The 10 Most Overlooked Women in
Architecture History
- 01:00 - 8 March, 2013
- by Nicky Rackard
Looking
back on architectural history, you could be forgiven for thinking that women
were an invention of the 1950’s, alongside spandex and power steering - but
this couldn’t be further from the truth. Big names like Le Corbusier, Mies,
Wright and Kahn often had equally inspired female peers, but the rigid
structure of society meant that their contributions tended to be overlooked.
In honor of International Woman’s Day 2013, we take a look at the 10
greatest overlooked women in architectural history.
Born
in 1869 in Santiago, Chile to a Chilean father and American
mother, Sophia Hayden Benett was the first woman to receive an architecture
degree from MIT when she graduated in 1890. The degree,
however, did not guarantee work; after searching fruitlessly, Hayden Benett
resigned to accepting a job teaching technical drawing in a Boston high School.
In
1891, Hayden came across an announcement calling on women architects to submit
designs for the Woman’s Building, which would form part of Daniel
Burnham’s gargantuan World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Hayden’s
proposal, based upon her college thesis, was for a three story building in the
Italian Renaissance style. Hayden's design won first prize out of the field of
thirteen entries. Only twenty-one at the time, Hayden received one-thousand
dollars for her design, which was a tenth of what many men received for theirs.
However,
during the construction of the building, Hayden suffers constant
micro-management and compromises demanded by the construction committee.
So much stress was put on the young woman that she suffered from a break-down
and was placed in a sanitarium for a period of enforced rest; leading many at
the time to highlight it as proof that women had no place in the world of
architecture. After the exhibition Hayden never worked as an architect again.
Marion
Mahony Griffin was not only one of the first licensed female architects in the
world, but was the first employee of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Born
in 1871, she studied architecture at MIT. After graduating in 1894 she began
working for her cousin, who happened to share a building with several other
architects, including Wright, who hired Mahoney in 1895. Being his first
employee, Mahoney exerted a considerable influence on the development of the
Prairie style, while her watercolor renderings soon became synonymous with
Wright's work. As was typical for Wright at the time, he credited her for
neither.
Their
collaboration ended in 1909 when Wright left for Europe, offering to leave the
studio’s commissions to Mahony, who declined. However, she was subsequently
hired by Wright's successor, under the condition that she was in full control
of design.
In
1911 she married Walter Burley Griffin, who also worked with Wright. The two
set up a practice together and before long they won the commission to design
the new Australian capital Canberra. The
couple moved to Australia to oversee the project, and later moved to
India, where they continued to work until Griffin died in 1937. After his
death, Mahoney refrained from working in architecture until her death in 1961.
Eileen
Gray was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Enniscorthy, Ireland in
1878. After studying art in London, Gray moved to Paris in
1902 to further her studies.
Having
studied lacquer work in Soho, Gray set up a studio with Japanese craftsman
Seizo Sugawara to perfect her skills. She gained notoriety through her domestic
lacquer wares and she was soon being offered interior design commissions by
wealthy patrons. Notably architectural, her designs used lacquer screens
to divide space, blurring the lines between furniture and architecture.
Using
her experience in interior design, she designed E-1027 - a holiday home in the
south of France - with her lover Jean Badovici.
The house became a test-bed for Gray to trial with radical furniture designs,
leading to some of her most iconic work. After splitting with Badovici,
Gray felt distant from the house. One person who didn’t, however, was Le
Corbusier. He became obsessed with E-1027, building a small
home for himself nearby and one day sneaking in to vandalize it with his own
murals. It was near this house where he died.
Gray
devoted the rest of her life to architectural designs; in 1937 her designs for
a holiday centre were featured in Le Corbusier's Esprit Nouveau pavilion
at the Paris Exposition. However, she distanced herself from the community
and only two other projects, both designed for her own use, were ever built. By
the end of the 1960’s her work was all but forgotten. She died in 1976.
There
is currently an exhibition running in Centre Pompidou in Paris as well as
a permanent exhibition in the National Museum of Ireland, both aim to
reinstate Gray's reputation as one of the central pioneers of modernism
alongside Le Corbusier and Mies Van der Rohe.
Many
of Mies Van der Rohe’s most famous works,
particularly in the area of furniture design, would not have been possible
without this woman. It is said that Mies rarely asked for anybody’s opinion,
but was always eager to hear hers.
Born
June 1885 in Berlin, Reich moved to Vienna after
high school to train as an industrial embroider - a
design career considered suitable for women at the time. Upon
returning to Berlin in 1911 she worked as a fashion and furniture designer and
joined the Deutscher Werkbund – a German work federation – becoming its first
female director in 1920.
Her
work as a designer took her to Frankfurt where
she met Mies Van der Rohe. The two of them became very close and she began
working in his office. In 1928, the duo were appointed artistic directors of
the German pavilion at the Barcelona World exposition, leading to Mies’ iconic design, long considered one of
the defining works of modernism. Shortly after, Mies appointed Reich as
the director of building/finishing at the Bauhaus school,
which he was at the helm of. Her tenure was cut short when the school closed
1933 under to pressure from the National Socialist party.
During
the war Reich took on a few small jobs, but her 12-year partnership with Mies
ended when he left for America in 1937. Remaining responsible for his
affairs in Berlin, she managed to save over 4000 of his drawings from being
destroyed by bombing when she smuggled them to a barn outside of Berlin. In
1939, however, her studio was bombed and she was drafted into a forced-labor,
civil engineering organization, where she remained until 1945.
After
the war she took a job lecturing interior design and building theory at Berlin
University of the Arts. She also partook in meetings to revive the Werkbund,
but died in 1947 three years before it gained legal status.
Studying
furniture design in Paris, Charlotte Perriand applied for a job at Le
Corbusier’s studio in 1927. Unimpressed, he dismissed her work with the
comment: “We don’t embroider cushions here.” However, later when her work was
put in display at the Salon d’Automne, he was impressed by it, and
offered her a job in furniture design.
A
year after joining his studio, Perriand had already produced three of Le
Corbusier’s most iconic chair designs, the B301, B306 and the LC2 Grand
Comfort.
As
Perriand’s views moved further to the left in the 1930’s she became involved in
many leftist organizations, founding the Union des Artists Moderns in 1937.
Noticed for adding humaneness to Le Corbusier’s rational work, her
designs started to become more affordable, using wood and cane over expensive
chrome; her aim was to develop functional and appealing furniture for the
masses.
In
1940 Perriand was invited to travel to Japan to
become an advisor for the Ministry for trade and Industry. Two years later the
ongoing war forced her to leave the country. Whilst returning to Europe she was
detained by a naval blockade and forced into exile in Vietnam. There
she studied eastern design including weaving and woodwork, which had a huge
impact on her later work.
Jane
Drew was an early proponent of Modernism in England and
was responsible for bringing Le Corbusier's work to India.
An
architect and town planner, Drew was educated in the AA in London and became
one of the principal founders of MARS – an English modernist movement based on
Le Corbusiers CIAM – based on the mission statement the “use of space for
human activity rather than the manipulation of stylized convention.”
Starting
a – at first entirely female – practice in London during the war, Drew took on
a number of large projects throughout the city, eventually going into
partnership with her husband Maxwell Fry. In keeping with Drew’s ethos, a huge
proportion of their projects consisted of affordable
housing in England, West Africa and Iran.
Impressed
by her work in West Africa, Drew was asked by the Indian Prime minister to
design Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab.
Drew was unsure of her ability to undertake the project - at the time she was designing
housing for the festival of Britain, - so she convinced fellow modernist Le
Corbusier to contribute, creating a close collaboration between the two. Drew
used the city to experiment with new socially conscious housing strategies,
eventually effecting the design of housing throughout India.
Completing
the vast majority of her work in post-war Brazil, Italian architect
Lina Bo Bardi was overshadowed by the futuristic work of peers such as Oscar
Niemeyer. However she has become known as an architect who
always put people first in her work, creating beautiful architecture that is
loved by its inhabitants.
Born
in 1914, Lina Bo Bardi graduated from the Rome College
of Architecture in 1939 and moved to Milan, where
she set up her own practice in 1942. Shortly afterwards her office was damaged
by an aerial bombing. This, combined with the lack of commissions due to the
war, caused her explore other areas of her work, and in 1943 she was invited to
become director of the magazine Domus.
Bo
Bardi moved to Brazil in 1946, where she became a naturalized citizen five
years later. In 1947 Bo Bardi was invited to set up the Assis Chateubriand
Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP), which has become one of
the most important museums in Latin America. Her design had plenty of radical
elements, including what are considered the first modern chairs in Brazil.
In
1948 she set up Studio d’Arte Palma with another Italian architect, with an eye
to designing furniture from Plywood and ‘typical’ Brazilian materials. In 1951
she completed the Glass House, her private residence, which became a
centerpiece of modernism in Brazil. In 1958 Bo Bardi received an
invitation to move to Salvador to run the Museum of Modern Art of
Bahial upon returning to São Paulo after a military coup in 1964, her work
underwent vast simplification, becoming what she described herself as ‘poor
architecture’.
A
prominent architectural theorist of the twentieth century, Anne Tyng became
central to the designs of Louis
Kahn, with whom she had a daughter.
Anne
Tyng was born in China in 1920 to Episcopal missionaries. In
1942 she became one of the first women to be admitted to the Harvard Graduate
School of Design, where she studied under Walter
Gropius.
After
graduating she went on to work for several New York offices
before moving to Philadelphia to join Kahn’s firm, Stonorov
& Kahn. When the firm split in 1947 Tyne continued working for Kahn.
She never designed a building of her own, but, due to a shared fascination with
geometry, she became critical to Kahn's work. Some described her as his
muse; Buckminster Fuller preferred to call her “Kahn’s geometrical
strategist." Many of Kahn’s designs show her influence, such as Trenton
Bath House and the Yale Art Gallery, while Kahn’s “City Tower’ was
mostly the work of Tyng.
A
woman of firsts, Norma Merrick Sklarek was the first African-American
woman to hold an architecture license, first to earn a license in California and
first African-American woman to be elected a fellow of the American
Institute of Architects.
Born
in Harlem in
1926, Sklarek found it difficult to find work with firms in New York, despite
having a degree from Columbia University. As she said, "They weren't
hiring women or African Americans, and I didn't know which it was [working
against me]." Eventually she secured a job in Skidmore
Owings & Merill.
In
1960 she moved to California to work for Gruen
Associates, where she recalled feeling under pressure because
of her gender and ethnicity. Despite this she quickly rose through the ranks
and was named director of the firm in 1966. Throughout
her career Sklarek gained a reputation as an excellent project
architect, regularly completing huge projects, such as LAX Terminal
1 and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, on time and under budget.
She
left Gruen and Associates in 1980 and shortly after co-founded Sklarek, Siegel
and Diamond, which became the biggest, female only firm in the country.
Denise
Scott Brown, along with her partner Robert
Venturi, has had an enormous influence on the development
of architectural design during the twentieth century. Her critiques are
credited with changing the way many architects and planners saw
mid-century modernism and urban
design. Many were surprised when her husband was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1991, and she failed
to receive a mention.
Born
in 1931 in, then, Northern Rhodesia, Scott Brown studied first in South Africa
and then London. In 1958 she moved to Philadelphia with her first husband
Robert Scott Brown, who died in an auto accident a year later.
In
1960, Scott Brown completed her masters in planning in University of
Pennsylvania where she became a member of faculty, completing a masters in
Architecture shortly afterwards. It was here that she met future husband and
partner Robert Venturi.
Brown traveled extensively as a scholar, sparking her interest in the relatively
young cities of Los Angeles and Las
Vegas. While teaching at Yale University from 1967 to 1970 she
designed studio classes called Learning from Las Vegas. Scott Brown, along
with Venturi, and urbanist Steven Izenour, compiled the work from these
classes in to the book Learning From Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of
Architectural Form, which has become a seminal work of the 20th century
design.
http://www.archdaily.com/341730/the-10-most-overlooked-women-in-architecture-history
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