Welcome to the 2nd Fire in the Library. Thanks
for coming. We hope that you're going to join
us in the conversation, There's a T Mhm.
Mhm. Um Yeah, so I'm gonna give a
brief introduction about the I W A. For those
who may not have heard about it, and then
I'm going to introduce the the panelists. So the
second part of the library is a conversation. It's
going to be a conversation with the group and these
while we're missing one who's traveling mary lou but these
are the people that constitute the first uh I w
a group. So you may some of you may
know already that the I W was founded 30 years
ago by Milka Bliznakov, Doctor Milka Bliznakov. Uh
She she studied in Bulgaria and she got her masters
in Bulgaria in the early fifties and she practiced there
for almost a whole decade. At that time,
Bulgaria was part of the communist bloc of countries.
She had some political, her family had some issues
and she had decided early on that she wanted to
escape Bulgaria, which he did finally, at the
end of The 50s and spent two years in France
in Paris before she made her way to The states
. So she arrived in the United States around 1961
, She says, knowing only two words of English
and she spent the next 10 years studying. She
got her PhD and Working. And finally in 1974
she joined the faculty here at Virginia Tech Until she
retired in 1998. So when she arrived here and
as an academic, having conversations with students and so
forth, she started realizing the absence of women presidents
in architecture and the absence of role models. And
so she promptly acted to counteract this by founding the
the archive. So two years before the foundation of
the archive, she started sending letters out to women
architects around the world. She sent more than 1000
letters out to several countries. And she also started
visiting different countries and talking to women trying to have
them donate their work to be preserved in the archives
here. So the archives were founded here is a
joint venture between the college and the university libraries.
Um and the collections are currently housed in special collections
in Newman Library. The first couple of years,
she says, uhh the archive was her office.
So in her office you had boxes of material that
women from sent to her. But then as the
archive got more formally established, all the work has
been obviously moved to the archives and it's currently processed
and and preserved for use for researchers. So in
this original letter that she sent to uh to many
women around the world, she stayed at the scope
of the archives will be international and will include the
work from the beginning of women's involvement in architecture in
any capacity up to the present time. The reason
for this was because she was aware that for a
very long time women were not allowed to study architecture
. Women who study were not allowed to get a
license or were not allowed to practice their easily.
And so, but in spite of that, all
women were very, a very big part of architecture
were contributing to the professional, we're contributing to the
built environment. Uh So she clearly stated that she
would want to collect the work all women in any
that in any capacity had contributed to the built environment
and to the profession. Together with this, she
determined the five main goals of the which is defined
and preserved the records of the pioneer generation of women
architects whose papers may be lost or dispersed if not
collected immediately. To appeal to retired women architects who
have played a part in architectural history to donate their
papers to the I. W. A. To
appeal to active women to save their papers to donate
them later on, once they retire to serve as
a clearing house of information on all women architects past
and present and to encourage research on the history of
women in architecture. Through seminars, exhibits and publications
. She understood that because throughout history, women have
not been published or given the same exposure as men
, there were really no records available, no books
are not that many, not that much information available
on their contributions. And so the only material value
that can attest what their contributions were, that where
were their own original papers. And that's why she
fought to gather them and preserve with the hopes that
researchers would start writing history and completing history or balancing
the history of the profession. It's also important to
know that when she mentioned pioneer, she's not she's
not rest. Thank you, referring Thank you,
referring two Stark It Tex. She's talking about the
first women that were out uh huh in the practice
. In spite of the environment and in spite of
the context and achieving that quite a bit of progress
and works and advances and so today, 30 years
, yeah, 30 years after the foundation of the
archive, the archive preserves has represents over 47 countries
of the world and It houses over 400 collections.
This map thankfully needs to be updated from since last
year. I did this last summer and I need
to update because we have a few more countries now
represented here. Okay, so a year ago when
they When the archive turned 30, we we got
together with the W. A. executive comedian.
We started thinking about, Okay, now Looking back
at the 1st 30 years, we have to start
thinking about what are the next 30 years is going
to be like, what is the new vision,
what what works, what needs to change? And
so there has been a very strong effort to update
the means of the means of dissemination and broadcasting and
the extend or expand the presence of the IAP of
the ah out in the world so that we can
collect and preserve more collection. So, some of
the efforts of the last year include the Organising and
hosting the International Congress here in Blacksburg last summer,
the 18th we have a congress that yeah, International
Union of Women Architects um and for this Congress,
among other things with some students, we collaborate and
we created this immersive digital exhibit that has been traveling
in to these, travel to mhm. Again increase
the awareness of the existence of the W. Together
with this, it was the development of a new
visual archive project which is a digital and very visual
browser of the material that's being preserved in the archive
, not only to to make it more accessible and
more visible, but also to promote and foster research
. Mm We hosted in March, the I.
W. S. Symposium which is going to be
hosted yearly. So next March by the end of
March, which is women's month. We're going to
have the 2nd 2017 symposium that brings guest presenters.
Mhm And includes other activities. We also launched this
year, the Kalashnikov student Research Price. This is
very important for you. You should be taking note
of this. Uh so we've had for many years
and milk population of research price for researchers. And
if you were here at the last fire, you
met two women that That 1 2016 award. But
we also started then the student Research Award. So
you will be encouraged. And the call is coming
in the coming out in the spring. You're encouraged
to submit a proposal for it To do some research
in the archive. The award, I believe is
$1,000. Not too bad. Yeah, so definitely
think about it and stay tuned and participate. And
we also launched the fire in the library series,
which intends to be a series of conversations where we
bring some of the issues or some of the work
that's related to the archive and want to include you
all ask you to participate in in the working in
the conversation. So the first conversation was September 16
and we had to Kalishnikov recipients. And today we're
having the second fire where we're having one of the
other things that happened this year, we started the
I. W. A group which is a special
study group with students of the universities. Some are
from architecture, but this is not from the college
and mary louise also from college, but she's traveling
today. So we've been working this semester with all
these projects that are emerging with a new vision.
But when the blessing of recipients came, They were
researching in the archive for 10 days or so.
And when they left, they sort of posed a
challenge for us. So both of them provided to
lists of women for us to work with. Tanya
papa Reuter had is interested in european refugees that came
to to the United States during and after the war
. And she's interested she found by looking at material
in the archives, she found only names of women
that she would like to do research on. But
we have no material for and the material is not
that available either. So she she provided the list
Of 10 women to do detective work to see,
we can find links and clues and hints about these
women or some references Florencia is part of the group
of the blog that is Writing one entry per day
architect and they are now on their second cycle and
they want to start the third cycle next year.
Also starts in March where they want to have the
entries be written in english Uh and translated into Spanish
because right now the blog is only in Spanish.
So the challenge that they posed for us was again
present a list of 10 women and ask us that
are in the archive and ask us to start looking
at their work to consider writing the entries for the
blog. So some of the the members here,
the w group are going to be writing the the
entries that are going to be published in the blog
once the third cycle starts. So with that the
challenge that I oppose them was let's organize a second
fire in the library. Go for a couple of
hours, divide the list. So some of them
actually used a few of the women from Tanya's list
and some from Valencia's list and devote a few hours
to go in and see what you can find.
So go online and see if you can find any
clues or hints about these women that we only have
names for. And then go into the archives and
look at the collections of some of the women that
flooding is interested in and see what what seems interesting
, what catches your attention. What do you find
what you dont find? And then let's bring it
up out and share with people and have a conversation
about that. So, I think that that's what
I'm going to and now I'm going to allow shop
. No, no, no, no. Yeah
. Divya, sorry. Yeah, it's time.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. To present what she
found. All right. So, well, I
spent some time in the special collections and I'm just
going to be presenting on two architects that I studied
their body of work in the archive and it's really
interested me. Uh I'm gonna be sharing some parts
of the person as well as professional lives. And
the first architect is jane Hastings. She was born
in Seattle. She worked in Seattle eventually she ended
up starting her own architectural firm in Seattle. And
she's a very much alive and kicking and she's she's
uh Paula has, she's met her and she's she's
Paula described her as a very lively personality. So
uh yeah, so I went through her work,
but what really stood out for me was I went
to the art and artifacts section of the special collection
and I went to like this bunch of scarves,
the UFA scarfs. Uh, well, these were
scarves that were gifted to the youth. The UFA
. Yeah, the architect delegates who would visit the
convention and in return, they would get these cars
. So jane Hayes, things happen to preserve these
cars. And she donated it to the archive.
Um and the 2nd 1 is a metric set that
she donated to the archive. If you go back
, if you happen to go back into the,
into the archive, you'll also find a small miniature
book gifted to her by one of her clients.
You'll also find a bunch of stamps that she donated
to the archive again. Um Well, these were
a few things that stood out for me with jane
Hastings, but the other architect that I'm gonna be
talking about is a secret rob. She was an
architect born in Germany, but she moved to the
United States happened to practice here for a really long
time. Um She practiced in California. I started
her own film there. Uh, eventually she uh
, she passed away, but we happen to have
a huge collection of her books in the archive as
well. Um And my personal favorite, actually.
Um well, I'm gonna be sharing some of her
personal life Uh, details, I guess. But
the first thing that I found was a personal diary
. Um, it was written in 1982. Uh
, it's just a small, you know, a
small thing that she wrote after. She probably broke
up with jennifer boyfriends. And it's just really,
it's just really nice how she describes it and shit
. And she puts her heart out on the,
on the notes and it's really interesting. And also
a bunch of two photographs to go. Then we
have a very interesting personal ad that she probably wrote
for a newspaper. This is just a draft uh
, where she writes here is um adventurous irreverence,
ordinary politically liberal professional of a certain age seeks a
professional man for fun discussion and travel, et cetera
. Must be able to read and talk interest interest
in the Rwanda, appreciate it. TV watching not
, um, age 35-65 should be fit and the
race is unimportant. So I had this is really
interesting. Uh, I don't know if it actually
got published but we found the drop. So,
uh, then actually, I'm sorry. Yeah,
go back. I'm so sorry go back. Uh
yeah. The box number is written at the bottom
. So if you want to go back and have
a look at it. Uh, and then while
I have a, this is a very interesting segment
actually. So this architect, she maintained a book
of her dreams. So all the dreams that she
would have, she would write it down in the
diary. And she called it the dreams Diary.
And this is just a small picture from her diary
. I'm just gonna read out like a small part
of it. But I happened to read a,
you know, I happened to read a lot of
it actually, but I'm just going to point out
a few things. Um but she writes In 1983
, she writes, I'm afraid of heights. And
I've always been so many dreams center on via elevators
and open stairs with many threads missing. And waiters
have always been my the ultimate fear of openness bring
up high suspended without help. These are the only
monochromatic dreams. I recollect the stairs I usually way
up, never just about the ground and there is
no way to get away. So it's really nice
how she, it seems to me like she's a
writer or she she wants to be because when you
go to her diary, you see that she has
moments of self doubt, which is which is something
that I could relate to and precisely why her collection
really stood out for me. And I think uh
I think it was a really interesting assignment that Paula
gave us because, you know, this entire collection
in the archive. It gives you create insight into
these personal and professional lives of these architects. Uh
but also, but not just that, but also
you through these personal diaries. You see how they
were almost juggling between their personal and professional lives,
you know, sort of maintaining a balance. But
it's interesting. So yeah, that's that's all I
have. And then thank you, I'm Stephanie and
I usually, last year I worked at the archive
. So I got a sense of what the work
that you don't see. It's like the pre work
that we do. We look through everything. And
and you really get familiarized with the archive, the
work of the women. Um so sorry for that
. So, I want to talk about the process
that it took me um about an architect that was
not in the archive. She, this was part
of the Tanya's list and she, she came across
this name through the archive. So this is Elizabeth
shoe close. She lived to be, well,
she was 99 years old when she died. She
recently passed away in 2011. And one of the
things when I was looking online, when you search
online, you jump around websites and you're trying to
find the right information and sometimes you don't know if
that information is right or wrong. So it's,
it's one of those things that having an archive,
you know, you, you know that their work
is somewhere. Um, but one of the things
that stood out to me was when I looked at
the, this is where she lived in 19 12
, I believe when she was born, her dad
commission a famous architect. And when I looked at
the, at the building, like I kind of
recognized because I actually did a presentation on him,
it was a doll flows. Um, So he
commissioned him to build this house for her, we'll
for the family in 1912. And so she gets
an idea of architecture through just living in the space
. I mean if you know Adolf he, his
architecture is austere beauty, so he doesn't like our
invitation, but he likes the wrong plan. So
it's like different split levels within the house so she
can uses that in her architecture, which I really
like. So she was born in Vienna and she
moved to the United States um to study architecture.
She graduated from M. I. T. She
got her bachelor's and master's and then she after she
graduated, she wanted to find a job and nobody
would hire her because she was a woman. Um
And one of the fun facts that I found was
a guy offered her the job and he told her
that In order for her to work for the firm
, she had to pay the firm$20 a month
. It was, it was horrible. I mean
, just imagine that. So she actually got hired
by a firm in Minnesota where she lived her whole
life and she met her husband there and they work
on a lot of projects for the university. And
they they were commissioned to Build 300 houses for the
faculties. So I found some of her work in
the archive of Minnesota. So she gave, she
donated most of her work to the to the archive
. So her work is preserved somewhere. And I
think that's what we're trying to do here. We're
trying to preserve the work of women architects around the
world. Two learn from their experiences and you know
, this is back in the 1910s or 1940s.
So I think it's a to have the history and
preserved and for us to research and see what they
were doing back then. It's I think it's a
great learning experience that these are some of the houses
that she um designed. And this is a quote
that I found this woman is writing a book on
her and it kind of stood out to me.
So it says by her example, she inspired many
women in architecture myself included, but she didn't want
to be known as a woman architect. Just an
architect who happened to be a woman. So that
yeah. So now Shadow Fine, fine. Hello
, Good afternoon. My name is traveling policy.
I'm doing a PhD in architecture and design research program
. And today I would like to briefly talk about
Lydia scholar, a famous female architect, flash actress
and interesting person because her destiny and her life work
does not solve the problem. Rather generally speaking,
it appearance life. Yeah. She was born at
the end of the 19th century in Austria to somewhat
wealthy family in Vienna. She graduated as Austria's first
lady engineer and so often called Miss Engineer. A
rather interesting fact is that at that time architecture program
was a part of engineering school. As a daughter
in good home lilies collier followed her own initiative to
study architecture and since her own cities Technical Vienna University
was closed. The woman, she set up for
address and where she could pursue her study address and
Technical University and become the first female member of Austrian
Association of Engineering Architects. Among the personal belonging with
which she escaped was her portfolio of a student work
from the University of dress and given to To the
i. w. by her two sons. These
images are part of collections of Libya's work as an
architecture student. Her board includes architectural drawing in charcoal
sketches. After graduation she worked as a mercenary,
apparent ease on construction projects, even taking on duty
in carpentry workshop because she wished to unite her academic
expertise with their hands on physical and mechanical elements of
her chosen field. Two years, she worked in
various studios trying to overcome the sexiest in their senses
that followed her. She wore courageously the professional world
of men. She completed her graduate work at Western
Technical University with dissertation on a palace built for contest
, so that had secretly constructed passageway with the stairs
leading from her good wife to the outside. Eggen
salt there and tells us lilia built the Children's home
in law and develop an exhibition along with Gisella Urban
called the set table including a model room in the
hygiene exhibition. The new household, private and public
success in the area of interior decoration have led to
her publishing many article and literally on interior designs that
have been well received locally and abroad. Uh huh
. Yeah, acting was her true passion but her
conservative family wouldn't allow her to pursue a carrier as
an actress. She was only able to follow these
lifelong dreams of her after getting married, scholar become
a successful stage and film actress in europe before fleeing
the now this with her husband and two sons.
Yeah, she found success as an actress broadway and
television and she was nominated for an Academy Award in
1963 for best supporting actress as a modern Maria opposite
Sydney For us here in lilies of the she later
received a Golden Globe nomination for her role in 1970
seventies. Uh Roseland, It's kind of passed away
in 1990 for her memory is still alive to these
days by her granddaughter, Libya Scholar. As you
can see uh Central Image with her. And also
in right image, Libya Scholar was invited to perform
lilia, her one woman show based on grandmother phenomenal
life during the 80th Congress of International Union of Woman
Architect Europa, which was jointly hosted by W in
july 2015 from an interview, her granddaughter has saved
. You can hear Lydia Scalia talked about her experience
as a young architect in Austria firm. That spectrum
architecture intrigued me because for a very simple reason,
I thought it's a little bit like acting because if
someone comes, so I said before I started study
and that if someone would come and order that you
would come to me and or the villa just around
the house then I face, I would have to
some extent um creep into your mentalities, the one
of your wife in order to fully understand and therefore
then designed a home appropriate to you. And so
I somehow called me just a little bit like ac
singers, but after I had finished and got my
degree and Virginia and I got married and I went
into anything when you were practicing as an architect and
I'm working at it. You said you were,
did you ever encounter any prejudice? Because there's so
much thank you. Oh yes. Because of being
normal. Uh What time can you give us an
example of what it was? A couple of experiences
. It's very funny that you ask me that this
is quite a long time. Uh I was assigned
to be an the chief technician of an exhibition in
Vienna. And this exhibition took place in you know
Vienna your shadow and doesn't mean rather large building which
was in former days under the heart sports staples I
know. So this particular building then I was used
for exhibition and because you asked me about her today
and I was assigned the job and I knew that
I would expect my first child and I wore to
see where I now a cape to hide it.
And the man in the administration over power people,
refugees. All right. He was stay in the
really stand in charge of the exhibition from the from
the era and at the end horrible told me the
whole building etcetera. And advice was and still is
of course an who's been there which was adjusted to
exhibition careful match and she took me and a staircase
calls and more and more and I got very tired
. It was about police before I got my boy
and a week before. Yeah, but he didn't
see it because it was just a cave in and
after walking I can't remember anymore for an hour,
1.5 hours anyhow. I said I am very sorry
and has and started to laugh and sing woman and
she wants to be the same what we are.
Well uh, we can open the case. I
do my job. No, I think I asked
you. Yeah lilia gained why they claim in europe
for her stage and screen roles but continue to call
her title from all diploma Engineer means uh Miss Engineer
. So in this slide you can see the presentation
the exhibition that we have about part of exception that
we have about lydia and you can refer to the
link below for more information. Thank you very much
. Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm will set,
I was part of the group that did worked on
Tanya's list, A list of names of women that
she came across in her research while she was here
for those 10 days that maybe she just saw something
interesting about them and wanted us to follow up on
. Um and I got a couple of names but
one of them is Marie from er and I'm going
to talk about this one because it's actually um it's
sort of shows the process and how it can be
sort of like a dead end and you can definitely
hit some walls. Um She gave us when she
gave us the list, you gave us whatever information
that she had found on the woman at the time
and she was going through it, which wasn't too
much on Reformer, but it was a couple of
lines of information. So when I first entered the
search terms, integrate, name, architect. I
mostly just came up with a lot of facebook results
. There's a lot of Marie farmers in the world
right now. Um and then one Wikipedia entry in
english. I'm searching in english at this point and
it didn't really give me much more than I already
knew from Tanya's notes. Um so I thought,
what am I gonna do? How do I find
it? Um So I actually started going through um
Wikipedia results in multiple languages. I went through obviously
english wasn't too too much help, but I did
look for some of these buildings and couldn't really find
any pictures on the um so I went through french
and then german and I finally hit on a check
entry, which I'm sure read this. you probably
can't maybe too small. But I immediately realized,
oh ai a why don't why didn't any of the
other search results mention that she was a member of
the A. I. A. That's very helpful
. But I had to go through because it's the
only thing that you can read here. Yeah,
exactly check right? But it immediately stood out because
it was bright red and it was the Ai Ai
and I thought okay this is good, this is
something I can go with. Um Also I kind
of went through it like one word by word um
and google translate just to see if there's anything else
that I could pull from this which is fun and
slow. But I actually came up, there's a
line here says something about progressive architecture, pencil point
right there and then this name paul Bride. So
it turns out from what I can gather, there's
an article in this magazine, pencil points, progressive
architecture about a project that she and a man named
paul paul bry worked on together. And it was
a pretty big deal from what I gathered about this
magazine. It was a pretty big deal to be
featured Um in this because it was it was big
at the time. It's actually a really long running
magazine. It went from 1920 to 1995 is when
it stopped being printed. Um, and it was
pretty important to get in that magazine. So I
started to see if I can find anything any online
resources for this magazine to see if I can find
this article. So, this is the first thing
I found. It was from University of Pennsylvania and
they have years 1920-1939. I knew from the Wikipedia
entry that was supposed to be July 1940 for that
this article was published. But so I said,
all right, this isn't gonna work. But down
here it says, Oh, we also list issues
from progressive architecture, which was its later name,
changed names several times through the course of its 75
year history. Not all that surprising. Um,
so I thought, great, maybe they'll have it
and no, They start in 1946. So the
five year period that I need that this article was
published during is the only section that's missing from 75
years of publishing. I looked on ebay Amazon just
to see if anybody had July 1944. I found
June 1944. Nobody has July so so close and
yet so far. Um, so I decided to
put this to the side. Obviously we didn't have
a whole lot of time to see what we can
find on these women. So I'm going to hopefully
follow that up in the future. Um So I
decided to go back to the A. I.
A. Um and I didn't actually know before this
that the A. I. A. Has kept
records, especially paper records of all of their architects
. Um I mean this goes back as far as
I think she joined in 1952 and they have all
of her paper records from her entire membership, including
original Application correspondents, notification of death, everything beginning
to end. So this was obviously going to be
a pretty pretty helpful. It gives her address of
her her studio, her own studio that she had
apparently in new york. Um And as I went
through I found two very interesting things at least interesting
for me. Um Here's the first one this name
, I don't, I haven't looked up Who he
is or how he factors into her life at all
. But the second one, Elsa Guidoni is another
name that Tonya had put on her list for us
to look up. And that is actually on case
list, which was pretty cool for us because now
we know that there's a connection between these two names
and we know that they knew each other. Not
only did they know each other at the time,
but they've known each other for 14 years. Because
this is Elsa Guidoni proposing her as a member saying
, I'll vouch for this person. They knew each
other. Not obviously they knew each other in new
york city as fellow women, jewish, german immigrant
architects. It's not really surprising that they might have
kept in touch, but they've known each other actually
before either of them emigrated to the United States,
so they kept in touch once they got here.
Um, so I think we're both pretty excited to
figure out, you know, what was the nature
of the relationship was are they friends? Were they
just business associates? I'm looking into that? I
hope so. I hope they were friends of 14
years. And then this is the 2nd 1.
And it's a short letter um from the director of
the A. I. A to Marie farmer.
Um it says I will advise our Director of public
relations Mr joseph Waterson and others of the staff of
your availability for translations, reviews et cetera. Sorry
, things did not work out with Mrs broadly.
I would be glad to receive a copy or drafted
the article on Family housing for forces abroad, sincerely
yours. So three things that I would like to
follow up on. Um did she actually worked for
the ai a translating and reviewing things? I'm assuming
probably for I guess german speaking architects, I'm not
sure. Um That's something I want to look up
also. Who's Mrs Bradley and why do things not
work out with her I guess. You know,
was she a disgruntled client? A potential client?
I just like to find more out about that.
And then thirdly apparently she she did write some article
or maybe was going to write an article on family
housing for forces abroad. And I'm assuming maybe that
was some project that she was involved while she was
with while she was here. And I'd like to
find out maybe a little more about that. If
I that's true. Do you want to have this
train? Oh I have to have nose and you
switch the browser. Oh no, but I'm going
to stand you sure. That's how everybody moment to
breathe that Probably the drinking. Oh, if you
want to have some t t T. Good afternoon
. Um, my name is Clara Styles but I
go by k um, just a show of hands
. How many of you were here for the last
fire in the library? Yeah. We got some
new people in the back that's always exciting. Um
, as Paula pointed out, I'm sort of like
the the black sheep of the group a little bit
. I'm from the School of Education and I study
instructional design but designers design and I'm happy to be
here. So me teeth. Yeah. I'm just
going off. So I just wanted to sort of
, um, how many of you remembered Tanya from
last time? Yeah. Yeah. Good. Um
, so Tanya's interest in rough refugee women who re
establish themselves like after before the war is is where
my list of women are coming from. Uh,
one of the things that I really want to like
sort of point out, here's the women right here
. Is that yeah, it's really interesting because although
these women aren't directly in the archives themselves, which
is why gotta go fetch the information for Tanya in
other places. Uh their names are actually derived from
the archive, which sort of points out the importance
of having a wide variety of material now. Um
, so these three women, I'm not really sure
how to pronounce all of their names. So I'm
sorry if I butcher it, but a lobby Ailsa
and Louise is what I'm going for. Uh,
these were the women that are tasked to um to
find to find out for that now. Unlike Florencia
, I don't actually have to write an article per
se, but I do have to go like digging
around seeing if I find like little nuggets of information
or wisdom, which, you know, is a
lot easier with the internet, but well, uh
see that in the upcoming flights. So let's talk
about Lottie now, Body. I started with her
for no other reason than she was the first one
on the list. Um and can I type her
name in to the summons search bar? Can you
go back one? The one yes. And oh
no, no results found. Okay. So I'm
like, okay, well, um Let's try Google
zero results, 0 results. I tried bing,
bing will pay you to use their search engine.
Is there other results? And I'm like, okay
, so obviously this is not going to work out
. Um and so instead of spending a lot of
time worrying about the stuff that I couldn't find,
um I decided to be like, okay, well
let's let's see where um Tanya got her information because
like I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here.
So I went back to the archive if actually what
we find out is her name is most likely best
instead of Reese. And so that just that one
letter difference is, is the difference between like a
happy world of research in the world of frustration.
But that's why it's really important when you start doing
your research to take really good notes and to be
able to give yourself as many ways to backtrack because
you'll come up with all of these brilliant things.
But if one thing is wrong, that's it.
And but if you have two points of information at
three points of information, you're more likely to find
out stuff about her. So um eventually I did
find out that's that's what she looks like. She
could be a student here. Isn't that interesting in
her younger days. I mean you guys really don't
change very much like from your drawings or your shirts
or you know that Disgruntled look after four hours of
studio. Okay. It's like I just want to
sleep and that's how I like to interpret that.
But so she was um involved with the boss.
No, so I don't come from an architectural background
, so all of this stuff might be really interesting
to you. Uh for me, I just think
it's really, it's really neat how she has traveled
from different places. Like so um I don't think
she ever made it to America, but she did
work with the soviet union and Czechoslovakia and I did
go to the Czech Republic like way back in the
way back. But it was a really if you
like buildings, you should go visit that place.
So uh the next, the next part I'm gonna
talk so less it from Tanya because I if she
actually mentioned this during fire, but every time we
met with her to talk about how we could help
her with her research. And she was like,
yeah, you have to find this information. She
was like, well you gotta be like a like
a dog with a bone, you gotta be tenacious
. You've got to sniff out those leads. So
that's that's me. And uh that was a really
big bone that she gave me almost got boned in
that one. But luckily it all worked out.
So so the next person was also, yeah,
you don't need and yeah, which, yeah,
I only speak two languages. This is why I'm
with the I. W. A. But I
speak japanese and not any of the other romance languages
. Um So she was actually, oh my gosh
, it's like so much easier because just just in
someone alone from, they came up with loads of
literature and some of it isn't as relevant because there's
other people with her name or She has other people
today. I'm not really sure which way it goes
, but so I picked 13 And 13 sources uh
, for whatever I can find, that's easy to
download into a pdf or whatever. I'll just go
ahead and put that in a folder and let Tanya
sort the rest. Um for the things that are
harder to find obviously, like I'm, my role
is as a research assistant is that's how I see
myself. So like the big decisions about what's important
or not, I'm just gonna let hug to handle
that. And that's why it's funny, you know
, be a research assistant. Um So those,
those were the 13 and that that was a great
break. And so here's a little bit about her
, Sorry for the low rez picture. Um it's
really rough so if anybody does find an actual like
photograph, we need archival quality so that when we
do give our big presentations it's not all pixelated and
they're like, but so there she is, she
looks um rather serious except for her smile. She's
like you think you know me? And uh so
so one of the interesting things is she was born
in river which is like a really big, the
biggest city in that little country. But from there
she moved to new york and I've been to new
york, so I'm like yeah I've seen that.
Cool, maybe I'll visit one of your building someday
. But and so that was nelson, that was
relatively painless to find her stuff and it's all digitized
, like you can email the list and it's like
, okay here, oh here's my resource there,
It is, how I eat, as long as
you have university access, it's great. So for
all of you who are studying in a university that
puts millions of dollars into their journalism research, like
all of that stuff, you have access to that
and when you graduate, it's too bad because then
you'll have to start paying membership, but for now
you should enjoy the free Reese, free resources that
you have available to you. Um So finally,
so Louise, Louise Mendelson is really interesting because she
wasn't an architect herself. So I was like,
how do I, how do I begin um searching
for this? And apparently Tanya sort of found the
link uh with Louise, through her husband, her
famous, um, the the Mendelssohn, what's his
name was ERIC or something like that? I'm really
, really bad. Wait. Um, yeah,
so erIC and uh, for now it's been really
difficult for me to find primary sources. Uh,
the only reason why I found this was I found
like some article that mentioned her and then, um
, but we'll take a short peek at this this
little trailer here so that you can see they made
a documentary about her and her husband. Okay.
I live among incessant visions. It's hard to catch
it and impossible to grasp it fully to express it
in solid terms is the task for me. It's
the truest life. I received his first letter when
I was 16, captured immediately. Yeah, I
think you're through floor some things. I think it's
one big shot. Thank you. The world again
, rumbles full of stupidity mediocrity and hate millions are
crying out for war, which eventually devours them.
Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave you all
with that if you're really interested, you can rent
it for like three bucks or four bucks. Um
And if there are enough people interested, maybe we
can have a showing, which would be nice.
Uh, but the really notable thing, no louise
, she was actually from like sort of this high
society and so um, she influenced her husband a
great deal. I mean I think he built a
building to reconcile some kind of like difference between them
because there was another love interest and so it's all
full of architectural drama awesome. Um but yeah,
so I mean it's not like these people live in
a bubble you can't just create and then you know
, not take into account what's going on around you
, it spills out in your work and um maybe
maybe that's what it took and for her she was
very uhh she knew what she wanted. I think
so. I know that I think it's interesting if
I remember what he was saying that there is no
material yet that has uh huh determined that she was
an architect. But Daniel as to what she has
researched and found has this punch that she was involved
that somehow she participated and collaborated affected impacted how he
practiced and so that she had a role in the
architecture and so she has that little tiny tiny ah
again hunch and she's going after it. That's why
you're not finding information about her as an architect.
I mean even as a person that's really, it's
really difficult like if you're just you're just the life
so we're not gonna really record that unless you actually
did something fantastic, like be the first lady.
And so that's really interesting for me from like,
like a women's issue perspective. Like we can work
probably just as hard or even harder. Or even
more spectacularly than Yeah, but until we're like,
really spectacular. We just don't get the credit.
The same kind of credit. Um at least that's
my personal experience, another another field. So we'll
see how it is. Uh with, with the
rest of you, How many of you remember how
many letters they they gave a brief hit in the
trailer? It's okay if you don't okay 300.
You think 300? You says 300? He says
more or less? 12, 1200. Yes.
It's 1200. Can you imagine? I mean,
like, we probably send more text messages than that
in like a given gear. But like sending a
letter, like, I can't even write a letter
to my parents. I'm like, uh, the
stamps who does that anymore. But in, in
the world of the work where they lived in,
that was the main formal communication. And if you
saw you saw a photograph of her, she has
to have funny because like, who does that?
You know, So only rich people actually can really
get a photograph. So these are really precious items
when you think, because, you know, it's
something to think about in your own life. Like
you're curating, you're creating your own lives through your
text messages and your emails and you're angry facebook posts
or your ironic trump posts. Okay? Yeah,
we're coming back, Coming back like, you know
, but like, so, so where this comes
back to is that, you know, like it's
also something interesting to think about for your own life
because you never know like how big you're gonna be
until you're dead and somebody appreciates how big you are
. So she'll leave behind a legacy on that.
So on that. No. Okay, so on
that now uh like there's many different paths to research
. Some of them are a little bit rockier than
others that Bessie Well she she certainly join me for
a loop. Um Some of them are look like
easier, like Elsa and then somewhere kind of in
the middle is uh luis where it's like I'd have
to have real physical resources to go track these things
down because they might not be digitized. So it's
really important to think about those sort of things.
But in the end I was tenacious. I was
like a dog with a bone and I found what
I needed to find and I have things delivered,
So I'm pretty happy. And I hope that you
all will try your hand at research. How many
of you have done research? So or considering research
? Uh Well you know research is basically drawing up
a question, putting it down on paper and then
finding out ways to answer that question. It's so
simple and it's so accessible and sometimes people freak out
about this part. Like the part that I'm doing
where I have to actually disseminate my research is about
it. But you have to write about it.
Like I have to write a paper. It's actually
a lot of fun when when you I would highly
recommend that you all find something that you enjoy and
then help out in that process. Because you can
be involved in all sorts of different levels. You
don't have to be the one with the question.
You can help the one with the question find,
find the sources to fuel that fire. Well,
thanks for listening. Um And we have one more
sure with us today. Wait. Mhm. I
really wanted to put a cat picture there, but
Tanya used the dog in the film metaphor. So
I had to. Mhm. Well, she for
that through the Okay, so what? Mhm sweating
. So what? Because you have two screens.
But something is where I'm saying. Mhm. Because
we have for your screens aren't married there, their
extended. So you have to put it push it
again. Yeah, it brings point. It's all
about Yeah. Hello everyone. I certainly wish I
could be with you in order to share in person
. Some of my favorite and most surprising finds during
my research in support of the Milk of Bliznakov Prize
winners for this research. I selected to architects whose
works are included in the A W A. Jane
Duncan and luis cutlet for jane Duncan, the collection
the has one fold, However, for Lewis scooter
Libby, the collection is much much larger. A
total of 10 boxes, including a much wider range
of artifacts. All of the slides that I will
be showing you today do come from lawyers, God
Lives collection. This is the first here that really
caught my attention when we were looking through artifacts.
We don't always understand the implications are full significance of
what looking at what I particularly appreciate about this is
the little handwritten note in Lewisburg loops, handwriting explaining
exactly what this letter the Harvard Graduate School of Design
meant to her. It explains that she was able
to skip the first year of the graduate program and
go into a class entitled Architecture for B, exactly
what was architecture for B basically structures. We have
pages upon pages of her no electra notes, um
, tests, homework and in looking at this,
what struck me was that something's really do not change
a page, for example, easily been my notes
. Well minus the neat handwriting. My notes from
my structures. Class. Great. Yeah. At
the same time that certain things don't change, fortunately
others do well, it's that hope so. This
headline really made me sneaker. Yeah, I'd like
you to pay attention to the highlighted portion says most
girls have designed for living Lewis G. Davidson,
a 26 year old blonde from San Francisco, puts
hers on paper. Here's another headline newspaper article about
Lewis at this time. Davidson, she was not
yet married yet. Another always give it son attractive
young blonde architect. It is interesting that 10 years
later, when she is now married, um,
these haven't changed all that much. It seems that
the newspaper article still insists on drawing attention to her
physical appearance. The highlighted portion here says, this
is God lived an attractive blonde, graduated with so
and so forth, so on and so forth.
Mhm. Here we have a set of note that
this is God lives prepared for a talk. The
Junior League in 1966 is entitled What's New Institute Beautification
. What struck me here is this little paragraph in
the middle and she says, are we talking about
what, what are we talking about? What sort
of cosmetics to apply to cover the ugliness or what
? This is the last page of the notes?
Rather poetic. I'll give you a couple of minutes
to read it on you additional three florida. Excuse
me. Another really fun find. Here she stays
that in 1953 she took an 18 month trip around
the world by herself. Pretty cool. But now
I have come back to this particular article. We've
seen it before. But this actually represents my most
interesting and surprising find. When I initially chose these
two artifacts, it was at random idea that they
were connected. It turns out they first met as
apprentices to frank Lloyd wright at Taliesin, jane Duncan
don't camp, don't come. McGee don't come actually
work together on a spec house which they then sold
. And then in the article states that when they
find a client to buy The$35,000 modern house,
they'll be off for around the world trip. So
we know that how jane was probably able to pay
for her trip. We know that most likely that
jane did not accompany her. As I'm not here
to answer any questions that you may have comments as
you may have. Please feel free to stop by
my desk. The third floor farm on the east
side. And my name is mary. Oh,
doing it. Hello. Mhm. I think she
is. I think she's it's sick but I instead
. Mhm. Yeah. Go. Mhm. Okay
. So do you have any questions? Any comments
? Four. Our group here and throwing it up
. Yes. I think that one of the goals
of this find the library again was two. Maybe
shed some light on. Oh, what the beginnings
of research could be where maybe you may not consider
for yourself that you would want to do research or
it seems like that's something that others do or researchers
do or maybe overwhelming or over whatever. But it's
actually a little bit the desire, the curiosity.
You need just the tiniest bit that tiny hunch to
just get going in some detective work and finding and
exploring. And it's quite enjoyable. But it also
it is also something that you offer back to the
professional history. So things that we have, we
don't have a lot, but we do have lots
of fragments. And so if you managed to put
some of these fragments together to create a little piece
truth or history, you're offering this to to the
profession. So a little bit is to encourage you
to actually think about the the students milk up Kalashnikov
research price. And when you see the call coming
out to start thinking about, I mean you don't
have to think about what you want to write about
. You just go to the archive, open a
box, find something and you'll be curious and you
immediately start searching and wondering and asking questions and that
can drive the the research. And I think it
was very good actually to be able to compare the
two different types. One would you actually have the
fragments and I for Florence's group and you go into
the archive and look at the work which is still
again fragments that you need to try and put together
in some to make sense of and then the other
where we have nothing but names, right hunches and
then start finding, you know, you're constantly hitting
the wall, hitting the wall and then being you
hit something and it's like getting a lot so anything
that you want to ask or talk about or anything
that you you want to bring up or compare with
your work I think so for at least Tanya's group
, you know, like we have like the german
language to also content with, you know, so
that's really interesting. You just don't realize how much
we take being fluent in a particular language for granted
and then other sources of information are, you know
, they're just as credible, but we just,
you know, it's like, oh I'm just going
to totally kind of not see this because I can't
so like working with Tanya's list really opened up that
role to us again, we'll have to let her
sort of sort of the nitty gritty. But I
mean just finding these things I think is is like
really invaluable to the progress of the work. I
think it's actually interesting. Let's bring that up because
when when Tania Palencia we're here Florence was saying that
there were several women that she just could not write
entries for because she could not understand the language.
So the whole collection was in whatever in french german
or something other, which actually was fortunate that Tanya
was you at the same time because they became friends
. And so they're like ok let's exchange you translate
for me and I'll do something else for you.
So that's that's a good thing. But it's also
understanding how it doesn't need to be an absolute barrier
. Depends on what you're looking for, what you're
looking for. So I'm sure that he said speaks
no check. Not like one word check but she's
not looking to understand the whole thing but to look
for the next hint. So she could look at
this check Wikipedia page enough to find this one length
. That would take her to the next level of
research. But the language is a very mm important
actually. I was fortunate one because the majority of
the paper that lilia actually wrote down within german.
But I was lucky enough that somebody else like Andrew
uh I don't know his name. He translated majority
of the paper and journal that she was involved or
somebody else write it down about her, something like
that. It was there. So I was lucky
enough to get more information. You know, it
depends on which one you want to looking for.
For example, in my case I was lucky and
majority of the german majority all of the newspaper,
an article about her or she wrote down was in
german, but somebody else take care of it somehow
. Yeah. Any questions like somebody asked me something
, I'm going to be sad. Mhm. There
it's all the pressure. It was interesting because these
guys like poor, not Florencia. Poor Florencia I
think least we should, we didn't have any information
kind of these guys shows you how to do research
and it's same things. For example, I'm doing
a PhD in architecture and also it's same process for
every one of you guys for master or PhD you
have the same process as you can see. For
example, for lizard case as she explained to you
how she started and however she was a stock sometime
something like that. I think it's the same process
and I thought kind of interesting because it's kind of
you some sort of sense of research and for your
future. Also, it's nice and I think it's
good to go there physically see the material that we
have. It's very beautiful sketches and very beautiful material
in document that that we have. And I'm pretty
sure you enjoy. And I also think usually the
all the activities that we organize with our, um
, asking that material from the archive be employed for
the research for anything else. But we decided to
when, when Tanya brought her list of people that
are not on the archive, we also saw it
as a potential to establish or expand the network.
If we find information about these women, if we
find some of the work, some of the relatives
, somebody that knew them, somebody that has kept
some of the work that we may be able to
then collect that work and bring into the ark and
preserve it. So it's a little bit like trying
to continue to develop more and new ways in which
we can reach the work of the women that is
not yet being preserved so that we can preserve it
for research two of architecture and some of these are
really time sensitive. You know, like at least
with us, like some of them might already have
passed on or getting close to or something. I
mean it's like turning play. It's like 19,
1930s 1940s, something like that. So um and
then you got to think like the paper and everything
that they had sort of recorded all of that.
That's if that hasn't been thrown away or burn for
fire, you know, warmth or something. You
know, like that material might be lost, but
as more time passes, like there's more the probability
that it's gone for good. So uh for at
least us in the eye A W. A.
There is really the sense of urgency to get these
collections because once they're gone, then nobody knows about
like, we can we can't ever piece together anything
that wasn't ever there. And that's that's kind of
sad when you think about it because these women change
the world's like literally change the world by building.
I think that is so cool. Okay. Final
your final comments. That's question. Mhm. Show
anything you want to offer. I know. I
know, but it was I do show that burning
smell like somebody's thinking out there somewhere or I need
to put more sugar. Yeah. Like is it
Mhm. Things that are kind of wondering international,
Right. I was born. Mhm. What would
that mean? Eastern little scraps of paper I think
. No. There's so many wonderful awful sketches.
There is Well, there is a there is an
interesting discussion going on about that because the work is
turning more digital. So, I've had these conversations
with Sandy archivist of how do you archive that work
? And what's the what's the value of it?
And so she was telling me for example that they
talk about archiving autocad drawings but not the drawings but
the files so that you can also keep the way
in which the person sets up the file, sets
up the layers. But it also requires that then
you also preserve the hardware that will run the software
. So it's interesting because in a way it may
start changing apology right, as a building. What
is the new archive building that will house all these
all these materials? Uh But I think that on
the other hand, at least for the I.
W. A. The the effort is more toward
the work pre digital where there's like the original work
and when that disappears, there's there's nothing else.
So that's what most of the effort at this point
, but it's still it's really interesting interesting question.
And another is like that. We also want to
want to start this as one of the activities of
the group is the possibility of finding the women that
have donated their work that are still alive and the
possibility of bringing them to the archive and have them
pull their work out and talk about their work.
Many of them have had their own practice and have
worked on their own projects. Many have worked for
other firms. And so it's not that clear what
it is. You know what their contribution is.
But I think it would just be also wonderful to
have these women call the workout and start remembering what
they were thinking and what the considerations were at the
time that they were making those designs and be able
to talk about that and capture that in film video
. You need a certain funding. So thank you
. But that's a perfect. So now that you're
here was wondering, oh, you want to address
one of the things that you said because I do
understand things are going more and more digital. But
like, I don't know an awful lot of you
have books where you scribble stuff or you know,
write down your shopping list. I'm not really sure
what all goes in there. Those are very important
artifacts, even like scraps of napkins where you're like
designing, because I prefer napkins as a medium um
to to capture ideas. I mean who sits at
a computer and says, okay, I'm gonna doodle
on this and spend like five hours trying to to
do this when like in five minutes you can decide
, you know what that's not really worth pursuing or
this is so I don't think We're at the point
because the dream of the paperless office has been like
since at least the 1980s, we're nowhere near that
. There's still something very important about this, this
tactile process of writing information for brainstorming. So you're
finished work which might be printed, will still be
preserved digitally. But like the thought process that we're
trying to capture through these archives, which is fascinating
. Like who does like Dream Journal? Oh no
. Like I'm falling in these stairs. I hate
these stairs with like the see through things. I
totally get that. I don't know why are like
a lot of architects. Well that terrifies because what
buildings that some of people build terrifying to such an
extent that I you know, should probably be on
some kind of medication. But those are really important
things to consider. And those thoughts are captured most
of the time on scraps of paper. Sometimes you
just write it on your arm to remember but it
disappears. It's really hard to capture. And you
all are researchers, you just don't know it because
you haven't been writing down every time you had thought
or wondered about something like if you do this experiment
where for one day every question it doesn't matter.
It's like did I use the bathroom today? Write
it down. You'll see that there's a lot of
things that you think about. Wonderfully. She tried
. I think the thought process is interesting especially for
researchers to see what you think while you are working
on for example a specific project that you're working.
I think it's very interesting for researcher check everything and
track on you somehow to understand you better and then
understand your design. Actually I'm unemployed rename. I
really applaud you enthusiasm. Uh but at one point
you talked about Tanya. I would urge you those
thinking of what is research? Maybe Look at her
panel on questions were asked. Yeah it's very very
important. Actually. I asked one of my PhD
students to study them. Yeah. So research people
say copy from workbook is better copy from two.
A joke. The research I think crushing babe.
Oh yeah Kanye is a very good question. Yes
she did. But I think it was also really
interesting with the Earthly Set. When you found this
little bit of paper that has three sentences. And
it's also the ability to read that a little peace
and identify what are possible questions. It's not unlike
when you're designing and you're working on something and try
to identify what are the important constraints. What are
the variables in the design and the geometries that I'm
exploring. But this is also really interesting that when
you when all you have is a little piece,
three sentences. Can you identify what could what could
become path that will lead you to something else?
So I thought that was also very very good.
And I hope that you're going to. I got
that trail. I'd like to I like, I
really am curious to know what is the deal with
that woman? You know, is there a story
there because that could lead to some kind of project
? You know, maybe that didn't go well.
Yes, maybe it's like funding. She just lost
all this funding like this. Maybe there's drawing somewhere
. Yeah. So it's thank you. Thank you
for coming. Especially it looks strange to you.
I retired from the tear 2 8, 2 or
nine whether I'm still a student. Yeah. And
do you think thank you so much for coming.
It's our pleasure. Thank you very much. So
if anybody's curious, if anybody's interested, we have
a longer list. Well, if you want to
be doing some detective work or doing some research work
or start practicing to develop those muscles so that when
the call comes out you're good to go. Yeah
, jake. Thank you. You just need to
come forward and talk to to me or any other
people would agree. Sure. Thank you very much
. Thank you. Thank you, baby. We
agree. And there may be some more tea once 1287 --> A:middle L:90% .