Past the Parapets of Patriarchy? Women, the Star System, and the Built Environment

Cynthia Hammond, Concordia University, has On June 10, 2009, the Beverly Willis received awards for her writing on the roles Architecture Foundation (BWAF) premiered a played by such women as Florence Nightingale short documentary at the Guggenheim Museum and Catherine Bauer Wurster in the in New York as part of the events related to the development of institutional and modern upcoming retrospective on the American architecture, showing how their production was architect, Frank Lloyd W right (1867-1959). This embedded within larger questions of nation, film, entitled A Girl Is a Fellow Here: 100 colonialism, and gender. She holds a Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd three-year, Emerging Scholar award (FQRSC) Wright, presents for the first time an account of for the study of Montreal's public, modernist 6 of the more than 100 women who, as buildings and spaces. architects, helped to build Wright's reputation as the greatest American architect of the Abstract twentieth century. The launch was followed by Twenty years after architect Denise Scott a panel discussion about how such an Brown challenged the patriarchal exclusion of important omission has endured. The film is a women from the "star system," what is the brief but potent counterthesis to the myth of status of women in architecture today? Drawing Wright's solitary and unique genius, a narrative examples from architectural history, recent that has many echoes in a recent spate of films statistics and current initiatives, the author devoted to individual, male architects. These identifies some of the lingering problems of films are a register of the importance placed on sexism in architecture, and explores some of blockbuster architecture of the modern and the women leaders shaping architectural contemporary periods, represented primarily futures. through a small pantheon of key male figures, 1 Résumé many of them North American. The Vingt ans après que l’architecte Denise Scott architectural profession relies heavily on this défiait l’exclusion patriarcale des femmes du pantheon, which feeds financial benefits back ‘système d’étoiles’, quel est le statut des into relatively few practices, represented by femmes en architecture aujourd’hui? En se individual, "iconic" architects (Jencks 2005b). servant d’exemples dans l’histoire de This process keeps the profession lean, fiercely l’architecture, des statistiques récentes et des competitive, and visibly male; it also diminishes initiatives courantes, l’auteure identifie certains the impact that women have had, and continue des problèmes de sexisme qui persistent en to have, on the creation of the built architecture, et explore ce que font certaines environment. femmes qui sont des leaders qui façonnent le In 1989 the American scholar and futur architectural. architect Denise Scott Brown published an essay on how architectural critics, historians, and professional organizations regularly eclipsed her role in the very successful joint firm, VSBA (Venturi Scott Brown and Associates Architecture), presenting her husband, Robert Venturi as the genius behind the firm's books, buildings and winning designs, even when Scott Brown was clearly identified as the author or lead designer of a project. Referring to the "star system" by which a very

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 5 few rise to the top, Scott Brown analyzes the name, if not the face, does become famous, as broader currents of sexism and competitive well as the building; for example, Jonathan masculinity in architecture against her own Meades' comparison of Hadid to a familiar, experience. She writes, "I watched as [Venturi] small group of successful male architects, who was manufactured into an architectural guru are all illustrated in his article with portrait before my eyes and, to some extent, on the sketches (Meade 2008). To the extent that basis of our joint work and the work of our firm" names and words reveal gender, and attitudes (Scott Brown 1989, 237). The myth of a lone about gender, the scarcity of female names and architectural genius hurt not only Scott Brown in pronouns in the registers of architectural the first decades of their joint practice: as she success - competition selections, lists of explains, "as sexism defines me as a scribe, tenured faculty in architecture schools, surveys typist, and photographer to my husband, so the of twentieth-century architecture - is evidence star system defines our associates as 'second that women remain largely below the parapets bananas' and our staff as pencils" (1989, 240). of official architectural greatness. Yet for many Having seen her work attributed repeatedly to women architects, the distinction of "woman her husband, and her ability as an intellectual architect" is demeaning and unnecessarily and an architect diminished, Scott Brown divisive. From a different perspective, feminist concludes that, "the star system, which is unfair deconstructions of singular, cohesive notions of to many architects, is doubly hard on women" gender identity provide an important basis to (1989, 242). point out the essentialism of this, or any, Twenty years later, how does the star distinction based on sex (Butler 2005; Fuss system in architecture affect women? W hile 1989). Yet, parity for women architects has not more women are entering the profession than been achieved in the profession, much less in ever, the number of female "starchitects" tallies the star system, and attrition is an ongoing up, perhaps, to only one. Zaha Hadid, principal concern (Adams and Tancred 2000; Ahrentzen of Zaha Hadid Architects, rose to international 2003; Anthony 2001; Groat and Ahrentzen prominence after winning the prestigious 2004 2001; Gürel and Anthony 2006). Given this Pritzker Prize (the architectural equivalent of conflicted situation, my aim in this text is to the Nobel Prize). Yet as many commentators revisit the question of the star system and the have noted (Forsyth 2006; Meade 2008; status of women in architecture in North Stephens 2006), Hadid's exceptional success, America at the end of the first decade of the while inspiring and well-deserved, does not new millennium. challenge the fundamental identity of architecture as a masculine profession. Rather, Form, Matter and Gender her star status confirms the invisibility of women The 1970s were an important decade in this field, as she is the exception that proves in the history of feminist studies in architecture the unwritten rule that men create form, while because of the simultaneous rise of feminism in women make way. political, academic and artistic circles. Doris Of course, the architectural star system Cole's book, From Tipi to Skyscraper: A History is different from systems of fame in cinema or of Women in Architecture (Cole 1973) and art. Donald McNeil explains that, "while the Dolores Hayden and Gwendolyn Wright's major image of famous buildings will usually prompt article for Signs, on architecture and urban recognition by the general public, the face of planning (Hayden and Wright 1976), together the architects would likely pass unnoticed in a mark a starting point of sorts for the confluence crowd. Such is the problem of engaging with of second-wave feminism and research on the the notion of architectural celebrity or built environment in North America.2 Since then, reputation" (McNeil 2009, 63). While this lack of feminists have explored women's contributions face recognition may be true for most to architecture, landscape architecture, architects, the continual evocation in the planning, and education in these fields, in an architectural and popular presses of a select impressive array of publications.3 In 2006, group of male architects suggests that the however, in their careful analysis of fourteen

6 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis university survey texts of architecture, Meltem high-profile films mentioned earlier, remains Ö Gürel and Karen H. Anthony concluded that male-dominated, symbolically, literally, and published surveys continue to ignore feminist professionally, and so the importance of raising research on the built environment, and retain the profiles of individual, women practitioners traditional race and gender biases (Gürel and remains on the table, even if doing so revisits Anthony 2006). normative gender binaries in an unsatisfying The most obvious strategy to counter way. these imbalances is to continue to raise the profile, or identity, of women architects working Architecture as Cultural Capital today or in the past. Yet this method, which According to architectural historian and Elizabeth Ervin calls the "add women and stir" critic, Charles Jencks, western culture and approach to feminist historiography (Ervin 1993, history have privileged star architects since 94), has been soundly critiqued for its failure to antiquity (Jencks 2005a). Architecture, as "a destabilize the very terms by which art (and field that idealizes a particular form of artists) are judged, and included. While the masculinity" (Forsyth 2006, 64), thus makes hope is that high numbers will shatter the glass stardom something very elusive for women. ceiling, this approach has the drawback of During a lecture I gave in 2005 on women and forcing women into a system that is architecture, one student's response to an always-already set up to dismiss their creativity image of Eileen Grey's modernist gem, E.1027 and their contributions. Furthermore, it does not (Roquebrune, France 1926-1929) was to insist critique the terms by which the exclusions that Grey had been "influenced by" Frank Lloyd originally occurred. Joan Scott's famous essay, W right's Falling W ater (Bear Run, Pennsylvania "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical 1935), despite the fact that Grey's design Analysis," asks feminists to rethink "the fixed predated Wright's by nearly a decade. When I and permanent quality of the binary opposition demonstrated the buildings' dates (through [between the sexes], a genuine historicization various websites - my word was not enough to and deconstruction of the terms of sexual convince her that Grey had been "first") the difference" (Scott 1986, 1065). Similarly, art student was disappointed to discover that her historian Griselda Pollock impels feminist hunch was incorrect (and remained historians to "difference" rather than unconvinced). I take the student's insistence supplement the canon, to interrupt the that Wright's distinct aesthetic had to be the "naturalized (hetero)sexual division" that basis for the work of a female designer as an research on women inevitably invokes. Pollock indication of the strongly ingrained belief that suggests that we need to "keep in mind the men (heroically) originate, and women (weakly) political collectivity in which feminist work must copy. It is this same belief that permitted the be founded and, at the same time...refuse misattribution of E.1027 to the famous containment" (Pollock 1999, 26). modernist architect, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) Happily, feminists have proposed other until after his death. This misattribution was paradigms of writing, suggesting different something that Le Corbusier encouraged, "rhetorical spaces" (Code 1995) in which to because he deeply admired, if not fetishized the consider the work of women within the house, virtually "signing" the house during restrictions that patriarchal discourse places Grey's World War Two exile with a number of around creativity and space. These rhetorical murals that Grey apparently never requested spaces rely on relational, rather than (Colomina 1996, 167-82). As Katarina biographical conceptual models, and privilege Bonnevier argues, however, even telling this the notion that individuals create, not from the story "victimizes Grey and the attention is pulled tabula rasa of genius, but from the loaded away from her architecture to the dominant intersections of complicated and contradictory male architect" (Bonnevier 2005, 178). But what personal, economic, historical and political is the story of the house, if not a story of a circumstances (Grosz 2001). Yet the star woman's creativity, and a historiography which system of architecture, symbolized by the only recently has been corrected to rightly

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 7 reflect that creativity? The Status of North American Women in Many cultures prompt deference to the Architecture and Related Professions myth of the male originator in matters of matter; To say that architecture is a culturally that is, turning matter into form. Western culture privileged profession is not to suggest that the carries with it a profoundly embedded notion majority of architects today enjoy a privileged that when it comes to the monumental tasks of existence; on the contrary, architects struggle to shaping matter into buildings, or buildings into design in a way that responds to their ideals cities, men will do the job (Summers 1994). (such as sustainability), to make ends meet and Pollock has suggested that this naturalization keep firms alive. Salaries, likewise, tend to be relies upon "the category of a negated modest for most practitioners (as will be femininity in order to secure the supremacy of discussed below). Nevertheless, architecture masculinity within the sphere of creativity" does enjoy an enormous amount of cultural (Pollock 1999, 5). Pollock notes Roland capital in the sense that "great," monumental, Barthes' observation that myths are a form of or avant-garde architecture accounts for a "depoliticized speech"; absolved of the significant proportion of a place's historic, specificities of history, users of myth locate artistic and cultural value. Yet architecture is, at cause and meaning in that which is supposedly a very irreducible level, capitalism wrapped up innate, natural, and eternal. In this way, the as art. For the legions of idealistic, hopeful, and logistically impossible notion that a 1930s creative women and men who graduate from building by Frank Lloyd Wright could "influence" architecture schools every year, this reality Eileen Gray's 1920s treasure somehow comes clashes painfully with the ideals and myths they to be more meaningful than the wonder of have painstakingly built up in their years of Gray's unique design. These ideas also help to schooling. For women, however, the myth that understand other troubling narratives from the greatness is always-already male constitutes annals of women in architecture. Sophia extra hurdles, and consequences. Hayden (1868-1953), MIT's first female Architecture is not a profession that is graduate, retired from architecture after known for financial reward. In 2005, the Ontario designing one high-profile building, the Association of Architects (OAA 2005) reported W omen's Pavilion at the 1893 W orld's Fair on the average salaries in architecture and (Paine 1977, 70-72). Alexandra Biriukova related professions in Canada, according to (1895-1967), Ontario's first registered woman seniority. Intern architects made, on average, architect, left the profession after designing a between $34,102 - $41,361, while a senior widely-admired modernist home for artist architect's average salary in Canada reached Lawren Harriss (Forest Hill, Toronto, 1930). between $57,556 - $67,822 per year. The Harris was one of the Canadian Group of highest annual salaries did not exceed Seven, known for their vigorous paintings of $105,298. In the United States, the average rugged and mystical Canadian landscapes. As salary for a mid-level architect was $57,700US, Adams and Tancred note, accounts of the while senior members made, on average, house assume that Harris was more or less $85,800US.4 A study conducted for the responsible for the design, despite the fact that American Institute of Architects, however, put Biriukova's name is on the architectural the average architect's salary at $65, 000US a drawings. After her resignation from the Ontario year (Holland and Knight 2005, 62). Compared Association of Architects, Biriukova became a to other professions,5 architects survive on nurse (Adams and Tancred 2000, 82 & 163). relatively modest means. Despite such This woman, who had designed "an icon of prospects, architecture continues to attract Canadian modernism" (2000, 82) died in the students hoping to enter the profession, or same year that Expo 67 would provide related fields. "unprecedented opportunities for Canadian Although architecture schools tend to women architects in large-scale planning and have fairly equal representation of male and construction" (2000, 61). female students in the classroom, a recent sociological study on Canadian women

8 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis architects has shown that a significant would result in a poor grade, and diminished proportion of female graduates from professional options. "Architectural work," architectural programs never formally register according to Adams and Tancred, is "totally as architects, despite success in school discriminatory" against women (Adams and (Adams and Tancred 2000, 21-33). The Royal Tancred 2000, 99). What will it take to make Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) also architecture's history a story of situated has reported that while approximately 50% of struggles, a story of diverse achievements, of the students in architecture schools are women, diversity itself? And what will it take for young only 13% of practising architects are women women to feel free to explore issues of concern (RAIC 2005, 17-18). Likewise, a major to other women, and minority groups? One way American study conducted in 2005 shows that to ensure that students are not punished for rates of attrition for American women are much wishing to design for minority groups is to higher than that of men; Holland and Knight ensure their access to teachers who represent report that, compared to Canadian statistics, these minority groups. W omen, unfortunately, American numbers are "virtually identical" still make up a very small percentage of (Holland and Knight 2005, 15). In their survey of tenured faculty in schools of architecture in American architects-in-training, architects and Canada and the United States, as will be former architects, only 47% of female discussed below. In the meantime, however, it respondents had completed or planned to is important to underscore how women as well complete the final qualifying examinations to as men use, transform and improve our built become registered architects, compared to environment. 74% of male respondents who had completed or planned to complete these examinations Raising Profiles (2005, 34). While both sources cited note that One important strategy towards this it is possible to practise architecture in a end is to open public discussion about the built broader sense without having completed the environment, who creates it, and how we registration and licensing procedures required remember its designers. On November 4, 2005 by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (RAIC) or the American Institute of Architects (BW AF) hosted the first of a series of public (AIA), the legal right to practise architecture events on the topic of women and architecture (and the official status of an architect) is ("Fabricating Identity," Centre for Architecture, retained only by those individuals who have New York). BWAF, named after its founding passed the registration examinations. member, the prolific architect Beverly W illis, is W hile the long hours and inflexible a non-profit organization that seeks "to expand schedules (incommensurate with the demands the historical knowledge and cultural of most young parents) of most architecture recognition of American women architects of firms are the usual reasons noted for this the [twentieth] century, with a special focus on attrition, perhaps there are more subtle causes the time period 1950-1980" (BW AF). This for the enormous disparity between the number mandate, taken directly from the organization's of women who train to become architects, and online mission statement, operates through the number that actually, formally, do. In 2005 several strategies: the first is to support a young, Canadian, female student in a school research about women practitioners in of architecture told me that her thesis project, a architecture and related fields, including, design for a woman's shelter, was criticized by "architectural and landscape design, the members of the school because it occupied building arts, urban planning and historic itself "only" with homeless women, and not preservation, as well as architectural history homeless men, and was therefore "limited," and and criticism." A key purpose of the exclusive. Of course, this student should have organization is to create a public legacy of been encouraged to think through the very real knowledge about women's contributions to design challenges of her project, without fear these professional arenas. Second, BWAF that her refusal to include men in her shelter seeks to raise awareness about these

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 9 contributions through the support of local), and powerful unions on the question of a publications, a lecture series and special national housing policy. events, such as "Women of Architecture" (9 Bauer Wurster's ability to learn the March 2008, National Building Museum, "languages" of diverse groups and W ashington), "W omen in Modernism: Making constituencies in the US, were instrumental to Place in Architecture" (25 October 2007, her creation of herself as a housing expert and Museum of Modern Art, New York). These authority on modern architecture, planning, and events, to which I have contributed several urban theory. Through these experiences and times as a speaker or an organizer, aim to choices, Bauer Wurster built an identity for create a debate about the state of research on herself, and in so doing, helped to enlarge women practitioners, gender, space, and the public expectations about who could know condition of public memory as it pertains to the about, and make transformations within the role of women in creating the built environment. realms of architecture, cities, housing and Early in the proceedings during the planning. Teaching and public events that make 2005 event, participant Gwendolyn Wright room for practitioners such as Bauer Wurster observed that one characteristic of the play a truly significant role for women students institutions that shape, house and trouble us is and readers who are seeking to create their that they have "edges." These edges, she own professional and creative identities. In the explained, are locations where great change encounter with historical individuals such as has taken place, particularly in university and Bauer Wurster, the possibility for locating educational settings. The idea of the "edge" oneself emerges: not just in a history of came up several times during discussion, and struggle for inclusion, but also in a history of indeed liminalities of all sorts have helped to remarkable achievement, a story of how the make schools of architecture, architectural margins can become the centre.6 firms and practices places which women, and As a field, architecture encourages its other so-called minorities can now occupy. In initiates to think in terms of broad social, my research on women and the built environmental and political difficulties, drawing environment, Catherine Bauer Wurster hopeful women and men into its possibilities for (1905-1964), stands out in this regard. A change. But at the end of the first decade of the remarkable agent in the fight for public housing new millennium, it is also a field in which legislation and standards in pre- and post-war high-budget projects and traces of mastery - United States (US), Bauer Wurster is familiar the ink sketch dashed off on a paper napkin for now mostly to students of planning, housing a multi-million-dollar building - seem to carry far and to much a lesser degree, architecture, greater weight than the slow but essential through historians such as Gwendolyn Wright advances made in less glamorous areas: social (1995), H. Peter Oberlander and Eva Newbrun housing, sustainable design, and design for (1999). But she was well known in her lifetime marginal groups, even ordinary housing for for several reasons, including her landmark middle-class consumers (all of whom have book, Modern Housing (Bauer Wurster 1934), some wonderful drawn-upon napkins of their her role in writing the US Housing Act of 1937, own). The architectural star system can leave and her many years of teaching urban planning one with the impression that true architectural in the College of Environmental Design at greatness does not concern itself with the Berkeley, and at the Harvard Graduate School unmanageable, fractured and messier aspects of Design. Modern Housing, the result of of existence, or if it does, it is to create broad intense, comparative study of modern formal gestures - the deeply contested, "iconic" architecture and city planning in Europe, sought projects of recent decades come to mind, such to establish the most useful lessons to be as the Montreal Olympic Stadium (Roger learned for American housing from European Tailbert, begun 1973), which displaced a precedents. After publishing her work, Bauer working-class community, or Studio Daniel W urster became highly active in galvanizing Libeskind's Michael Lee-Chin "Crystal," the politicians, housing committees (national and extravagant extension to the Royal Ontario

10 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis Museum, Toronto (2007) which has ravaged is not possible, the alternative is to agitate the institution's historic fabric in favour of outside the institution. There, all kinds of iconicity. Such designs tend to envelop or actions and strategies are possible: acting out, displace, rather than engage with the whining, tugging at the door handle, making a unmanageable, fractured mess that most tend scene. When all routes are blocked, there to live within. remains the possibility (although perhaps not at the Guggenheim) of breaking in, looking for Edges, Margins, Liminalities side entrances and open windows. The event of To return to Gwendolyn W right's exclusion, whether physical, discursive or observation that edges are where change inferential, can become its own performance, its happens, I now consider the place of women in means own entry, despite - and perhaps even schools of architecture, where they are still very making fun of - the barriers. I believe that much in the minority, or on the edge. My own women (and men) need to have a lot more survey of Canada's schools of architecture, laughs as they push their way past the parapets urban planning and landscape architecture, of patriarchy in the field of architecture. conducted through the faculty pages of all London-based public art/architecture firm, muf, Canadian universities with accredited programs combines the occasional, strategically in architecture, landscape architecture, and essentialist move with cheeky savvy about how urban planning, reveals that women make up to work the edges. Made up of artists, 27.4% of these departments' full-time, tenured architects and designers, muf makes proposals or tenure-track faculty. According to the that are often designed to be rejected, on the National Architecture Accrediting Board principle that sometimes one can say more by (NAAB), in 2003, only 16% of full-time faculty in proposing an unbuildable project, or one that American schools of architecture were women critiques the underlying presumptions of a brief. (Holland and Knight 2005, 11). Such women Their work has run the gamut from an faculty members, furthermore, are often installation of a white, breast-like form slowly marginalized within those schools, teaching expanding to fill an exhibition space at the history rather than the highly-valued studio Royal Institute of British Architects ("Purity and courses (Anthony 2001; Groat and Ahrentzen Tolerance" 1997), to several winsome and 2001, 241). provocative museum projects in England, As Groat and Ahrentzen suggest, proving that diversity of physical results can be however, "this distancing from the centre as much a hallmark of a firm as a signature enables [women] not only to see the inherent style (muf 2000). There is nothing like humour contradictions and inequities at the centre but to underscore the fact that the Emperor has no also to claim the 'space' from which important clothes, and there is nothing like a temporary alternatives may be launched" (Groat and alliance - between artists, architects, Ahrentzen 2001, 241 & 251). What might these communities and academics, for example - to alternatives be? One example might be the create new relationships, effective coalitions, aforementioned film by BWAF about the 100 and involve a wider audience in one's concerns. female collaborators of Frank Lloyd Wright. Dolores Hayden's work with the Power of Place Screened in the context of the Guggenheim, collective has set a high standard for how such itself a monument to individualistic creative coalitions can break though disciplinary genius (Wright designed the building in 1958), boundaries while involving a broad constituency the film brings to light the names of women in its sites of concern (Hayden 1995). These architects such as Cornelia Brierly, Marion collectives show by example that there are Mahony Griffin and Lois Gottlieb, and dozens many sites waiting for the occupancy of more. The naming of such women architects intelligent and creative squatters. within institutional space is a subversive and Architectural practice can likewise profoundly political move. engage with other groups that are habitually And, at those times when getting into rendered invisible within patriarchal society. the Guggenheim to name the forgotten names Vancouver-based Patricia Patkau and John

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 11 Patkau, as Patkau Architects, designed The Washington, DC, while Deborah Berke heads Seabird Island School (Agassiz, British an office of 25 members in New York. Toshiko Columbia 1991). Built for and with the First Mori balances award-winning design with a Nation Salish people, the stunning, bird-shaped full-time teaching position at Harvard. Gisue building is a powerful example of and Mojgan Hariri are sisters who have user-integrated design practice, bearing out successfully run their own firm since 1986, Patkau's faith in the ability of buildings to unify while Winka Dubbeldam's New York firm, and strengthen communities within challenging Archi-tectonics, employs fifteen architects and sites. Scholar and architect Tania Martin has designers. These individuals, their designs and made community-based design strategies the their professional successes provide powerful basis of her work with students in the role models for young women in the profession, architecture program at Laval University as does the fact - noted by many interviewees (Quebec) and the Innu of Uashat mak in Stephens’ survey - that women clients are on Mani-Utenam (Quebec). Her participatory the rise as well. teaching methods led to the design of modern housing prototypes for this community (Martin Closing Words and New Verbs and Casault 2005). Those women who have Every time I prepare lectures and succeeded in breaking the glass ceiling in seminars on women and the history of teaching institutions are also a way of bringing architecture, I find myself searching for a verb, the edges to bear upon the centre, and perhaps one that would express the kinds of practices differencing the institution, to adapt Pollock's that I have described above. After I lead phrase. Francis Bronet, principal of Francis discussions and take student questions, there Bronet Associates, is also Dean of the School is often one young woman at the end, who of Architecture at the University of Oregon. stays behind to tell me (often very shyly) that Bronet has worked extensively in a she would love to be an architect, and to ask cross-disciplinary way, bringing together me what I think her prospects might be, where engineering, dance and architecture in she might study. When I answer her, I feel that collaborative practice. At the University of the verb I seek is one that would describe Virginia, Karen Van Lengen is Dean of the exactly the situation at hand. Having just heard School of Architecture, where she developed an about all the difficulties that women face, the integrated architecture and landscape program ongoing misattribution of their work, the with a strong emphasis on ecological issues. challenge of (still) facing a choice between work The environment is also a concern of Dean and family, this young woman still needs to Donna Robertson, of the Illinois Institute of know, can I do it? The answer, always, is yes. Technology (IIT), where a new landscape This mentoring or fostering of an individual who architecture program was unveiled under her is not yet part of architecture but one day might direction. These women, who have succeeded be, must be among the most important tasks in their leadership and design careers suggest within the larger project of raising the profile of that the parapets of patriarchy are under siege, women in architecture. if not yet vanquished. About 100 years ago, pioneering Outside the academy, there is a feminist and domestic reformer, Charlotte growing phenomenon of women-run firms. Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote extensively Susanne Stephens' 2006 article for about women's roles in American society, Architectural Record interviewed thirty women championing economic independence, suffrage architects with solely-owned firms across the and alternative social and spatial models. United States. "While [these women] are not Gilman too sought an alternative language and Zaha Hadid," Stephens writes, "her success is new verbs, hoping to escape the gendering of helping bring to the public the notion that a lone language that maintained women's social and female architect can indeed create significant, symbolic inferiority. Deeply convinced of the even great architecture" (Stephens 2006, 68). importance of work for women's mental and Suman Sorg runs a 40-person office in emotional health, she believed that the

12 Atlantis 34.1, 2009 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis challenge that lay before a woman was to "find practice - at $212,000 annually (Kubacki 2008); her work and do it." "Life," she wrote, "is a verb" in comparison, the American Association of (Gilman 1989, vii & x).7 And so I tell the young Family Physicians reports that in the United student who has stayed behind, after my talk, States in 2005, the salary range for a family that yes, she most certainly can become an doctor fell between $125,000 to $200,000US. architect. Will she find her place in the The highest-paid doctors in Canada pantheon of star architects? She may. But she (neuroscience) receive $479,000 per year, on might also find some wonderful ruins, maybe average; and government-funded positions in even some old bones from which to build her neurosurgery in the US pay as much as own brilliant alternative. For while architectural $325,000US per year. history is still too forgetful where women are 6. I thank an anonymous Atlantis reviewer for concerned, our architectural present is perhaps pointing out that Bauer Wurster is remembered, too crowded with a few oversized and overly in a sense, through Wurster Hall, which houses familiar figures. Yet, as architectural historian the architecture and urban planning and critic Charles Jencks suggests, this may departments at UC Berkeley. Although the not benefit the star system for long. "Most name of the building refers to Bauer W urster's dinosaurs," he warns, "died because they were husband, architect and educator William too big" (Jencks 2005a, np). Wurster, a bust of Bauer Wurster can be found in the main library. Endnotes 7. I am grateful to the anonymous Atlantis 1. My Architect: A Son's Journey (Nathaniel reader who pointed out Gilman's interest in Kahn 2003) examines the biography and verbs, and her use of the manifesto as a architecture of Louis Kahn (1901-1974); feminist political tool. Sketches of Frank Gehry (Sydney Pollack 2005), Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Acknowledgements Lautner (Murray Grigor 2008) and Sacred I wish to thank Annmarie Adams, Wanda Spaces: The Architecture of Fay Jones (Larry Bubriski and Thomas Strickland for their Foley and Dale Carpenter 2009) all treat their support for early versions of this essay, and the male subjects with a similar, near-religious anonymous Atlantis reviewers for their very devotion. helpful commentary and suggestions. 2. There was of course an earlier interest in women and the built environment. Charlotte References Perkins Gilman published texts on gender and "A Thousand W omen in Architecture," space (Hayden 1981), while in 1948 Architectural Record 103 (March 1948): 105-13. Architectural Record published an article entitled "A Thousand Women in Architecture." Adams, A. and P. Tancred. Designing Women: 3. For an excellent, critical review of the Gender and the Architectural Profession. literature see Ahrentzen (2003). Substantial Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. online bibliographies can be accessed via Hardy et al.(2005) and through the Beverly Ahrentzen, S. "The Space Between Studs: Willis Architecture Foundation (www.bwaf.org) Feminism and Architecture," Signs: The Journal under "Resources." of Women in Culture and Society 29, 1 (2003): 4. Numbers have been taken from 2005 to 179-206. (www.bwaf.org/resources.html) avoid the 6% swell in salaries that paralleled the construction boom of 2005-2008 (AIA 2008). AIA (American Institute of Architects). "New AIA 5. Average salaries for medical professionals in Survey Indicates Strong Gains in North American are, for example, significantly Compensation" Institute News: Business Vol 15 higher than for professionals in fields related to (26 September 2008) architecture. Maria Kubacki, citing the Canadian http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek08/0926/ Institute for Health Information for 2005, puts 0926b_compsurvey.cfm>. (Accessed 1 April the lowest-paid doctors' salaries - family 2009).

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.1, 2009 13 Anthony, K. Designing for Diversity: Gender, Writings, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, ed. New Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural York: Random House, 1989. Profession. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Groat, L. and S. Ahrentzen. "Interdisciplinary Visions of Architectural Education: The Bauer W urster, C. Modern Housing. Boston; Perspectives of Faculty Women," The New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934. Discipline of Architecture, A. Piotrowski and J. Robinson, eds. Minneapolis, Minnesota: U of Bonnevier, K. "A Queer Analysis of Eileen Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 235-59. Gray's E.1027," Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Grosz, E. Architecture from the Outside: Architecture, H. Heynen, G. Baydar, eds. New Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 162-80. Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.

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_____. The Iconic Building. New York: Rizzoli, Scott, J. "Gender: A Useful Category of 2005b. Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053-75. Kubacki, M. "Male Family Doctors an Endangered Species," The Vancouver Sun (16 Scott Brown, D. "Room at the Top? Sexism and March 2008). the Star System in Architecture," Architecture: www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story. A Place for Women, E. Berkeley and M. html?id=07744248-b2a5-4266-bebd-2bd17b6f McQuaid, eds. Washington and London: 0975&k=35028 (accessed 9 April 2009). Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, pp. 237-46. Martin, T. and A. Casault. "Thinking the Other: Towards Cultural Diversity in Architecture," Stephens, S. "Not Only Zaha: What Is It Like to Journal of Architectural Education 59.1 (2005): be a Female Architect with a Solely Owned 3-16. Firm in the US Today?" Architectural Record 194 (December, 2006): 58-62, 64, 66, 68. Meade, J. "The First Great Female Architect," The Economist/Intelligent Life 1.4 (Summer Summers, D. "Form and Gender," Visual 2008): 62-71. Culture: Images and Interpretations, N. Bryson, M. Holly and K. Moxey, eds. Hanover and McNeil, D. The Global Architect: Firms, Fame London: Wesleyan UP, 1994, pp. 384-411. and Urban Form. New York, London: Routledge, 2009. Wright, G. "A Partnership: Catherine Bauer and W illiam Wurster," An Everyday Modernism: The muf. This is What We Do: A muf Manual. Houses of William Wurster, Marc Treib, ed. San London: Ellipsis, 2000. Francisco, Calif., Berkeley: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; University of California OAA (Ontario Association of Architects). "Job Press, 1995. Search Guidelines - General - The Architectural Profession," Ontario Association of Architects: Service and Resources. 7 July 2005. www.oaa.on.ca. (accessed 1 February 2009).

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