, cardboard from models, used x-acto knife blades, broken window shades and three-legged chairs around the room. I could not see the floor.

I asked the secretary how I could contact housekeeping or maintenance. She said that there was no such service and that I would have to clean the room myself. She continued to say that,

"If you don't clean it then I will have to and I don't want to clean your office." She went to a closet and brought out the oldest, most dilapidated upright vacuum possible and when I plugged it in, the Hoover spewed black dust everywhere. I brought in some cleaning supplies from my car and was scrubbing when the Director of the School stopped by and apologized for the mess. He said that there were budgetary cutbacks and that we all had to "pitch in."

No other faculty member had an office in such disarray. I jokingly asked the Director if the graduate students responsible for leaving the room in this condition could likewise "pitch in." He said that I would know how "men are all slobs," since I did my research on "that sort of thing." So my role was beginning to take shape - when thought of at all, I was the one who knew all things "gender." At this point I knew that I was not welcome.

I cleaned the office and then learned that I was to share it with another faculty member. Everyone told me how lucky I 141 was since the room was so large, we had the biggest office in

the building. My office-mate was a full Professor who was a graduate of this institution and had been on faculty there for over 25 years. Save for when he was teaching, this faculty member was always in the office.

The first day of classes our "team" of Studio Design

instructors was assembled in front of the students, introducing the course. The Full Professor assured the students that they could ask any of the four of us a question, that we were co- equals in teaching this course and that we were all "on the same page." He said, "You can ask Professor M., Professor W., Carla or Karen anything." Karen was the graduate teaching associate.

The Professor then broke the students up into four sections and one student assigned to my group asked if he would also get crits from "a professor."

I further partitioned the students assigned to my section

into groups of four. They would participate in "crit groups" to present their work around a table, wherein each of us was required to discuss the projects. I gave the students examples of what was expected from them as co-advisors (not critics) and showed them how to talk about another student's architecture in constructive ways.

The students who were in the star subculture protested

this tactic. They wanted a jury. Further, they said that the projects that were assigned were not "Design" projects - they knew Design when they were assigned it and this was not

Architectural Design. The Sophomore Design Studio was

traditionally taught as a "design process" studio. This first 142 quarter the students were to analyze great houses designed by great architects - all white and male. They had to draw them first, so that our initial discussions were centered around drafting technique. They were right, this was not traditional design studio work. Because I had nothing to do with choosing their projects and because I was new to the school I pleaded "no contest" to their accusations, but, I was concerned about how early the students had internalized what was and was not architecture.

They had learned about the place of architectural Design

Studio their first year in the school. Professional socialization had taken hold, they had mentors from the sixth year studios who let them know the real story. It was not really architecture school unless they were "pulling all nighters" and presenting their work jury-style. They did not take my reasonable and "supportive" environment seriously.

The seminar course that I taught was much more effective.

The course was titled, "Architecture and Social Responsibility" and most students assumed it was a technical class about how to use material without endangering the environment or how to design public housing. While we peripherally discussed those topics, the class focused on the exclusivity of the profession.

The question I asked the 20 students assembled on the first day of class was, "Why are there so few people of color practicing architecture?" The all white and predominantly male class sat silently and looked uncomfortable. Eight students dropped the course on the first day and 5 others added it after 143 hearing, by word-of-mouth, about what they thought might be an interesting class. Eventually, the assigned readings led to lively class discussions and we made a safe class space in which to speak of "sensitive" topics. The second quarter that I taught this course the class was capped at 25 and there were 28 on the waiting list.

COLLEAGUE INTERACTION - A CHILLY CLIMATE

Early in the first quarter that I was on faculty the secretary's union, "9 to 5," went on strike. The day they formed picket lines I was carrying a high pile of books into the architecture building to place in my office. An older man I recognized as an architecture faculty member held the door open for me. He said, "Why are you working, I thought you gals were on strike?" I introduced myself by name as a member of the faculty and he looked very confused. Although I knew to anticipate that others perceived being a woman and an architect as inconsistent statuses, with each confrontation I was feeling more isolated, and I missed being around Sociologists.

The Director of the School called me into his office shortly after this encounter to find out why I was, "so very anti-social?" He related to me that one of the faculty members, the reputed star of the school, said that I do not say "hello" to him when I passed in the hall. I told him that I had not yet met this man, did not know what he looked like, and that I would never knowingly snub someone in this way. He also let me know that everyone wondered why I was never in my office. I explained that I was in my office for my scheduled office hours, 144 but that having no computer there and sharing my office with another faculty member who was regularly on the phone (he was the Assistant Director of a Study Center involved with fund raising) discouraged my spending time in my office. I was supposed to be focusing on finishing my dissertation, but without a computer and without a quiet environment, I could not do that.

He let me know that I was talked about. Who were these ever vigilant people, intent on logging my whereabouts? Because no one had even asked me to lunch or made an effort to include me in any other way, let alone introduce themselves to me, I was surprised that I was acknowledged at all. Again, simply understanding that tokens experience heightened visibility did not lessen my discomfort.

The Director then took me to the office of the star who thought me ignoring him, and introduced us. In making conversation, the star said that he had heard that I worked in the office of T. and wondered what it was like to be so employed. I gave a noncommittal and non-judgmental reply, "It was challenging." He said that the two of them were old pals having attended an Ivy League Architecture school together and that he knew T. had a reputation for being tough. He added, "He would be difficult for dark, curly haired girls." He was referring to my appearance. The Director then said that this man had played college football and the star seemed very pleased, imitating someone who would appear humble about such exploits. The star asked if I could guess which position he played. This older grey haired white man was slightly taller 145 than I am, with a waist-line that represented years of sedate living. I would have guessed that he was the football, rather than a player. Using better judgement, I said, "guard?" He went on to tell a football and architecture stories and I thanked the Director for introducing us. Extending my hand to him as I was leaving, intending him to shake it, he clasped my hand in both of his hands and kissed it.

This was not the last that I heard about my being thought of as socially unavailable. The Chair of the department who had questioned my ability to complete my dissertation at the job interview, let me know that it was best to be seen during the day in the building. I asked that the department furnish me with an IBM compatible computer if they wanted me to spend time on campus. They had three McIntosh computers for faculty use in a small room that also housed the photocopier. Getting work done there was impossible, even if one used that format. He said that they did not have the funds for such "luxuries." If they bought me a computer, then everyone should get one, they would have to be fair. In my job interview the Director assured me that I would have the equipment, although he said that he did not recall such a conversation. The Chair said that I could use the secretary's computer and printer after she left each day or while she was at lunch.

In addition to my daily whereabouts, my choice of home or neighborhood was also a topic of contention. The Chair of the department regularly told me that I was living in the wrong area of town, "where the conservatives live." Posturing as a

"liberal," he said that the better neighborhood, where "they all 146 lived" was his neighborhood a mile from campus. I explained that it was also my first choice but that I could not find rental housing there and had to settle for another area that was about five miles away. Given my request for help finding a place to live, his criticism was particularly bothersome. In addition, using political correctness as a measuring stick - that the conservatives live where I do - was an effective way to neutralize my professional work. Often in the first year of my working at this university, when I would challenge the status quo, the Chair would bring up where I lived to illustrate inconsistent behavior. "How could someone who lives in the Park have progressive or liberal ideas?"

Those challenges came early in my tenure. I was placed on the most contested departmental committee set to revamp the curriculum. This committee had been in place many years before

I was hired, with the same mission - to overhaul and update the required courses and the sequence in which they appeared. The faculty had developed courses over long careers and felt quite attached to their work. No one wanted their classes moved, eliminated, or changed, and they did not want to develop new course work themselves. In addition, reflective of personal ideological beliefs, these firmly entrenched Professors and their likewise entrenched classes had political consequences that they were unwilling to acknowledge.

At a full faculty meeting where our committee presented curriculum changes that touched almost everyone, there was an immediate uproar. Old arguments were relived and rehashed and grown men acted like children, appealing to the Director of the 147 department like he was a father deliberating between sibling squabbles over toys. Because I was new, they used my presence to explain the historical development of a course or a personal argument between factions. Each man took turns explaining, directly to me, some aspect of their personal and scholastic histories. I was very uncomfortable in this position as one- woman audience and extremely bored with their endless dramatizations. There were two curriculum committee meetings each week and they were marathons, lasting for hours. I wondered when these men got their work accomplished for all of their wrangling.

The first time that I voluntarily involved myself with their decision making was over the title of history courses.

There existed a series of required courses for Architecture and

Interior Design students called "The History of World

Architecture." However, when looking not-so-closely at the course content, I saw that it was really the history of Western architecture, (or what critics considered architecture.) The only buildings presented from Africa were the pyramids and from

Asia there was a hotel attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright, an architect from the United States.

Although politically I had a problem with the "great men, great architecture" format of teaching something referred to as

"the" history of architecture, I asked only that they change the title of the course to reflect its content. Substitute

"Western" for "World," thereby more accurately representing course content and indirectly displacing the centrality of considering European ideals universally. This request was met 148 with great resistance from everyone, even those I thought would support it. One man who had expressed support for, among other ideas, honoring cultural diversity and even feminism, cited a noted architectural historian who was affiliated with the

University of California at Berkeley and wrote the text for the class "World History of Architecture." "Spiro Kostoff teaches this course the same way," he said. I was astonished - invoking the name of the textbook author and a Greek-American as authority - was paradoxical.

The other time I spoke my mind about the curriculum was regarding their mentoring program. This long established tradition had select sixth year students assigned to two or three first quarter freshmen, to "show them the ropes." The head of the sixth year, the self-promoted star of the school, hand picked the mentors in what became an honor for these soon- to-graduate students. What the mentors had in common was their unquestioning devotion to architecture as fear based education.

The sophomore students that I regularly taught told me how their mentors scared them into working hard, how they told them about which professors were "pussies" and which were "studs," and above all that majoring in architecture was the toughest curriculum in the entire university. Only the best and the brightest and the most committed succeeded. Indeed, the culture of Architecture was handed from generation to generation.

Most of the freshmen were 18 years old, just out of high school, and although this architecture program had entrance requirements, there is no way to evaluate who would withstand the added pressure. The second year Design students talked 149 about members of their cohort who were scared out of the program. One fourth year woman student told me that when she was a freshman her mentor took her off campus on "architecture field trips" and would ask for dates. She was afraid of him and the program, but managed to persevere.

I asked that the school do away with the program explaining that replicating the dominant or standing culture of architecture school - the stated goal of mentoring - was not what we should be promoting. The faculty agreed to what they called a "compromise" with me, and decided that every sixth year student could be a mentor and that the program be for university credit, but not for a grade.

These early meetings set me aside, according to my office- mate as, "radical." He said that my ideas were thought of as

"out there." I was surprised that my two issues received any attention, as daily the rest of the faculty had loud and contentious arguments. They seemed distracted by each other and

I thought that I was invisible.

During my first year, the only woman on the architecture faculty who had ever gotten tenure, quit. She was trained as a landscape architect and behind her back was referred to as a tree-hugging-granola-loving-hippy. She did not give specifics about why she was leaving, just that she "could not work here."

Another Assistant Professor who was the only woman in the

Interior Design Department also resigned during her first year on faculty. She told me that she was "not taken seriously," and was repeatedly told that she should return to school for an architecture degree if she wanted respect. Every other 150

Professor in Interior Design was male and trained as an architect, not as an interior designer. She also had years of professional experience working in the interior design field and was frustrated with how ill trained the graduates were.

The School(s) of Architecture and Interior Design (SAID) were intended to be equals in this university. They shared a

Director, many core courses, and the two faculties met together often to determine curriculum, hiring, and other issues, but architecture dominated in every way. Architecture and Interior

Design students took all of the same first year courses but they were only taught by the Architecture faculty, who regularly demeaned the interior designers. One History of Architecture professor would post grades on the main office wall by major, pointing out that the better students were regularly from architecture. In Design Studio, one first year professor would criticize what he considered bad student work by saying that,

"it looks like you should be in Interiors with that drawing."

It was not a coincidence that Interiors was primarily composed of women students.

At a curriculum meeting the Interior Design faculty member that was a woman requested that they stop posting grades, stating that it is an invasion of students' right to privacy.

The various teachers who posted grades said that the students wanted them publicized, that they were only responding to the students' requests. As a compromise she asked that they not post them by major. The faculty responded that their computers separated the students, and there was nothing they could do about it, as if computers were not programmed by people. 151

Talk among faculty continued about how difficult it was to

find "smart" interior design students and that they were

thinking about doing away with the degree. My office-mate said

that they had been threatening the elimination of Interiors for years and years. My Sophomore level architecture students told me that when there was a bright and promising first year student

signed up for the Interior Design major, the faculty would persuade that student to major in architecture instead.

Making it normative that architects and architecture staff

teach Interiors courses was a contributing factor in the

subordination of interior design at this university. I asked the Interior Design instructor to guest lecture in my

Architectural Theory course before she resigned. She declined, adding that her "scholarship was not at that level." I repeatedly assured her that this was not the case, that I had heard her "job talk" and knew she was quite capable, and that my students would benefit greatly from her historical perspective on interior design theory. She was not swayed.

When I taught second year architecture studio, a student who attended this university on an athletic scholarship was

thinking of dropping out of architecture school. He said that

the architecture faculty did not understand that he had to

travel with his team and was often not found in studio working during the expected hours. They set up the choice - architecture or sport - and he could not afford to loose his

scholarship.

Of all of his courses, the structures sequence was giving him the most trouble. It was not that he was not good in 152 engineering, he assured me, he just found it much less interesting than history, design and drawing. I thought his work in Design Studio was generally thoughtful and he seemed to enjoy the process more than most students. When he suggested to me that he transfer to the Interior Design major that did not have the structures requirements, I wholeheartedly agreed. He also understood that as a man in this female-dominated field he would have a much easier time of it.

When the architecture faculty found out that I encouraged his transfer, they were very angry. The Chair of architecture said that it did not look good when we loose the good ones to

"lesser majors." How could I have fostered such an idea without consulting him? I was surprised that the Chair referred to this student as a "good one," because his grades were not stellar and his design work inconsistent. But, he looked the part of the ideal architect - he was tall, blond, white, and athletic.

Later in the year, the student told me that he, "got a lot of shit" from the architecture professors. They called his sexuality into question, then wondered aloud about how he was accepted on an athletic team.

Making the female-dominated Interior Design profession subordinate during the acculturation process of education prepares architecture students to act as members of the authoritative elite in the construction industry. Architectural dominance is not only apparent in the architectural supervision of interior design activities, but this supervision sets up architects as the "experts" at all levels of environmental design, from urban planning to furniture arranging. This 153 framing of interior design curricula by architects constructs

interior design as supporting the needs of architects, who are usually men.

Because at her college, interior design and architecture were in separate schools, the Interior Design professor told me that in her professional life she had not interacted with this many men. When she gently complained about the incomplete presence of architecture in every aspect of her attempts to prepare the interiors students to become complete interior designers, she was roughly rebuked. The architects acting as interior design faculty defended their role in interiors education on the superiority of their knowledge. This claim was allied with a concern that interior design students needed to learn to follow architectural directions, even if architects do not hold the specialized knowledge that interior designers require. The necessity for the interior designer to learn obedience to architectural authority was argued, vehemently, on the grounds of "building occupant safety" and "theoretical superiority" and resulted in a structured subservience that reinforced the dominance of architecture over interior design.

While the new woman instructor did not argue from a structural position at the time, she knew that she felt frustrated both with the inadequate education the interior design students received and with the voracity of the arguments.

She said that they, "yelled at me," and she did not know how to work in that sort of environment.

The majority of my time on this faculty was spent in isolation. The sporadic interaction with the others was all the 154 more meaningful because it was so rare. There was daily open hostility emanating from the department secretary who had an admitted disdain for women and interior design students. She told many students and the male faculty that she disliked women because we were, "helpless." I could not get answers to the most basic of questions - how do I obtain a parking pass, a key to my office, or have photocopies made? I dreaded going to the office because of her behavior.

In a meeting with the department Director, I advised him of the secretary's demeanor, and urged him to take some sort of action, that we should not have to work under conditions wherein people are openly hostile. He said that he was well aware of her attitude but that she had been with the school for quite a long time and that she, "had all of the information to run the department." In effect, he said there was nothing he, as her bureaucratic superior could do and I would have to work around her. Meanwhile, I would see her charmingly bend over backwards to work with most of the popular male students and faculty. The other women and men out of favor on faculty also complained to the Director, to no avail.

Other interaction with my co-workers was sporadic and generally centered on what they defined as my "area" - dealing with an issue about women or race relations. During my first quarter, a very ambitious Assistant Professor, a man, invited me to come to a gallery to see his student's work from Design

Studio. The project description, to design a residence for a married couple, was printed on a huge poster. The teacher was very proud of the fact that he reversed traditional gender roles 155

- the husband was a chef trained in Paris and the wife was a

structural engineer. Nonetheless, his description of the couple

for whom the residence was intended stated, "A man and his wife

are moving to C. from New York City...."

When I delicately pointed out to this Assistant Professor

that choosing the words, "man and his wife," was problematic, he praised my delivery of the message, not the content. He and

another faculty member told me that they appreciated the way in

which I approached him, that I was not "like those other

castrating feminists," who make all men the villains. He did not rewrite the poster.

Some of the "interaction" was intended to be anonymous, as

someone put a series of articles on my desk without attribution,

apparently for me to read. The magazine/journal/newspaper

articles were broadly concerning the definition of "family" and

specifically about the negative social consequences of feminists wanting equality within the family. This occurred shortly after

Vice President Quayle took exception with glorifying single motherhood on the television program Murphy Brown.

There was ample and easy access to my personal space.

Because I shared my office and it was the largest room on the

floor, a conference table had been placed there for department

use. There was a lot of traffic in and out of "my" office as

informal and sometimes spontaneous meetings took place around

the conference table. I never thought of this office as a

"safe" space and treated it like it was temporary. Whatever

books, files, or personal artifacts that I had brought there 156 when initially hired, I took home after receiving these articles.

Eventually, the man delivering the reading material left a subscription label on a magazine he had placed on my desk that contained an article praising traditional women. Hç was the

Chair of the Interior Design Department. I immediately went to his office to confront him with this magazine. He claimed that this was the first such article he had given me, he knew that his name was on it, and this was my area of research. He was just showing that he was interested in my work. I told him that

I was not researching family issues, that I did not appreciate him in my office when I was not there, and asked him not to do this again.

Another faculty member was writing a paper for a professional conference and asked if I would read it and comment. This white male Professor had the year previous proudly instigated a directory of African-American architects.

I asked him what was the purpose of the directory and he could not articulate that, just that no one else had created such a document. But he could name each and every Black architect, where they went to school, and where they were currently practicing. In this paper about promoting the inclusion of minorities in the practice of architecture he listed the number of African-American architects along with the number of women.

I suggested that he specify how Black women were counted - whether they were categorized by race or by sex or both - but, he was confused with this suggestion. When I told him that the paper read as if all African-American architects were men, he 157 literally began to list the Black women by name to prove that he knew that they practiced architecture too. It was a frustrating interaction, one in which I know that I did not convey my meaning. He never talked to me about his work again.

The Chair of the department was scheduling the courses for the following curriculum year when I reminded him of my desire to teach a seminar about "women and architecture." His response was, "we don't teach women here, we teach architecture." I asked about the official channels for adopting new course work and whether I had recourse. At this time he was trying to put me off, saying that he was late for a meeting but that we would talk soon. But, I followed him out of his office and said that

I would walk with him to his meeting so that we could talk more about how I could circumvent his singular rejection. As I followed him down the main hall like a child trailing after her parent in a supermarket, he spoke very loudly about why I needed to "shape up, get off of this women thing." Many students and some faculty overheard this interaction.

Later, in my Social Responsibility seminar several students who had heard us talking asked why he was antagonistic about this class. I honestly responded that I did not know why, exactly, he did not want the seminar taught in this department but that I was disappointed. That night in studio, these students decided to help my cause. Organizing a group and giving themselves a name, "Students Toward Empowerment," or

S.T.E.P. they enlisted their friends in a poster drawing session and pinned signs to the architecture building walls encouraging 158

grass roots student and faculty support for my class. The signs

were everywhere.

When I arrived at work before teaching an 8am Design

Studio the following morning, I was quite surprised at their

handiwork and that the students would take this sort of action.

I knew that this would become a huge problem with the faculty.

I took down as many posters as I could. I did not check the men's rest rooms; apparently there were very descriptive

messages hanging above the urinals about why a course on women

and architecture should not be feared.

The signs read: (1) "It's just a class - what can it

hurt?; (2) Women ARE relevant to architecture; (3) And now for

something completely different; and (4) Support Carla's class

for a Change.

The Director of the Department called me out of class,

into his office that morning. He said that my enlisting the

students to go to bat for me against the Chair was doing a

disservice to them, as "they don't know any better." I thought

that this narrow notion of student agency was dangerous, but

focused on another issue - what recourse I had to request a new

course. He went to a manual and read aloud about how a course

was adopted and approved by the entire Arts College, not just

the architecture faculty. To his knowledge, no architecture

professor has ever had to, "go to that extreme." Apparently,

they circumvented the process and used informal means to add

classes. I knew that I would have to use the rules to my

advantage. 159

After the student poster protest, I was even more invisible to the rest of the faculty. No one spoke to me. I introduced myself to other faculty in other Arts departments looking for support for my course on women and architecture.

There were many encouraging women and men Professors from the

Urban Planning, Industrial Design, Art, and Fashion Design departments, and they all despised the Architecture faculty, I learned. Many of them supported my course, if for no other reason than that they wanted to "get" the pompous architects.

With written support from the College and going through approved channels, I ended up teaching a course called "Women and Architecture" for one quarter, with 15 men and only two women enrolled. The women students did not want anyone to know that they had signed up for the course, as they were not "those kind of women." When I probed them about what kind of women they thought would take this course, they replied, "feminists."

The word had very negative connotations that were not displaced after an 11 week class. Their biggest fear was being rejected by the men in their class. "We don't want to exclude the men with a class about women, we should be fair," one of them said after she suggested they add a course about men in architecture.

Overall, women who did not take the class told me that they knew that they were "equal" in the practice of architecture and did not need "special classes."

The Chair used this special class to his advantage when scheduling which classes I would teach. He desperately wanted me to teach full time during the summer quarter. I flatly refused, saying that I needed the time to make progress on my 160 dissertation. Since beginning this position, I had prepped six new courses, teaching two or three courses a quarter, and Design

Studio met four hours a day, three times a week. I barely had time to think, let alone complete my research. He said that he would schedule my Women and Architecture course for the Autumn quarter if I would teach during the Summer. I had struggled to gain that teaching assignment and felt over-committed to its place in the curriculum. In addition, given our respective power differences, I agreed to teach that summer.

Two of the faculty edited a journal that was published as part of the college special projects. They asked if I would write an article about the national American Institute of

Architects convention, from a feminist perspective. "But don't make it white-male-bashing, okay," one of them advised. They funded my flight to the conference in June and wanted the article in September. I handed them a draft, as work-in­ progress in August, asking them for feedback. What I got was humiliation. The ambitious Assistant Professor accosted me in the hall in front of the main office and began to verbally abuse me. He called me a "fucking ego-maniacal religious zealot." I was silenced, frozen in embarrassment, disgrace, and confusion.

Knowing that we had an audience made things even worse. I did not know where his criticism was coming from.

Later that night this man called me at my home to "discuss our conversation." I said that we did not have a conversation, as that would have required that I speak, too. What we had was a humiliating encounter, for me. He said that he was participating in "psycho-analysis to deal with his hostility," 161 as way of explanation. Further, the feminism that was expressed in my essay envisioned a world free of patriarchal domination on a theoretical level and did not present a map of how to arrive there. He said that I was naive and like a religious zealot in that I was urging a huge change based on MY "ethics" - that women and men are equal. "How do we know that, we are different?" he queried. I declined to participate or continue this phoned monologue, I felt he would only hear what he wanted anyway. This man was married to a woman who was on faculty in

Architecture.

Earlier in the school year while participating on a Design jury, I heard this same Assistant Professor viciously berate students. He lit into one student because his facade or front elevation was not "contextual." His language was so cruel and his demeanor so angry and brutal that I left the jury and invited the students to do the same, saying that there was no review of architecture work happening. Soon after this episode, this Assistant Professor told me that he was enacting a new kind of jury, one where students introduce each other's work so that he never speaks directly to the designer. It is the structure of Design juries, he claimed, that caused his nasty behavior.

Juries had not changed since I was in school. They were still degradation ceremonies.

I went through the motions of assembling a dossier for my reappointment and submitted it for a pre-review. The Director returned it to me and asked that I add a document. At the same time, while traveling to a professional conference, I passed a little time in a bookstore between sessions. Picking up Women 162

Who Run With the Wolves : Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman

Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, I randomly paged through the text, landing on the following;

"If you have attempted to fit whatever mold and failed to do so, you are probably lucky. You many be an exile of some sort, but you have sheltered your soul. There is an odd phenomenon that happens when one keeps trying to fit and fails. Even though the outcast is driven away...It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while." (page 186) "...that of a basic incompatibility with dissimilar persons, which is no one's fault, even though most women are too obliging and take it on as though it is their fault personally. When this happens, we see women who are ready to apologize for taking up space. We see women who are afraid to just say 'No, thank you,' and leave." (page 186)

That day, I returned to the Department and, offering no explanation, said, "no thank you," taking my dossier out of consideration for reappointment.

When I told one unpopular, somber and very unhappy young male faculty member that I was resigning, he said, "I have two questions: "Where are you going?" and "Do they need anyone else?" This man and I had just begun to find commonality in our joint dislike for the department and shared love of sports. It was odd to me that the rest of the faculty had warned me away from him from the day I began there. "He is conservative," they said, as if that meant he was morally corrupt. But, I found him to be a caring and effective teacher of architecture, whatever his politics.

Another faculty member that I barely knew told me that he had, "lost the pool." Apparently, when I first arrived at this school they had placed bets in a pool guessing how long I would be on faculty before I quit. Women did not last long in the

School of Architecture. 163

At this time there were three women on faculty, the woman married to the man in psycho-analysis, another woman who was the

computer graphics instructor for both Interior Design and

Architecture, and me. Shortly after I resigned, the computer

expert did likewise, telling me that she realized no job, no matter how prestigious it was considered, was worth what she was

experiencing there. Her re-appointment review was being

contested and she did not understand why.

The day that I resigned, the Chair called me into his

office at 5pm and I sat and listened to him talk at me until

seven that evening. Among other things, he told be that; (1) no

one was happy working in this department, so why did I think

that being unhappy was a reason to quit?; (2) I was the most

insecure person that he had ever met; (3) the rest of the

faculty thought that I did not "give a damn" about anything and

it would be better for me if they knew that I was insecure, not mentally absent; (4) the reason they hired one woman Assistant

Professor was because of her husband's presence on faculty; and

(5) I, as a first term Assistant Professor, had more power than he as Full Professor and Chair of the School of Architecture.

The last point was the only one he paused after uttering

so that I could respond. I told him that saying I had more

power than he was extremely offensive when even objectively,

that was absolutely impossible. He went on a tirade, telling me

that no one on faculty would listen to him, that he was disliked

and ineffectual and that with the power of affirmative action

any woman was in control now. 164

Knowing that he was running for the Chair position again and that a vote by the faculty was imminent, I asked why he would bother if he so believed his persona to be powerless. He replied, "that is just the kind of man I am, I take action."

That launched him into another monologue about how much more committed he was, compared to the rest of the faculty, to the responsibility of participation. He told me that he always encourages students to get involved with whatever cause they believe in. "For instance, even if the student is pro-life, I tell him to be committed to his cause," he said. He had relayed that example to me before, the one that encouraged a student to be involved in social movements, even those he disagreed with, such as anti-abortion.

The universal idea that any participation in political activity is worthwhile is problematic. As far as I was concerned encouraging a student to be active in the pro-life movement was antithetical to progressive or feminist values.

All social movements and counter movements are not equal, and encouraging political action for its own sake was irresponsible.

This university was situated near documented Ku Klux Klan enclaves. I wondered if the Chair would encourage a white supremacist under the umbrella of "at least the student was taking a stand?"

I was particularly taken aback when he admitted his belief that the only woman left on the faculty had been hired because of her husband, assuming that she was not qualified for her position. What did he think I would do with that information?

I knew that this faculty couple socialized with the Chair and 165 his family, that they lived near one another, and spent holidays together.

Coincidentally, shortly after this meeting with the Chair, my colleague the woman/wife, campaigned for my vote in her crusade to keep the acting Chair in his office. She was actively working as an advocate on his behalf in a hotly contested race for Chair of the department. I was deeply conflicted about whether or not to relay to her what he had said about her qualifications. She seemed so loyal in her support for this man, telling me how the department needed him now more than ever and how wonderful he is as a teacher and as Chair.

I thought it irresponsible and completely unethical that an administrator would speak about any faculty member in the way the chair had spoken of her. After considerable deliberation, I did tell this Assistant Professor what her "friend" had said about the conditions of her hire. She told me that she appreciated my honesty, but I was not sure that I had done the right thing.

The Dean of the Department called a faculty meeting on the status of women in the School of Architecture and Interior

Design. During my brief tenure, every woman on faculty had resigned, save one. The Dean apparently realized the potential consequences of such a record, as I had been summoned by the newly appointed Provost of Human Relations to report on the climate for women faculty. My negative statements were sure to reflect poorly upon the Dean.

Before this meeting the Assistant Professor/Wife asked me if she could confront the Chair with the information that I gave 166

her. I agreed that she could make him accountable for his

words. To my dismay, she did so during the full faculty meeting

on the status of women in the school. "Carla said that you

said..."

I was mortified. Of course, the Chair flatly denied ever making that statement. I knew full well that the word of a Full

Professor, on faculty for over 25 years, would be taken above mine. She continued to read from a prepared statement about what it was like to be a wife and mother on faculty. She told

of the deal she and her ambitious Assistant Professor/husband had made - that she would take care of all things domestic,

including their newborn children, until he got tenure, then they would trade places. This called to my mind Hochschild's "family myths" in The Second Shift. I thought her divulging their plan

odd in this context.

I fully intended to work through my contract period, but

after this faculty meeting, I felt too uncomfortable

there to continue teaching until the end of the quarter. I quit.

Is this why women leave the culture of architecture? CHAPTER VII

DISCUSSION

The discipline of architecture, like any discipline, maintains shared common meanings concerning taken-for-granted knowledge about how objects, experiences, and events are understood and what is of value (Street, 1992). These meanings make up the very basis of the study of architecture and therefore, powerfully and profoundly permeate architectural culture. Inductively, through ethnographic detail, I have discovered three of architecture's intertwined ideological components - the star system, single privileged meaning, and architecture's privileging of aesthetics - that keep women in architecture marginal through the systematic valuation that grants significance and merit along very narrowly defined lines.

These characteristics of the ideology of architecture are exclusively mapped onto the bodies of men.

The Star System

Within the profession, the handful of elite architects are referred to as "stars," who, like their Hollywood referents enjoy positions of cult-like celebrity and even adoration. Ayn Rand's solitary figure in The Fountainhead suitably summarizes architecture's vision of its stars. The goal, the very pinnacle of practicing architects professional

167 158 life is peer recognition realized by individual fame. The profession acknowledges singular designers, like the Christian notion of a singular God the Father as creator. Architecture canonizes its chosen few.

Architecture school is the proving ground where a few stars are born and the remainder cast as supporting characters, or even relegated to "stage hands." The previous chapters document how the domination of design studio in architecture's curriculum systematically constructs stars and their corresponding persona. The instructors encourage and reward chosen students in several ways - their design work is favorably compared to that of current or historical "signature" architects

(all of whom are men,) they are granted a reputation as

"talented" and then receive consistently high marks, and the student stars are publicly praised in critique sessions while the rest are subjected to degradation ceremonies (Garfinkel,

1959) .

As I documented in the ethnography, in some design studios students were ranked in order, from the "number one" star to the students who were tagged to fail. Positions were spatially defined as well, with desks literally and symbolically linearly assembled in numerical order. Hierarchy and reputations were constructed, then reinforced. Labeling theory reminds us that social identities and self-definitions are formed from the responses of others. Labels became prophecies, fulfilling the expectations of others in authority, with stars acting out their roles and students who were "expected" to fail, did so. 169

In a classic case of anticipatory socialization, the star students would emulate their star critics and instructors. This behavior manifested itself in bossiness, exaggerated masculinity, an often ruthless bravado, competition with classmates whereby others' failing was cause for celebration, brutishness, and outright cruelty. Many star students played along when their "lesser" classmates were publicly humiliated, adding their own derogatory comments with jokes made at the expense of those stigmatized. The latent function of "making fun" of non-star students was a demarcation of group boundaries.

As leaders within the studio system, stars were the instigators of the "harmless" gags, not the objects. When one student was told that it looked as if he had drawn with a candy bar, others whose work had been positively reviewed, took up the charade, fortifying the embarrassing critique by leaving chocolate on his desk.

Humor is often a sign of real conflict in situations where one or both parties do not wish to bring the conflict out into the open (Primeggia and Varacalli, 1990). The studio star system is constructed such that students are pitted against one another in competition for the few top positions. Concurrently, they are required to exclusively spend time working together in studio, while directly encouraged to forego relationships with other students majoring in supposedly less-disciplined disciplines. Studio-mates become constant companions, practically living together, literally taking every class together, and sharing many stressful experiences. Tension is inherent when placed in a situational contradiction - there is a 170 conflict in subjectively experiencing peers as members of one's primary group, whereby relationships are personal and enduring, as well as objectively knowing them as direct competition.

Perhaps men are better equipped for such contradictions as masculine gender role socialization prepares them for relationship incongruity. Like most male peer activities that reinforce the culturally ascribed masculine trait that separates winners from losers, as in sporting events, (Lever, 1978;

Thorne, 1993) the culture of architecture reinforces reasoning according to abstract principles. "Rightness" in architecture is achieved by "playing by the rules." The rules of architecture allow for some participants to enjoy positions of prestige (the winners) without a debt of responsibility to peers

(the losers) who, by their very presence concede the binary opposition. Employing the rhetorical practice of dualism, there could not be architectural stars without the unknown architect.

However, when stars are created by subjective qualifications such as innate "artistic talent," which is coded as a discernable if not a measurable quality, "rightness" can become a function of what reifies dominants' place. Further, when talent in architecture is extolled as an ascribed quality rather than an achieved practiced characteristic, challenges to the star system may be dismissed.

The defining and most prevalent persona for professional stars of architecture and therefore, for the student standout, is one of extreme self-confidence, if not haughtiness. However for women, regardless of authority's rewards, gender role expectations do not include arrogance. Rather, notwithstanding 171 their individual talents and distinctive personalities, women are constrained to behave in a self-effacing manner (Ehrenreich,

1983). The double-bind (Statham, Cook, Richardson, 1991) for women finds acting in a feminine manner not congruent with behaving like an architect, and acting like an architect is not feminine.

As a graduate student when I resigned from the star architect's firm after only one day, seemingly I either lacked the confidence or was simply not really interested in pursuing stardom after all. At a level for which I had no words then, I

"knew" that I was not really one of them, that I was an imposter. Although, by virtue of my successfully executing the arduous requirements of earning a degree in architecture I was enacting the prescribed professional norms, I did not completely submerge my sense of self. To loose the self was the intense cost of becoming a star on architecture's terms. Further, as the image of the architect is consistently constructed against that which is categorized as feminine - i.e. wimp, softy, indecisive, cooperative, etc. - as a woman, I could never be distinguished as a star. Perhaps a "starlet" - but a woman, no matter her "talent," may never be confused with the legitimate, strong, and intractably heroic figure of a star in architecture.

Architectural stars generate charismatic authority (Weber

1978; orig. 1921,). Students, clients, reporters and public officials, among others, seek out the stars and take their inspired word for what constitutes beauty and value in building.

Stars are further legitimized by critics, historians, and the architectural press who construct an ineffable ideal which 172 complements the myth of singular-innate-artistic-genius who designs buildings for society through his extraordinary inner

"vision" (Larson, 1983) . Furthermore, popular culture is permeated with ideas about the individual nature of creativity

(Crane, 1987) and how artistic genius will always overcome social obstacles (Pollack, 1994). Feminist art historian

Griselda Pollack criticizes the unreasonable notion that there is an inherent talent acting as a power within, surfacing and succeeding no matter the impediment - ignoring barriers such as sex, social class, or race in hierarchical societies. Taking no account of the previously privileged who have the power to mentor, and then to grant stardom allows for the belief that stellar architects are classless, universal, and superior beings who simply seize control of the art of architecture they were predestined to direct.

The remainder of the profession reifies the stars' privilege by tacitly accepting the stratification system. At a professional conference, one young male architect said that during intermission he found himself positioned between two of architecture's most famous at the urinals in the men's rest room. "I didn't think you two did this," he reported to have said to them. Although this is a rather whimsical anecdote, noting that those to whom he relayed this story "got the joke," serves to illuminate how exceptional characteristics are scripted onto architecture's upper echelon by the professional community. When star architects guest lecture at universities, students and practicing architects from around the city literally line up to receive their autographs. 173

The ideological underpinnings of the star system in architecture serve to justify its system of stratification, which does not recognize women stars. As I describe in the data, architecture students spend hour after hour, year after year in studios looking over architecture magazines in order to emulate approved works. As well, students dedicate interminable amounts of time to improving their skills in lettering, drawing and model making, distracted by the form that the products of architecture take, rather than its process or content.

As student architects learn to embrace the professional culture's ideas of worthiness, they may question the rightness of their own position in the hierarchy, seemingly confused about why their ability to design and draw does not measure up, but they are unlikely to challenge the star system itself. The role of ideology in architecture defends a particular kind of hierarchy as fair - with stars defined as the product of remarkable artistic talent, strong wills, effort, and initiative.

My experiences within the culture that constitutes the studying, teaching, and practicing of architecture speak to the role of compulsory masculinity in architecture. To become an architect is physically, intellectually, and emotionally challenging. Like athletes training for punishing sports, the architecture student must push her or his body to exhaustion without complaining. There is no crying in architecture. There is also no acknowledgement of monthly cycles or even the basic physical need for sleep and food. Absent are relationships, families, or responsibilities that constitute attachment to 174 anything more than work. For women, whose gender identity and gender role expectations encourages them to draw strength from establishing and maintaining connections with others (Gilligan,

1982), the all-nighter is more than physically depleting.

To challenge the star making system is to implicitly challenge what it means to be a "real" man. Given the societal requisite of heterosexually defined hegemonic masculinity

(Connell 1987), whereby men whose masculinity is in question are stigmatized, it is no wonder that men hesitate to protest against the star system that is, at its very essence, gendered masculine. "Architecture," as one instructor at the university where I was on faculty said, "separates the men from the boys."

Privileged Meaning

In addition to architectural historians, the major architectural publications - e.g. "Progressive Architecture,"

"Architectural Record," and "Architecture" - historically have functioned as attributors and authenticators, consistently focusing the production and meaning of design on the contribution of the individual. Architecture's theoretical meaning is attached to a name, thereby simplifying process and disregarding the actual collective nature of creating architecture (Cuff, 1992; Larson, 1993).

As a direct consequence of this naming strategy, critics have analyzed buildings both in terms of the designers' ideas or intentions and the formal arrangement of components (just as formalist art history analyzes a painting) rather than as a social product. Architecture is thereby isolated from its 175 social process origins and its function and attached instead to a design style codified in an individual man's name (e.g.

Esherick, 1993; Ghiardo, 1992). The history of architecture is reduced to a history of the architect.

Considering the professional socialization's requirements for unnaturally long hours devoted to work, and because important buildings literally last for centuries, time becomes an obsession of sorts. Star architects talk about star students' design work as if it would be of historical significance if actually built, thereby granting the design agelessness. Consecutive "all-nighters" are meaningless when contemplating how very long "real" architecture impacts the environment. Their hypothetical place in the historical chronicle of architecture and the cultural significance of building was taken very seriously by star students who would sign their sketches with a flourish, noting the date and place for posterity and to ease curators' tasks.

The notion that architecture is such a complex endeavor it takes decades to become excellent, is part of architectural lore. It is no mere coincidence that the ideology of architecture has powerful conceptual and normative conditions surrounding time. Assuring young, hard working, tired architects that "someday your time will come" placates them, successfully staving off grievances and challenges to professional process.

In schools, star instructors discuss the personality quirks of the famous along with their architecture's stylistic or theoretical variations, so that students may "overhear." 176

Privileging insider discourse functions to secure the place of

the meaning of architecture squarely within the limited circle of elite architects. Further, a large component of meaning in architecture is dispersed through oral culture and oral history.

With the emphasis on drawing, visual presentation, and pictures and off of literature and reading, oral discourse becomes central. Charismatic authority is bolstered as colorful stories about the architects are enhanced and passed along, giving even more weight to ascribed meaning.

When professional socialization relies on oral discourse it is impossible to ensure equal access to knowledge.

Conversation among the all male instructors in schools acts as a kind of locker room talk, they were often vulgar and always exclusive in their choice of subject. Public critiques were places for fraternal bonding (Curry 1991). As an instructor, I would sit on juries unable to participate as "one of the boys" - because "insider" is not an act of will but a cooperative relation (Williams, 1991) - thereby marginalizing my status with the students and devaluing my critiques.

Architecture, or buildings-as-object's commonly held professional meaning signifies what the architect is reported to have said it signifies. There is no accounting for the users' or the clients' meaning. For example, under the general category of "modern" architecture, stylistic variations are referred to by an architect's name, (Corbusian, Kahnian,

Meisian, etc.) and what the buildings "mean" are what the architects said or wrote that they "mean," (e.g. house as machine, God is in the details, etc.). The social, political. 177 environmental, and cultural context is overlooked in favor of highlighting the supposed individual architectural "genius" himself.

The notion that the meaning of architecture is singular and is determined by the designer(s) is simplistic, ignoring the fact that design is a process of representation. The latent function of architectural education maintains this distorted privilege by reinforcing individual accomplishment and intention. Students in architecture rarely have team or group projects and as the ethnography points out, often buildings have no assigned function, for reportedly pedagogical purposes.

Relaying the uncomplicated idea that the meaning of architecture is determined by the designer occurred when students were instructed to write their "Big Idea" on the back of a drawing.

When the products of architecture school focus on drawings, rather than the buildings those drawings represent, students are taught that architecture is conceived in isolation, and creating pretty pictures matters the most. In this fabricated and abstract world, the meaning(s) of architecture has nothing whatsoever to do with building users, the environment, politics, or other contextual considerations.

Training in architecture does not reflect the cooperative nature of architectural design. Through engagement with varied subjects, architecture represents political, economic, and social power,,and values within different contexts. Further, buildings are increasingly complex structures requiring a complex division of labor for their completion (Blau, 1986;

Gutman, 1988). Architecture requires input and then formal 178

augmentation from programmers, zoning boards, mechanical

engineers, structural engineers, civil engineers, surveyors, urban planners, landscape architects, interior designers, decorators, detailers, contractors, crafts workers, and a variety of other architectural specialists. The heroic singular artist/designer/architect is a mythical figure, yet he remains a pervasive social and professional symbol working to the detriment of women's status in the profession of architecture.

The normative discourse contesting extraordinary architecture is addressed in terms of creativity within individual extraordinariness. That is, when debating the value of a single building, architectural discourse attributes success to the personal ingenuity of the solitary architect - or conversely, to the architect's lack of imagination. "He is a master of plan moves," or "This building displays creative solutions that only he could have developed," are quotes from architectural critics about structures reviewed in Progressive

Architecture (1995).

If the profession, because of predetermined ideological constraints, does not recognize women as stars, it cannot give women a voice in delimiting meaning. Because of the low priority placed on reading, even women who take to writing about meaning in architecture are invisible or marginalized. Granting meaning only to architects effectively eliminates women from the discourse. 179

Aesthetic Criteria

In architecture school, as the previous chapters attest, faculty and students focus their attention on the products of design studio. Here, worth is determined simply by appearance.

The "beauty" of drawings and models created to represent building design is what influences considerations of value.

Nebulous aesthetic criteria surround what is considered a valuable architectural object. This practice of decreeing one building a handsome success has everything to do with "artistic" value and nothing to do with how well the building is received by the users or how well it functions, on any level (Gutman,

1988).

It is problematic for women if the focus of determining individual merit or imagination in architecture (supposedly making stars) is on subjective formal properties of buildings, for a number of reasons: (1) because, "creativity has been appropriated as an ideological component of masculinity,"

(Pollock p.86, 1994) in this society it is accepted that men create while women reproduce; (2) depending upon social class, to be feminine generally means to be humble, wherein touting individual accomplishments is discouraged (Devault, 1991); (3) being recognized as an architectural star is a function of participation within an insider's status and network to which women are uniformly precluded (Scott-Brown, 1989); (4) most building clients are upper class men, corporations, or government entities (Gutman, 1993) who are less inclined to employ a woman-owned firm and the owners of firms are generally credited as "designer" (whether or not they are indeed 180 responsible for conceiving the formal properties of structures); and (5) all work completed by women is devalued, such that if a woman designed it must not be worthy (Richardson, 1988).

Another element of architecture's dominant ideology working to the detriment of women in architecture is the construction of aesthetic categories. To be accepted in mainstream architecture, a student must embrace form above function, above process, and above other contextual considerations (Larson, 1993; Scott-Brown, 1989). Requiring that members of non-dominant groups evaluate architecture according to its formal properties (i.e. their aesthetics) is asking that minorities take part in obscuring their own participation in the building process. Women are segregated as supporting characters into architecture's complimentary and less prestigious sub-areas (ACSA Firm Reports, 1994a) . Even when they are directly involved as architectural designers, because women are so rarely owners of firms (3% of architecture's principles in the U.S. are non-white men) (ACSA Firm Reports,

1994a) their work goes uncredited.

Within professional discursive practices, definitions of good and bad design are constructed according to aesthetics - and aesthetics' language is unproblematicly presented as universal truthful meaning (Mohrmann, 1995). Considering a structure or drawing as "beautiful" is in fact "nothing other than the individual expression of general class taste and the particular ideas promoted in that class" (Bourdieu p.117, 1980).

Taste is determined through specific social conditions, such as exposure to formal education, social class, race, and gender. 181

One of the mechanisms dominant groups employ to retain their positions of power and enhance their prestige is to invent the

"aesthetic" category as a universal entity (Bourdieu, 1980).

Social critics have long castigated architects for their role in promoting and producing artifacts or material culture that is irrelevant (e.g. Ghiardo, 1992; Whyte, 1992). Obscuring the political nature of building, architects reward, write about, and discuss their work exclusively according to aesthetics - thereby positioning architecture as nothing more than "elegant distraction". Walter Benjamin predicted that contemporary building would become merely the sum of formalist games with cheerfully manipulable images that direct attention to abstract properties of art or style. Further, when those properties are touted as "timeless, universal, and eternal" the political consequences of building in context and time is ignored (cited in Ghirardo, 1994). Not considered a legitimate topic for architectural discourse is the fact that there are more retail strip shopping centers than schools or shelters for battered women or affordable housing - issues of import to many women.

In graduate school, when designing the slaughter house I used architectural design and its formal properties to make what

I felt was a challenging political statement. My meaning was disregarded and the formal properties enhanced. In this situation I garnered negative attention from my peers for my work, and silence from the critics, both responses acting as effective agents for maintaining the status quo. 182

I was certainly not the only architect to resist and as a faculty member I enjoyed the support of a few frustrated students. However, we would have been more effectual and

"radical" had we produced a series of architectural presentations that were "avant garde." Upsetting the cart in artistic fields often depends upon visual challenges because that is the accepted level of analysis and mode of communication. Again, that type of challenge is aesthetic or stylistic in nature and reforms in style eventually become institutionalized, affectively eliminating real discursive debate.

Training architects to become cognizant and critical of artistic composition encourages them to evaluate all objects for their visual beauty. I can rarely enter a room or walk down a street without noting my surroundings in extreme detail while visualizing a re-design to make them more aesthetically pleasing. As an exercise in enhancing my design acumen, color schemes or window patterns run through my mind's eye constantly.

While there may be times when architects experience a kind of sensory over-load, there are more powerful consequences for this heightened awareness of objects.

The place of women in a society where a "beauty myth"

(Wolf, 1990) exists that teaches women to measure personal importance, accomplishment and satisfaction in terms of physical appearance, reduces women to objects in both women's and men's eyes. Men in architecture, overly attuned to the visual, have a large vocabulary with which to describe the women-objects in their company. Objectifying women often takes on new 183 proportions in architecture studios, alienating women students and instructors and giving us another uncomfortable reason to leave the culture of architecture. It also has a destructive impact on how women architects, who internalize both the beauty myth and architecture's aesthetic, view themselves.

CONCLUSION

In a world where famine coexists with capitalist land speculation, building is hardly a neutral act (Frampton, 1993).

Yet women, as members of a minority group that are directly hurt by society's distribution of wealth and resources, are expected to critique architecture based on acceptable aesthetic criteria, respond to dominant's meaning, and celebrate stars.

As part of my field research, I have participated in professional conferences where inquiries about, "What about architecture is oppressive to women?" were paneled. I were regularly rather innocently asked, "How is that building sexist?"

When meaning is conceived of as derived from form, rather than process, sexism is reduced to trivial notions of phallic symbol skyscrapers or too few rest rooms allocated for women.

My research finds that why there are so few women participants in architecture school and in the practice of architecture has much less to do with aesthetics or formal properties of the products of the profession (buildings,) and much more to do with institutional practices that make stars out of designers, concede meaning to those individuals, and grant worth based on predetermined aesthetic categories. Given the type of social 184 organization, it is unlikely that women who enter and remain in architecture will alter the values, the hierarchy, or the professional culture. REFERENCES

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