it's my pleasure to introduce our first speaker. Um
, first, I'd like to also, uh,
give a big welcome to our guests. Um,
and we look forward to forward to hearing more from
you, uh, in the future. Um,
Sharon Altomare, PhD, is an architect, architectural
historian and educator. She's an assistant professor of architecture
and urbanism at Virginia Tech, where she teaches design
studios and urbanism courses. She received a bachelor of
arts with a major in architecture from Washington University in
ST Louis. A master of architecture from the University
of Oregon, a master of philosophy and architecture from
the University of Cape Town and a PhD in architecture
from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research
explores how architectural practices operate within the address and address
conditions of urbanized inequality, attending to issues of race
, gender and climate change. Her latest research examines
architects, aspirations for political and spatial change. In
late the apartheid Cape Town, her teaching writings and
presentations addressed topics including modernism, gender and architecture,
public space and architectural activism. In addition to scholarly
work, she has practiced architecture in the San Francisco
Bay Area, focusing on innovative community houses. Please
join me in welcoming Sharon and former Kelly. So
I'm gonna be speaking today about a couple of incidences
of women's struggles in South Africa, and I have
to give a little disclaimer. There's something going to
be going on, and near the end of the
lecture that might feel awkward. I've been working on
this piece this a little bit of research for awhile
, long before this event was sort of planned.
And I'm actually quoting one of our attendees here,
Leslie Loco, because I was trying to figure out
ways to think through these things I'm looking at.
Unless these work proved to be very helpful. Yeah
, so Loretta and Copos novel and they didn't die
opens with this scene. There's a rural part of
the cuisine you, Natale province in South Africa and
an undisclosed year. The clearly in the first couple
decades of apartheid, which began in 1948 the rural
black women of the area have committed an act of
civil disobedience. They have emptied the dipping tanks.
These tanks hold chemicals used to treat cattle for insect
borne disease. Ostensibly, the tanks were devices for
improving rural life, yet is a forced and unsustainable
rural existence. the apartheid system binds black women to
the land, forbidding them to move from their assigned
ethnic homeland. The land is in horrible condition and
can support only the most meager subsistence department and at
the side of assistance. The apartheid states required rural
dwellers to use dipping tanks to supposedly control disease.
Yet the women are also required to maintain the dipping
tanks without compensation. So as the novel opens,
the women have, as we are made to understand
, again empty the tanks and the apartheid official tasked
with administering the area. Supposedly quote, These are
his words, the only white person who is thought
to know the pulse of the people yet did not
understand anything about the place or its people or its
problems. End quote. He bemoans the women's actions
. He asks himself, quote. What do dipping
tanks have to do with clinics and doctors and starving
Children? What do they have to do with schools
and beer? House? This struggle at the heart
of in Cobos novel and my presentation today is at
the heart of encoders novel and of my presentation.
Both the novel and my talk argue that these seemingly
disparate spaces and terrains of action actually have everything to
do with each other. Together, rural and urban
spaces, dipping tanks and schools and beer halls illustrate
how gendered struggle takes form through architecture. Now studying
each and their inter connectivity can expand. How we
think about architecture. I'm gonna make this argument by
linking together a pair of narratives these stretch across the
time and space of the South African apartheid nation.
They connect Durban to Cape Town and the early early
struggles against apartheid to urban struggles in the years immediately
after apartheid. The primary actors in each narrative are
black women from rural areas, each making claims through
architecture in cities. Their stories illustrate how it can
read the city as a site of speculative aspirational.
Imagine it's through these stories. The city becomes a
place where alternative, particularly subaltern, gendered and racialized
realities are set into motion. So I'm gonna start
in Durban in 1959 black women, many originally from
rural areas, stage protests that led to the closure
of Durban's male only beer halls. The Baylor halls
were state owned male spaces. They were established in
South African cities early in the 20th century's. The
halls built upon what had been what continues to be
an indigenous cultural tradition of making and consuming fermented alcoholic
beverages. The halls were also, however, an
emblematic feature in the migrant labor system upon which South
Africa is industrial system and apartheid were built under migrant
labor, which was key feature in South Africa's gold
and diamond extraction system. Men spent large parts of
the year away from home, and thus from their
traditional places of all sorts of activities, including veer
consumptions. So the beer halls were established by the
state in order to replace what has been a traditional
activity. Um, and so therefore they really act
as a part of these rural urban divides. Um
, and in a way you can think about the
beer halls is capturing as part of a system in
which the state captured men's bodies and labor, and
then also their culture. Um, the systems,
however, though we're incredibly gendered because it was women
who traditionally brewed and sold the beer. So in
this way the approach the beer halls where in some
ways much more fundamental concern for women than they were
four men and this concern reached a climax in 1929
and an incident shown here when the state announced it
was imposing even more severe restrictions upon the brewing and
consumption of quote, fear, fear. Waves of
protests broke out in Durban and the surrounding smaller metropolitan
areas. Record numbers of women across Natale were were
fined or jailed. And again in 1959 the protests
broke out. And this time, and the impetus
was in the Cato Manor area of Durban we see
here, um, when women were making a series
of demands that were being unmet by the state concerning
both the provision of health clinics and homebrewing permits.
So after as Mr Pinar, the apartheid official from
and they didn't die, could not understand the clinics
and the beer halls were connected. They were both
spaces that manifested the oppression of the apartheid state.
Um, and in both cases, both in 1929
and 1959. Part of what was going on was
the state was not only, um, instituting the
beer halls but restricting the number of permits that were
given for home brewing, Um, which was then
pushing more men into the beer halls. Um,
and under this system, what happens is a variety
of things. So for one, what is a
cultural activity gets appropriated by the state, but there's
also a loss of income, and it's really a
double loss of income. There's a loss of income
from by the women from the sale of the beer
. But also, when the sale of the bear
is happening within the community by women to men,
the money stays within the community. And this way
the money is being extracted by the state. It's
almost sort of like the old company store sort of
system. Um, but the system, the entire
beer hall system, is also very much part of
this migrant labor system. Men are considered to only
be temporary urban dwellers. They were not actually residents
of cities. Um, yet this subsistence farming,
as I was saying in the area, drew that
, so the subsistence farming in the area was incredibly
impaired. So you have these conditions. These existence
, it's were incredibly precarious and which men are being
pulled off the land when we're expected to stay on
the land and maintain the household. But there's very
few resources for doing that, and women were very
constricted and very rarely given passes to leave the cities
. Um, so in June 1959 women entered the
Cato Paul Cato Manor beer hall and quote scattered the
utensils and chase the menfolk out of the bureau hall
. This entering and disturbing of the beers halls continued
throughout Durban through a number of beer halls and really
throughout the entire Natale regions, and the protests were
so intense that three days later, the state board
all the beer halls to be closed for 10 days
and the end most remained permanently closed. This resistance
against the beer halls at the very initial moment was
led by men but was very quickly became a protest
that was taken over by the women. But in
doing so, the women faced rebuffs both from black
men and from the state. They became in the
discourse around the beer halls and the protests conversations not
just about the beer halls, but about men controlling
their women. Um, and then the beer hall
. Protests lead even further, and eventually to these
acts like the the emptying of the dipping tanks.
So historians have traced how these protests moved across the
countryside. So what I feel is happening is that
the beer hall protests really stitched together spatial, cultural
and economic realms. The beer house themselves stood in
for a broad set of concerns about the entire racialized
apartheid system. They also illustrate how gender gets inculcated
in apartheid era social relations, in which the women
were doubly bound both by the state and by black
men. So the second narrative moves across the nation
to Cape Town and to the latter years of apartheid
in first years after apartheid. And it concerns a
series of efforts to upgrade Cape Town's migrant labor hostels
and ways in which women were marginalized within this process
and they reactively claimed a space both metaphorically and material
in which to act. The women in the Cape
Town story held a lot of similarities. The women
in the beer hall stories there again, rural women
who have moved to the city this time they're moving
sort of across the nation, um, further across
the nation to get to Cape Town. But they're
still moving from rural areas to urban areas, Um
, and in both cases, coming to the city
was a defiance of the policies that really sought to
make black residents in cities under apartheid only temporary,
just purely to meet labour needs. And again,
in this case, the women were doubly bound by
the state and like black men. So the to
explain very briefly the project of the hostel, the
migrant labor, hostile upgrades. The hospitals were predominantly
male, only spaces again. There were dormitory like
accommodations that men were expected to live in during this
temporary times that they were residents in the city.
Um, and both the spatial condition of the hostels
, their location on the periphery of the city really
reproduce the marginality, um, of the migrant labor
system at the scale, the kind of more intimate
scale of the city. So these migrant laborers were
subject to. It's called the past control, um
, system where every person that had to have one
of these past books and you had to you are
only allowed to leave. What was your ethnically assigned
to homeland, which were in the rural areas?
If you had a past, if you had a
job or some reason to be in the city for
a short period of time? And for the men
who had jobs in Cape town is an example of
the conditions in which they lived. Mhm. The
living conditions within the hostiles were deplorable at best.
Um, this is an image of an average hostel
, uh, unit. So there's a number of
rooms, each with two or three beds. There's
a kitchen area, a toilet that has the most
meager of facilities. Some cold water taps, um
, hit sort of latrines, usually not showers.
Um, and there was. The idea was,
it's basically one man for bed, and then a
building such as this would have two or four hostiles
within the building. And then all of these are
arranged in a really sprawling fashion across the landscape at
the periphery of the city. Mhm. So the
project to improve the built condition of the hospitals began
in 1985. So about nine years before apartheid ended
as a way of agitating against apartheid without participating in
labour related strikes or protests. Because the men that
lived here only lived here because they passes to work
. And at the time much of the protest against
apartheid was going on in factories was very closely connected
to labor movements. But if the men went on
strike and lost their jobs. They also would lose
their ability to be in the city. So demanding
the improvement of the hostels was a way of agitating
against the system. And these were a set of
conditions that they meet which, as you can see
, there really closely tying together employment, the right
to be in the city and the right to live
as families. Because these were male only hostels,
women were not allowed to be their women and Children
other than for brief temporary visits. So in a
way, these conditions really speak to a much broader
set of concerns around the entire infrastructure of apartheid.
What happened was in cities were made in 1985.
The project began in 1985 and in 1986 the passed
laws were abolished and what became women and families were
able to come to the cities. But what became
one man for bed became one family for bet.
Um so the process of upgrading the hostels, um
, has been widely and very deservedly celebrated for transforming
really deplorable examples of the specialty of the migrant labor
system into modest family housing. And these are some
images of some of the upgraded hostels. But the
piece that I'm concerned with today is how the process
was heavily dominated by the male hostel dwellers. When
I first started on this project, one of the
things that got me interested in it was this is
about the domestic about reproductive labour. So there's got
to be an interesting gender component and what I actually
found out that it was. But it wasn't what
I was expecting, which is The women were completely
sidelined out of the entire process of upgrading, um
to the process was entirely led by the men,
and this really followed a very kind of traditional patriarchal
internal governing system that was already at play within the
hostels. It's called the Sibanda, which is the
headman system. One man is sort of designated ahead
over each of the hostile areas, but within this
system, women were considered literally non persons. A
woman was only was not allowed to speak in public
meetings. She could only be spoken for by,
uh, male. Um And so in response,
um, the women who are active in the process
there was a large hostel dwellers association and there were
women who are members of the hostage Weller's association.
They turned their attention to different types of programs and
spaces. Um, and these are areas that are
more arguably related to reproductive labor. So they organized
clinics. These mobile clinics to be, um,
uh, instituted. They built crushes. So pre
skills. Um, and this is one that's amongst
some of the hostels, Um, and, uh
, and they built market. And the crashes particularly
were important because they freed women from the reproductive labor
so they could go out and work, engage in
paid work, which really sort of change the social
internal social systems. And I read these us these
in these elements as supplements to the housing. So
they fill out the broader spatial and social infrastructure of
the hostile areas. And they claimed a role for
the women in spatial production. The third piece that
they did the market was this project, which was
the Google Latu Central meat market, and this project
was designed through a participatory process with an architect current
. Smuts and current insists on doing all of her
projects through participatory processes. She's very, very adamant
militant about this, um, and much of our
work has worked with communities and impoverished areas around Cape
Town and in the peripheries of Cape Town. And
what the market sought to do was really to provide
an infrastructure for the various traders in the area.
So together they worked out this system where there would
be sort of this L shaped bar, um,
that would block the wind, provide all the infrastructure
necessary for the market, and then this big,
undulating, curving roof that would house all the market
spaces underneath. Interestingly, I've been told by others
that, um, initially, while the women were
instrumental in designing the process, initially the men actually
kept the women out of even holding market stalls.
But that's now mhm. So to me, these
two instances, the Durban Beer Hall protests, um
, enclosures and the female lead efforts in the Cape
Town hostels bring up questions about the relationship of building
and design to architecture. And to make sense of
these, I've turned to a variety of scholarship.
That, for me, helps provoke, um,
and disturbed kind of static, normative ideas about what
is architecture. So, um, as Leslie logo
has written a quote, um, discussions of architecture
are often limited to traditional formal qualities supposedly intrinsic to
architectural form, such as qualities of light space,
organization materials, actualities, orders and so on.
This reduction supports the classification of architecture as an object
driven exercise. The building, validated through reproduction of
those same qualities, is, in the end,
everything and everything is my emphasis. So this critique
of the building being everything applies to these South African
cases because as I'm trying to draw attention to the
intertwining of race and gender and struggle, I'm asking
, Can we think about architecture beyond the building as
the object? Um, and perhaps architects do,
um, operate predominantly in the currency of design,
of making form of eventually producing buildings and building design
. But in the process, they engage with an
effect social processes. And so I'm asking, Can
we see architecture beyond the boundaries of architecture? Design
acts? Another way to look at the aspirational acts
discussed here is through the urban imaginary and another South
African architectural scholar, Lindsay Bremner, asks, argues
that architects and planners work, um, in a
globally circulated representations, and they produce quote images of
high rise buildings, sweeping boulevards, tarred roads,
motor vehicles and these tell quote of an ambition to
be part of a global world. The instances of
the woman that I have discussed always also invoke ambitions
through their urban imaginary. But there's, however,
concerns not globalization, but rather aspirations for a more
just equitable participation in the making of the city.
Sometimes such ambitions require the demolition of architecture, as
in the case of the beer halls. And sometimes
they call for the creation of new architectural forms the
crushes, the meat market as well as new configurations
of agency regarding how and whom gets to participate in
the creation of architecture. So in conclusion, I
brought together one of these rather disparate stories of black
South African women women who have come to urban areas
and disturb South Africa's urban rural divides. And these
women's were subject to racialized legislation. Yet they also
faced a second round of refusals from men of their
own race. And these these stories to me illustrate
the range of binaries that attempt to force black women
to the periphery. These batteries include masculinity versus femininity
, urban versus rural, white versus black, and
additionally, these stories expand what we think of as
architecture. The histories of the beer hall protests in
the childcare initiatives. I claim our architectural histories,
and these women stand out in the realm of architectural
scholarship because they are precarious urban dwellers whose work in
the terrain of architecture subverts architectures, normative position as
an agent of power. And these cases, urban
architecture gets used to articulate demands for fair treatment,
for equity, for the opportunity to create a life
where and how one wants. And these stories are
ones of ambitions for our voice, for agency,
for meaningful participation in the nation's economy. So it
is in this spirit in which the building is not
everything, and architecture is so much more than building
that the significance of the gender protests began to enter
into the realm of architectural discourse. The women that
are right about this paper have sought to claim a
place which brings together their spatial environment with their economic
lively, puts their health and their families some of
their struggles, produce architecture and the capital A um
as it is traditionally framed, such as the meat
market, which has been published widely in South African
architectural journals. Some, however, also produced changes
to space in ways that question What are the disciplinary
boundaries of architecture? They illustrate that architecture has the
potential to go beyond built form to serve as a
terrain of action and aspiration, a material and symbolic
feature through which to make claims for social equality and
recognition. Thank you. Mhm. Come on.
Okay, we have time for questions. If there
Okay. Yes, I have one. And it's
a little computer. Yeah, if the men are
separated from the women and have restricted access and the
women can't leave were their regular times that the men
got off, which meant that procreation. Because this
would be a way to limit appropriation. Because then
when the women the men were allowed to go home
, clearly they could cohabitate with their wives and then
there would be Children. But we're there's certain months
only the Children were going. This is a couple
of times a year. Wasn't quarterly? Uh,
no. It's a fascinating questions. I'm going to
go back to this book cover because this novel,
um and they didn't die the first part of the
novel essentially about that question. So the it's about
one woman. It's an amazing novel. It's one
woman who just goes through these horrible struggles after struggles
, and it opens up in addition to the dipping
tank. She has a husband who's working in Durban
, but she can't get pregnant. They're just they're
trying and it's not happening. But she gets to
see him so rarely. And her mother in law
, who is her neighbor, is really giving her
grief about the fact that she's not producing a child
. So at one point in the book, she
goes, um, she begs and begs to get
a permit to go into town into Durban so that
she can try to locate with her husband. And
there's actually the Bear Hall. Protests are going on
, which for me was part of what sort of
inspired me thinking about these two stories together? Um
, I do. It's good. So there were
men are able to come home at Christmas time,
so there's long breaks at Christmas time. They could
get occasional other periods off. I have no idea
about the timeliness, the seasonality of babies being born
. It's a really good question. But that whole
question of limited ability to appropriate was central in the
novel, and she ends up sort of being pushed
out of her community for various reasons, including that
one, because in some ways it's also population control
. Mhm. Which to me, I don't know
if it was. It was, um, intentionally
thought of that way, But it could have been
. Probably not. They weren't that in many ways
, they want to fight that work. At most
. It's really just about separation labor, leading bodies
for work, one of the mhm. Clearly,
I think difficult and also very interesting. Questions about
this is that it collapses racing class to become the
same thing. But actually there are other dimensions to
this issue around the culture around ritual around the way
people live. And I just wonder, you know
, how do those other forms of expression how do
they take place in these these kinds of positions?
You know where the body is, just a labor
unit. It's not really a question. It's just
, Yeah, it's a really it's an observation of
how total control of the state was. Yes,
I mean what's interesting, So I'm just really diving
into the research around, particularly the culture around the
warehouse, because it's a new subject for me.
But I think what's interesting is the act of resistance
, and all these ways to find resistance were really
, really interesting. And all the ways that people
did try to subvert the system, whether it's women
to there's these lines about women coming to the city
and brewing beer in kind of the men's hostels,
like in sinks and tubs and things in the states
coming through and trying. I don't think they haven't
sort of turned over the beer, but limiting like
the number of pots and pans that women could bring
in to town as they were coming in. They
found all these quotes recently about this concerned. Look
at all these women coming with these giant pots and
pans, and that was when, in 1929 they
instituted more laws about the beer halls. But,
I mean, it's also interesting that table and making
so much flatlands comment around AIDS. But there's been
recent research to suggest that one of the reasons why
aids is so prevalent in Southern Africa stems from this
history of men living always separately from women. There's
something that statistic that's something like 90% of black South
African households are headed by single women, which is
absolutely shocking statistic. But one of the reasons why
Minister Promiscuous because for generations, has been a lack
of any kind of family culture. So it's kind
of interesting. How something starts off as a law
and then 30 60 80 years later, emerges is
another kind of issue that very few people make these
correlations know the history there is that film can remember
that it was a month was like November, January
, something. There was a film that came out
. It's about 10 years ago now about a woman
in a rural area, I think. And,
um, there's a hotel who finds out she's HIV
positive, has AIDS, and it's because her husband
works in Joburg on the minds, and he's clearly
gone through promiscuous activity. Um, but also,
there's, um it's not so much South Africa,
but other places in southern Africa. The incidence of
AIDS along the trucking roofs is also really, really
hot. But yeah, it's true. All of
these activities reproducing different ways. The picture you showed
at the beer hall those are bigger than Fierstein's.
I mean look like Was it like a gallon better
? Is that things drinking that we're seeing there And
is that Is that culturally encouraged? Well, that's
also one of the factors was the idea of binge
drinking and there was gender discussion around binge drinking.
And so just the there is one of the critiques
of the beer health system was actually that encouraged.
Been drinking binge drinking because when people drank beer kind
of in a more traditional setting, there was this
system in which people would kind of self police.
And because the brewing and the consumption of alcohol was
so tied to different ritualistic practices, it wasn't necessarily
just purely for a new creation. But it gets
divorced from all of that when it gets dislocated to
the beer hall. Yeah, so that that was
also one of the critiques. But part of the
state's argument for the beer halls was that women should
not be drinking. And so this is a way
to keep women from drinking. The beer halls are
only for men. Mm, yeah, it's a
crazy system. Did you share any research you've done
or hypotheses you might have about how the sidelining of
women in that hospital redesign process impacted the actual design
and the actual design of the awesome the renovated hostels
. Um, it's interesting. Um, there was
definitely, um so what they did with the hostels
? They took years and years, Um, at
some point. So the architects came into the process
because they are just technical spatial question of how to
turn these hostels into family housing was really complicated.
So a couple of architects who are teaching at the
University of Cape Town were put in contact with the
hostel dwellers, um, and they over a long
period of time And over, of course, a
very interesting, heated public meetings, um, developed
a bunch of prototypes of different unit designs. Um
, and one of the architects talks about this crazy
meeting where these men are talking about something, and
they really can't understand what that is that they're talking
about, because these are white architects who come from
very privileged backgrounds who are involved in this process.
Finally, is. They are complaining that there's no
, um, columns in the middle of the spaces
that there was some idea about columns and things made
out of brick. Um, but so what they
ended up doing was get raising money through some international
donations to build a set of prototype units and they
were different. Um, configurations, different number of
bedrooms and everyone, including the women. It was
completely all hostel dwellers were invited to come tour through
and basically put up kind of like the equivalent of
post it notes saying what their feedback was. And
through that they ended up deciding that the units were
going to be much more homogeneous. There was going
to all be two bedroom units. Everyone would sort
of get the same thing. Um, the hostels
are located in three different townships Langa, Langa and
Google It too. Um, and in each of
those, the actual what was what's existing is different
and even within longer, there's like three or four
different prototypes. So the the upgrades end up being
different. Um, but yeah, it's a curious
question. I don't really have claim on whether the
design itself is any different than it would have been
if women have been involved in the process like very
nervous around gender ring form. Um, but yeah
, they were really, really sidelined out of it
. Yeah, we can see in the grounds of
that, though, and I don't know if it
would have been different if women advocating, but where
they ended up putting the little money they had was
in the solidity of the construction. So they're very
proud of the fact that architects are that these are
still built out of brick. Um, but they're
what they call their double cavity walls. So instead
of just being a single brick wall with no insulation
there, double brick walls with an air space in
between and Cape Town is relatively mild climate. It's
in a medic with the Mediterranean climate. So cold
, wet winters, warm summers. Um, and
it's not that cold, but the wind really comes
through there. I've never lived in a place with
wind, even Blacksburg, Cape Town in terms of
wind. Um, and so they're very proud of
the fact that these houses are built much more sadly
than they would have otherwise. But then, like
this. So this is so this woman's house.
She took us inside the day that I was visiting
, and they still don't have a shower. They
use the tub, so they gave up things like
built in showers. There's taps, um, for
much more solid construction. Who knows if someone would
have argued differently. Thank you. Yeah. Okay
. Our next speaker is morale. Angelou, as
in Istanbul, light in between two worlds. Morales
Scalise Studies focus on feminist practice and architecture history,
the politics of gender and feminist potentials of architecture Encounters
between Postwar Turkey and the US She conducted her advanced
Academic Research project on the historical recognition of Turkish Women
, Architects of the Postwar generation in the US at
MIT's History Theory and Criticism Architecture program with a critical
insight into institutional structures, their policies and actors and
architectural profession and academia. The focal points of her
scholarly endeavor. Our inclusion, representation and creative potentials
of women and gender beyond national borders and the practice
of history Writing in this context, she is a
curator and author of the collection entitled Women in Modern
and Contemporary Territories of Turkish Architecture. Conducted for the
Arc Net Online source of the M. I T
. Aga Khan Documentation Center. This is the first
project on documenting the leading profiles of the 1st and
2nd generation of Turkish women architects and aims to simulate
a critical awareness of gender and women in architecture and
to give impetus for the new collections in these fields
in order to promote multicultural and diverse perspectives in the
architecture profession. It's practice and academia and history writing
in these fields. Based on her PhD dissertation at
Harvard University, Aga Khan history of art and Architecture
, PhD program and at Columbia University School of Architecture
Planning and Preservation PhD program, she completed her first
PhD dissertation on the practice history of Turkey, a
CISA architecture partnership, and obtained her PhD degree in
architecture at Istanbul Technical University. Her secondary academic fields
, or sociology theory and modern history of the architecture
profession, modernization of architectural design practice and its historical
fresh rolled in Postwar Turkey. She received her bachelor
and master degrees in architecture from Istanbul Technical University.
Please join me in welcoming morale like Angelou. Yeah
, yeah, Good morning and welcome to my presentation
historical constructions of Turkish woman architects in Postwar America,
a missing chapter in feminist architecture history. But first
of all, I would like to express my thanks
for this symposium, and it's too great to be
here today. The main purpose of my presentation is
to reveal how a woman architects could help us comprehend
the significance and the creative potentials of diversity and inclusion
in their obvious and act as a possibility of change
in order to promote pluralistic understanding as opposed to the
white and heterosexual male dominated consciousness and the barriers of
gender politics in architecture. With this purpose, I
will focus on women architects beyond their national borders because
interconnectedness and cross cultural exchange are inevitable facts into the
global world. And I think that we strongly need
to examine their challenge with conventional gender expectations, the
potentials of that challenge and their survival. Today in
particular, I will trace Turkish woman architects in Crossfire
America because although the modernization process of Turkish architects came
to a new turning point in the Postwar period as
a result of his close dialogue with the United States
and scholar studies on Turkish architects of the Postwar generation
has recently appeared and introduced new perspective, we challenge
standard histories of modernist projects in Turkey. Turkish woman
architects in particular their efforts beyond their national borders within
the pictures are still largely invisible. Mhm and more
specifically, feminist architecture history on Turkish woman architects still
continues to investigate them. In the early Republican period
around the 19 thirties in relation to the nation,
state ideology. Despite the strong emphasis on globalization in
Turkish architecture and growing variety of voices in fairness,
architectural history since 19 nineties. Before my presentation,
I would like to underline a question. What is
the significance of Turkish woman? Our checks in the
United States is later Ahmed's, a professor on Islam
and gender in America, indicates Turkey was the first
Muslim nations to brought feminist issues on a national political
level and the attitudes and formulations he at that point
. She refers to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder
of the modern and secular Republic of Turkey, made
use of where to be repeated. Resorted by other
Modernising Muslim states within the spatial context Turkish woman architects
exemplifies as a significant case from the modern Middle East
in the establishment of the modern and secular Republic of
Turkey. In 1923 woman operated as the heart of
modernization, and it's transformative power in a Muslim majority
society. Following Republic reforms in 19 thirties, Turkish
woman architects had the opportunity of architectural education, participated
into practice teaching, writing and became visible in the
profession and architectural publications in spite of traditional patriarchy in
the society. The absence of an independent almost liberations
moment and the male dominated nature of the profession.
Secular identity of the Republic of Turkey and its revolutionary
reform provided opportunities for them to compete with their male
colleagues without being marginalized in the male dominated profession and
in a Muslim majority society. As as an hour
ago, the Carcassonne architecture history underlies. For instance
, the mountains and many of our Belen who obtained
their professional degree in 1934 as the first woman architects
of the country, could proceed their practice and became
visible in Turkish architecture after their graduation. Here,
you can see one of their published projects in the
19 thirties, and this is the first monograph only
mountains and on her architecture, which published, which
was published in 2013. On the other hand,
it should be forgotten that their historical roots in terms
of the professionalization of architecture, is quite different from
the most of their Western colleagues. SBS Ambassador architecture
history and avoid this fact in her PhD dissertation in
the access of an independent market for building the professional
status of the architect was guaranteed granted, selected by
political power, and the station hardly changed after the
19 twenties, when the architects desires for professional autonomy
and their economic dependence on the state, began to
create explicit tension between professional societies and contemporary government.
The architects struggle for autonomy was realized only in 1954
when the chambers of architects of Turkey obtained authority for
licensing. Professional. Yeah, so modern Turkish woman
architects afford in the United States to deserve an attention
in order to explore how woman architects from such a
context, could tear down educational and professional limitations they
face in their country and how they could integrate their
architectural potentials into this country, which is one of
the leading global actors in modern and contemporary architecture with
its education system and the historical background of the legitimization
of his professional market for architectural service, goes to
18 57 when the First American Institute of Architects was
held and multicultural, highly competitive, and has still
white and male dominated consciousness. According to my academic
Research project, the historical background of the modern Turkish
woman architects in the United States goes back to the
second half of the 19 forties with J Dilla Bark
Vodka, a student of Professor Oliver Otto, one
of the leading professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
School of Architecture in that period. S. Gibson
, Solemn, are the first woman director of Istanbul
Technical University in the case. Gearbox is the first
woman to graduate from Istanbul Technical University School of Architecture
in 1942. In those years, the general landscape
of modern Turkish architecture was characterized by nationalism. For
instance, here you can see the disease by Lamontagne
at Istanbul Technical University on Borsa Houses in Turkey in
1941. Within such a landscape, the core of
architecture, education and curriculum at Istanbul Technical University didn't
include the essential and existing theoretical and historical arguments of
modernity and their influences on architecture. In addition,
there was no graduate program in architecture, and finally
, English language was not a part of the curriculum
of the university. In this respect, it can
be assumed that, like most of architecture students and
perhaps professor in the university, G really couldn't develop
. An understanding of the scholar listed his own modern
architecture. One of the critical factor is that architecture
, education and academic culture which shape students future career
were dominant, dominantly structured by an individualistic muscling culture
. In those years, and not coincidentally, architectural
design studio education exemplified the basis of the individual of
male architect and gender relations in the university were surrounded
by a patriarchal values and the lack of formal role
models. At that point, it's clear that a
woman architecture student could find little direction towards achieving her
own goal within such an atmosphere in spite of this
fact. Following her degree from Istanbul Technical University,
J D Lead conducted her master cases at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning in 1946
1947 and obtained her master degree, as her messages
is, shows us she designed a sanatorium and architectural
design. Languages radius how she could embark modern sense
of design principles along with a new wave architectural thinking
as opposed to the nationalism in Turkish academia and the
architecture around the 19 forties. Here you see her
sanitorium Projects on the Left and Oliver Alto. Her
professor sanitorium projects in Finland in 1928 5 months sanatorium
. In spite of this fact, she's an invisible
figure figure in the historical record of the Istanbul Technical
University, according to the letter and documents sent by
them to the Mitt 2000 15 Istanbul Technical University doesn't
have her TV, detailed information and documents on her
career. When I contact one of the family members
who is a professor in Istanbul, it was impossible
to receive information and documents to celebrate her career and
clarify some days as well. On the other hand
, according to the published projects by Architect, one
of the leading professional architectural journals in Turkey in those
years she participated several national architectural design competitions, return
male colleagues in Turkey and won several hours between 1943
and 1959 according to her CV in the archive of
American Institute of Architects. She returned to Istanbul Technical
University after M. I. T. Served as
an assistant and assistant professor at Istanbul Technical University until
1958. Then she left Turkey and her academic career
, came to the United States and conducted her architectural
practice in this country between 1959 1972 and passed away
in New York City in 1984 mhm. And in
this country she could work at large scale architectural offices
and companies such as Canon Yakov Architects about Mark Architects
, Engineering John Graham company and served as the member
of the project teams of some significant projects, such
as one Astor Plaza, New York telephone buildings,
American Airlines buildings at JFK International Airport and so on
. Mhm. At that point, it's important to
emphasize that architecture students in Turkey had no opportunity to
work actively in a well established architecture office in those
years, since most of architects and professor conducted theory
practice under the patronage of the States. As I
explored, her personal archive was donated by Camel to
Woman's Library and Information Center Foundation in Istanbul after she
passed away in New York City, although it was
nearly impossible to reach her own words. Words as
a woman throughout my academic research projects, and she
preferred her masculine, masculine characteristics of architectural practice in
the United States. Surprisingly, her personal archives includes
many publications on woman voters. An artist here you
see a page from her archive in the Istanbul.
This page is from a book by Nexium Witten,
one of the prominent activists activities of the woman moments
in the late in the late of Ottoman Empire and
the Republic of Turkey, and the book title is
true Katana in English Turkish woman, which was published
in 1931. Following her another Turkish woman Arctic in
the United States is L. A car. A
job All night. Gil Island bloom to generations of
Turkish woman who could find educational opportunity characterized by a
feminine consciousness and multicultural environment. All night. A
Patriarchate system and a nation oriented understanding in Turkey in
19 forties, and she received her bachelor of science
degree from the American College for Girls with honors in
Istanbul in 1954. This college was established by the
Woman's Board of Mission and Women educators from Boston in
Istanbul in 18 71 and its mission was to promote
the modern education of women, along with the universal
spread in the Ottoman Empire. In the meantime,
this school can be seen as one of the long
lasting connections between the United States and Turkey in the
field of education. Following her education in Istanbul,
either received her bachelor of science degree from Was Our
College, one of the oldest institutions for woman's education
in the liberal arts in the United States in 1956
and her field was art history. After that,
she enrolled Harvard University Graduate School of Design and educated
under the academic leadership of Jose Luis Start, the
dean of the Graduate School of Design and leading Spanish
architect and urban planner. In that period at Harvard
. John Lewis, our academic agenda, deal with
humanizing the environment, the integration of the programs of
architecture, planning, landscape and urban design in that
period. Mm hmm. Here you can see one
of her drawing, sensuous and architecture. Students at
Harvard University in 1960 Island obtained her master of architecture
and urban design degree from Harvard. Then, in
1973 she graduated from the Columbia University, be the
master of philosophy degree in architecture and urban planning.
Although she was silent on the subject of her own
career. Like most of Turkish woman architects in generation
in 1971 her statement reflects the influence of Jose Luis
Start on the philosophy of her own architecture. It
was our college periodical. On September 10, she
elaborated her architectural approach as follows. Teaching architectural history
and design has provided me with one of the major
challenges of my professional life. Being aware of the
lack of communication between the fields of urban design and
urban planning. I went into the field of planning
as an extra discipline while working as an architect,
according to her city in the archive of American Institute
of Architects. In the beginning of her career,
she worked for Marsa Grow Yard and Edward Larrabee Barnes
to leading post modern, postmodern post war design architects
taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design at Marcel
Breuer office, one of the North Quarter projects,
which should work on, was playing a secure resort
town in France. It can be forward that she
gave a modern design thinking, functional, functional discipline
drive from topography, local sensitivity, standardization and regularity
from Marcel Breuer. In the beginning of her professional
career and throughout her career she worked on projects in
the United States, Turkey and Europe. And in
my presentation I will focus on her three projects in
each countries. One of the projects revealing her own
individual architectural design vocabulary, student student union for the
University of Florida in 1960 eight, mhm. As
the chief designer, she designed a center for the
communal activities of the campus in this project. On
the left, her architectural design recovery indicates some influences
of Marcel Breuer armed her like fairy house, only
right, designed by myself. Designed by my side
lawyer for Westar College in 1950 her own architectural design
approach is characterized by a simply geometrically defined, functional
and formal patterns. Geometric aesthetic without ornamentation of any
kind, flat roof and smooth facade. After one
year in 1969 she participated in an international urban design
and regional planning competitions. Return for male colleagues in
Turkey, a new resort tongue for a development of
the Hellenistic site, and its environment in Turkey,
which calls city among 171 projects. The proposals,
designed by Ida and her colleagues, was one of
the 10 prize winners. On the one hand,
her participation in the international competition indicates her afford to
place her urban design background in the United States within
a historically specific context, which is also modern touristic
town in Turkey. On the other hand, the
gender profile of her competition team emphasized how Isla could
continue to conduct her career with a male dominated community
in architecture, and finally one of her projects is
Esmeralda Resort Condominiums, a reserve village located in the
south of Spain with ocean works as the chief designer
and planner. She worked on 250 units for an
international and flexible market of the projects. And for
her design vocabulary. She seems to be inspired by
a local architectural characteristic, such as tile, patio
, arch exterior crews, built in furniture and so
on. As one of the major features in Spanish
architecture, she interprets the concept of PTO as a
unit for the generation of housing system. And in
this publication, you can see shows the Luisa's house
in Cambridge showing his interest in PDO. And while
conducting academic research Project I explored. The 1968 is
an important turning point not only for Turkish woman architects
journey in the United States, but also for the
history of woman architecture, students, education in that
country. Princeton University, known as an old voice
Schools began to accept woman architecture students for the first
time, and two women could unlock the gates of
his historic the masculine space. In that year,
Aaliyah, picking from Ankara, Turkey, and Marlon
Jackson, is from the United States. Here you
can see an article published by Data Palestinian in 1967
co education is in a table graduated from the Middle
East Technical University School of Architecture. Better Master Degree
in 1967. The essential objectives of the architectural education
at that school were based on interdisciplinary teaching and learning
, and we're including architecture, planning and landscape architecture
. Thanks. And in the slide, you see
some photographs of women and main students, architecture students
with their Turkish and American professors at their parties and
social activities in Turkey in 19 fifties. Yeah,
as Ali expressed, there were six women architecture students
in a class of six freshmen. Man meant freshman
when she began her architecture, education and at the
Middle East Technical University leading professors who influenced her architectural
vision. Where Biggie and Sarah Donald, a couple
, conducted their careers in the United States. Maybe
just cried. A woman professor who was a member
of the Urban Land Commission in 1969 and Daniel Tankard
, a leading wound urban planner in Turkey, following
her master Tess's Children's Home and Physical Patrick Health Center
, Indiana Mahalia Ankara at the Middle East Technical University
, she decided to apply to Princeton University School of
Architecture, and one of the leading figures behind her
application to the school is professor Bill Durnan, a
graduate of Robert College, which is degree in civil
engineering and a graduate of Princeton University School of Architecture
, which is master degree in 1963. According to
Robert Giddis, the first thing of the school and
the Students of Water Group is at Harvard University.
The committee didn't know whether Aaliyah was female or male
. While they were emulating her applications, they are
believed in her talent and potential have played the most
crucial role for this historical threshold at Princeton University,
at least in university. One of the professors who
have to clarify her real interest in architecture to improve
living standards through the built environment and design was Eduardo
Lasagne Lozano, a native of Argentina. In her
master thesis entitled Sequester Housing and Proposals for its Elimination
in Turkey, she studied the rising influence of the
immigration from rural to urban areas and sequester housing built
without considering any construction laws and regulations in Turkey.
After the Second World War, in 1970 she obtained
her master of fine arts in architecture degree as the
first woman architect from Consumers School of Architecture, which
are 20 male classmates and was awarded by the American
Institute of Architects Award for Excellence, Certificate of Merit
. Mhm, mhm. In addition to her,
I could reach Marlon, Jack and Carol Case Cash
, who obtained their masters in architecture degrees from all
boy schools in 1971. Black Dahlia, as they
expressed There is no scholarly study on their career history
, although they are the early Roman architects from all
bicycles. As they shared their biographies with me,
both of them conducted their architectural practice in the professional
world in a successful way with their swords. As
a scholar from Istanbul, I would like to excite
that historical studies on their career should be conducted,
and they should take their places in famous architecture history
in relation to the United States as well. Here
you can see Marley's career and her special achievements,
and here you can see Krul's career if it turned
to Aaliyah. After Princeton University, she went back
to Turkey as her cities and projects shows. From
1970 to 1981 she translated her architectural background from the
Middle East Technical University and Princeton University. Into her
career, she worked on urban, urban and regional
planning in Turkey. In addition to this. She
continued her academic studies and career, obtaining my PhD
degree and promoting to a state professorship and continued her
Internation Scholar studies as O. E. C D
. Research and travel fellow in Europe and at Center
for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. 1981
was another turning point of her career. She began
to work for the United Nations between 1981 and 1980
seven. She conducted projects for the organs for this
organization in Nairobi, then was transferred to its headquarters
in New York City in 1987 mhm at the U
. N. As a woman architect, she began
to concentrate on women's issues and work for the Organization
of the Third World Conference of Woman, which our
colleagues in Nairobi. This conference underlined the role of
women in development and an effort to establish a new
international economic order based on equity. It might have
said that she could gain gain a much better exposure
to international world in relation to woman issues and urbanization
in that period, in terms of woman is just
her publications began to appear in the beginning of 19
nineties in 1992 in her published texts. She points
out the contributions of the construction sector to the labor
force in developing countries and criticizes gender based handicaps in
this field. Finally, in 1996 her major architectural
field became appearing in her career and she acted as
one of the key people. Keep people behind the
habitat. Sure Istanbul International Conference In relation to Urban
Settlements, this organization brought into focus decentralization of the
government, the Internet, the importance of non government
organizations, local governments and the importance of woman issues
after it is international conference. She also played a
significant role in the organization of crosstown 1 16,
bringing Habitat to home from Istanbul to Harlem in collaboration
with Robert Kiddies in the United States. And with
this effort, she was awarded by Space Special Citation
, American Institute of Architects, New York chapter in
1919 70. Although she retired at the U.
N. In 2000 and five, she continued her
work and projects on woman and urban planning in an
activate In 2000 and six, she was awarded by
the Woman of Distinction Award by Symptoms International, New
York City, and in 2008 and 10, she
served as the president of his New York City chapter
. In addition, in 2008 she established a consortium
for sustainable organization in New York based nonprofit organization with
her colleagues. In the same period with her.
According to my academic research, a Turkish woman architects
came to the United States as well. Meryl is
scared. It can be assumed that her architectural endeavors
indicates another significant threshold for Turkish woman architects in the
United States in the 19 sixties. Coming to this
country with to escape her architect husband, she established
her own architectural office with her partners in 1999 and
still active as the practitioner in the professional world and
was elevated to the College of Fellows by American Institute
of Architects in 2016. In other words, the
process of our practice underlines how to be able to
survive in the professional world of the United States as
an architectural design practitioners in a successful way. Obtaining
her bachelor degree in architecture from Istanbul Technical University in
1964 in 1969 she began her career in Silver Spring
and obtained her master degree in urban design from Catholic
University of America in 1974. Being the only woman
in her grass, there was no role model for
her at that time. In her email to me
in 2016, she expressed her experience entitled As follows
. This year I was elevated to college fellows.
I am sincerely proud of being a Turkish woman architects
as one of the partners in my profession, working
against to all of us and succeeding at the end
. Those years were so hard and so challenging.
In this country, discrimination was so teak they ended
up passing the love to protect women in the business
during those years, and here you see some architectural
projects and buildings designed by her and her partners.
Finally, we business a Turkish woman architects as the
principles of her own architecture office in New York City
in the second half of the 19 nineties, Bowen
Caravan, as she expressed in her book Ground Law
In 2010, she was enrolled in American College,
and then candidate possesses a boarding school for girls in
Istanbul, beginning her higher education at the Middle East
Technical University. She wanted to become a mathematician.
Then she one jump Canada secular ship with her study
on the art of mathematics, came to the Stony
Brook University, and she was only two woman students
in the Department of Mathematics. Then she decided to
be an architect and begin her architectural education at Columbia
University. In 1977 she obtained her master degree in
architecture from Columbia University and was awarded by the American
Institute of Architects Student award for Excellence in Architectural education
in the same year. In her book in 2010
, she wrote that context. Children's um was the
operative word of her architectural education at Columbia University.
In the 19 in the 19 seventies, the complex
world of architectural history, inclusion of Eastern influences in
architecture, Renaissance painting, social responsibility and tectonic explorations
of materials were significant parts of her architecture education,
which is architectural education. Her words in Italy during
her partnership with Michael Shorting and her early travels to
the historical places of Turkey have significant influences on her
simply use of materials and expression of the building purpose
. Here you see the historic preservation projects of the
Article Man Library at Corner Leader sit by her architecture
office, as she wrote in her book, this
project is a clear expressions of the relevance of her
architecture. Education at Columbia University in the 19 seventies
and the small, fragile residents as a part of
the meat Hermoso town complex by architects. None in
Istanbul. Yeah, and this is her another historic
preservation Gintare building cast iron facade restoration. And this
is a word by Preservation League of New York State
Award for Excellence in History Preservation, and this brings
us to the end of the final section of my
presentation. In conclusion, this woman architects from the
Republic of Turkey to the United States shows us how
encounters between different countries, societies and cultures could produce
creative potentials of women, although most of them clearly
expressed gender politics as one of the crucial problems in
the earliest of their Kurdish, secondly, they could
tear down some educational and professional limitations, face their
home country and could integrate their potentials into the modern
and contemporary architectural context of the United States and its
professional world. By working with professors and professional partners
from various cultural backgrounds, Charlie is part of their
challenge in education. In their professional career. They
could survive in their career, and as I expressed
. Some of them were many hours in the United
States for their contributions to their fields for the their
professional career, Paths also implied half a woman Arctic
can conduct her architecture in an alternative way and can
play a significant role in architecture through various way.
In other words, they didn't specialize in the field
of interior design or domestic architecture, which are mostly
acceptable for women, architects, occupational fields and 50
. The case of Aaliyah and Merrill shows us they
could conduct their own practice, although they merited architects
. And they didn't sacrifice their own architecture in order
to support or promote their architects, spouses and rejected
. Being obliged to live according to the stereotypical way
with gender ideology dictates to some woman professionals is a
part of this fact. Some leading schools of architecture
in the Republic of Turkey and, as I understood
in the United States, seems to be a way
to recognize their gender and woman history, such as
Istanbul Technical University, Middle East Technical University and Princeton
University. Like some feminist architecture historians on Turkish woman
architects and the post war period, as I expressed
in the beginning of my presentation, however, a
multiple perspective on women and gender issues in architecture.
Whether they are from Turkey or not might be a
way of new understanding of the potentials of cross cultural
dialogues and the crucial importance of gender equality. Not
only for the past lot. Further today. Thank
you. Time to progression. Okay, So in
this discussion, you've been speaking about how these Turkish
women are moving into the U. S. But
in your research, have you seen evidence that people
from Turkey are also moving to other countries in Europe
? Where is it largely into the great since my
academic ladder? As for the ladder, Okay.
Uhh. These Turkish women architects are moving into the
United States to continue their professional careers. Have you
seen in your research that they are also moving into
European countries or other places? Where is it?
Largely the United States? In my academic research project
, I will focus on, in particular United States
to draw. My friends in released my research problem
. But during my Academic Research Project project, of
course, I contact the chambers of architects of Turkey
in particular, uh, to ask them, um
, is there any? Of course, there are
many Turkish woman architects outside the United States, Europe
or the other parts of the world. Unfortunately,
one of the significant planning of my academic research project
, the chambers of architects of Turkey have no documentation
because the data or information on Turkish woman architects outside
the turkey at least a question I have is a
researcher. I'm curious. How did you find the
is women? Can you talk about research methods?
It's a kind of miracle for me, to be
honest, because when I was a research scholar at
Columbia University for my PhD dissertation research, first of
all, I contacted Robert Hilliard to talk about design
, architect and client relationship. And so, and
he suggested that there is a Turkish architects in his
office in New York meeting Cherokee, Met in Chile
is the husband of the earlier. But I had
no idea that meeting has, um, maintenance as
wife is a first ignited from business At that time
, when I came to MIT while conducting my academic
research, I contacted meeting again because he is a
well experienced architects in the United States. In my
first phone call, she he said that Mary,
I'd rather than me I think that my wife,
Ali, could be very helpful for you. Then
I called her and, you know, first conversation
, a full conversation. She said that I am
the first woman architectural prints here is it's a cup
of architecture. Mhm. And then I was put
her in New York City many times. And I
would like to express her for her help because she
immediately responded to my academic research questions. And she
shared shared first and materials and information immediately. And
it's very important, I think, while conducting studies
on women in architecture. Have a question about the
woman Mhm Callahan, who's teaching at New York.
Correct? Yes. Um, has she, um
, does she have a report from how the status
of, uh, what you're talking about at the
level of an educational environment? Not necessarily that she
has to teach a course about women's architects, but
does she have a report about about what might happen
in her school or, uh, with Bianca?
I could meet only at one time, because she
had a busy schedule in her architectural office and,
uh, schools. So she only shared her published
books with me, and we told woman issues in
general and she talked about some problems with woman's in
the United States architecture and in Turkish architecture. Um
, in my academic research projects, I talk.
I could talk in detail, to be honest with
Aaliyah because she has times. And, uh,
she was very generous to share many informations with me
. I'm just curious because we're so fortunate to have
the archive here. And our students also have direct
access to it, as everyone can. But,
you know, these people have such remarkable stories and
those that are also teaching. You wonder how How
does that work? How can they make progress in
that world? Or do they take that up?
And how do they pick that up? Because it's
difficult to do that. Even if it's difficult to
the world is also difficult in the school after these
simple as you. Maybe I should meet her again
to talk about this is shoes. Thank you.
Uh huh. Thank you very much. Meaningful is
the expensive presentation. And I have a question to
you since you've collected so much material of absolute value
and it is online right now on your website.
Do you have publishing plants? Uh, in regards
of a book or new volumes on the topic because
it is just a drug screen season. Thank you
for this question. As soon as I completed my
research, I contacted Sam. Uh, I shared
first of all, the biography is all of this
woman architects I reached in my research academic research projects
. And in addition to this, um, eye
contact with Beverly architecture foundations. They have digital archives
as well. And I shared my, uh,
biographies of this woman with them as well. And
I was Beverly Villas in Connecticut and we talked together
and in the near features, not yet. But
in the near future, of course, I would
like to share these materials as online's, uh,
for instance, for, uh, with a woman
, any woman is institutions in the United States or
archived digital archives on loan issues. I will be
very happy to share with this material. Of course
, with the permissions of this woman's architects, I
have a comment and a question also, thanks to
thank you under for his intervention. Yeah. Oh
, New York Institute of Technology. Obviously, schools
and countries go through periods of history, the Republican
era in Turkey future but also unique period, obviously
for money. Uh, but New York Institute of
Technology is one of not one of our founding collection
on Shoulder Han came to the New York Institute of
Technology and established the interior design program there, of
course, for her interior design and design, per
se was not separated from any of the other fields
because she grew up the resident there, all that
her own told us for all that was possible.
But my question goes back to the first woman who
spoke out. We worked at the office for yes
, yes, to the left. I wondered if
you could comment since you used as a reference the
auto sanitorium primal and then her project. You see
it? Of course I'm a little distant comment.
But can you comment a little if you notice her
touch in her project or something that she gained?
Obviously from here there are many similarities in the first
plan, but I wondered if you observe something in
that because the reference with the project is such a
good time. Uh, at M i t.
When I visited the Stanford Anderson while conducting my academic
project and when I could reach the generous master Tess's
with our alto. First of all, I visited
it. Sanford Anderson I shared with information her master
Tess's of are also and tuberculosis Sanitarium projects in Istanbul
with drawings. And as soon as seeing this master
tests and the project Stanford Anderson, during my attention
to prime a sanitarium. Merrill. Our Altos has
a sanatorium projects Primus Sanatorium. And he wrote these
materials together for this appointment. And on the tables
she shows this is the private sanitorium and with some
geometrical solutions and, uh, functional solutions. There
are some similarities between these two projects. First of
all, Stanford Anderson attention. And I would like
to express to him, Of course. Thanks.
Okay, thank you very much. There's some freshman
teal cookies. Uh, we're gonna have a very
short five minutes. Five minutes, 13 seconds long
. Uh, movie by the blog India and architecture
. I'm going to briefly introduce them, and then
we're gonna move on to our last, uh,
talk today by Christine Fallon. Okay, we're gonna
we're gonna start with the with the video. It's
a very short movie. As I was telling you
, uh, this is made by the blog India
on architecture, which translates to one day one architect
. It's a blog, uh, composed of over
30 uh, men and women from Spanish speaking countries
in South America and in Europe who got together,
um, to start this blog that publishes every day
the work of a woman architect. They've been doing
this for two seasons already. They're starting the third
one pretty soon, and they have kept with it
everyday publishing, biography and images of the work of
different women around around the world with, of course
, the I W A group which some of them
are sitting back there. Um, they have we
have collaborated with them, uh, this past year
, Um, for the, um Milka Bliznakov research
price, we had to awards one for Tanya Popular
Reuter and the other one was for the blog.
And so one of the people of the blog came
in September and did research on the archive to use
the material of the archive to write entries for the
blog. Um, they decided this year, this
coming series to do it bilingual bilingual entries. So
until now, it has only been in Spanish,
and they have a very large following. But They're
starting now with bilingual, um, entries. So
with a group we have already written, I believe
for entries that are going to be posted in this
next, uh, cycle, uh, of women
that we have already in the archive. And we
hope to continue to support that that project. So
, uh, one of them was gonna come to
present for the symposium, but they couldn't make it
, so they put together five of them put together
this little, um, video. It's a five
minute video. Five. Yeah, well, I'm
here. It's 5. 51 long about the project
. Have you? Okay. Mhm the property or
receiving itself? Essentially. So I only got policy
and translated. And the media? Uh huh.
Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.
Now, yeah. So you can visit. Here's
that's the, uh the what? The website.
Um, but you can search it? Yes.
One. The Indian architect to and the nice thing
in their blog also is that they share the list
of all the women that they have posted. So
you can go through, you know, scroll backward
on the on the blog. But you can also
see the list of the 571. Women? Yeah
. What are they doing in there? Illinois.
This is a very important piece of research that where
they are coming, well, they have. Their
work is all digital. It's the blog. So
they've been They created this book, right? But
they I think that they bring together all these resources
. So, like we are listed in their blog
is one of the resources that provides information for for
their entries. And they have various others, and
they hold this digitally. So the blog is basically
there. Their archives. They did one publication of
50 that they brought a copy of the book.
When? When Florencia was here in September. Uh
, there's been conversations about using that information either to
, um, put it into Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia
is also very low in entries about women, uh
, in architecture, um, and or starting it
, uh, bilingual. The bilingual version so that
they can expand. Um, but they don't have
, like, a physical archives center. Yeah.
Yes. So, yes, we do have the
option within special collections do some web are private capture
. So in theory, if they were willing,
we could crawl their page and captures snapshots, dynamic
snapshots and put them in the new digital platforms.
Yes, I think that they're still trying to figure
out what they want to do because there's been.
We first presented their work two years ago for the
Congress, and it was the first round. Uh
, and so there were questions about Okay, are
you going to publish a book? Is just going
to become something that you know, a a physical
record of the of the effort. Um, and
they were not yet quite sure what they wanted to
do because there were these options, a book or
trying to push it towards Wikipedia or for strengthening their
own blog. And it seems now that they're moving
towards the strength, strengthening and growing their own blog
. Uh, but they still they are very active
and and they start their own initiatives, and they're
always present. Uh, and all the Wikipedia edit
a thons already Daytona's and all sorts of things trying
to publicize the work of women. And I think
that they also have listed the, uh, they
have published the list of the women that they have
already published, and the list that's coming up the
next 365. So talking about Okay. Any other
questions? No. Okay, we can then move
on to our last presenter of the day. If
I can find them available. Well, it's fresh
out of the oven. Well, I had a
file and they just put it on YouTube like a
day ago to make it easier to show rather than
to show it from my computer. But so it's
already in YouTube, and I can make it available
? Certainly. So we're gonna start with the last
presentation of the day and the symposium. Okay.
Christine Fallon is a fellow of the American Institute of
Architects and an innovator and applying information technology to design
construction and capital asset management. Since the 19 seventies
, she founded Christine Felon Associates Inc in 1993.
She possesses a keen insight and consistent track record,
investigating and implementing strategies to help owner organizations with large
capital programs create new or improve existing technology systems with
outstanding results. Her clients include many large public agencies
, including the Tennessee Office of the State Architect,
the Chicago Transit Authority, the General Services Administration,
Public Building Service, the National Institutes of Health,
the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and infrastructure. Ontario Fallon
developed and, for over a decade taught a graduate
level course entitled Computer Integrated Project Delivery in Northwestern University
. McCormick School of Engineering, Master of Project Management
Program. It is a required course for those specializing
in construction management. Fallon, co author to National
Institute of Standards and Technology and I s T publications
on capital facilities, Information handover, as well as
seven U S. Army Corpse of Engineer Construction Engineering
Research Reports and was a contributing author of the Architects
Handbook of Professional Practice, 13th and 14th editions as
well as the National Been standard United States. Please
welcome Christine Fahlund. Yeah, okay. Hello.
So this is going to be funded? I've never
done this presentation before, but since it's Women's History
Month, I thought I'd give you a little bit
of personal history, which is also part of the
history of the introduction of computer technology into design practice
. So 1977 I joined the Chicago office of Skidmore
, Owings and Merrill, and I went out.
This is not really the the room I started working
in, but it was so much like it when
I found it online. I was looking to see
if I knew these people. Okay, So this
is what it looked like when I joined practice in
1977. And there are several things you'll note here
. Not a computer inside. Okay, not a
telephone insight. And this was way before cell phones
. Um, in this time, what you do
see as technology here? Can you stay? I'm
sorry. Forward. Does anybody know what this is
? You say that? Yeah. You know what
it is? Yeah. It's an electric eraser.
Yes. Okay, the the the sort of thing
we were told to remember is young draft people was
never drawn more in the morning than you can erase
in the afternoon. And so, working in a
drafting. So when I joined the Chicago office of
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, I went to work
in the drafting room like this, which was an
auxiliary office, and the office stretched this. A
series of drafting rooms like this stretched from State Street
to Dearborn Street for a full city block in Chicago
. At the time, Skidmore Chicago office had over
1000 people, and the majority of them were working
on something called the New Jetta International Airport, which
then became known as the King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah
, Saudi Arabia, and there's a lot to be
said about this. The most astonishing design accomplishment of
this project was the hajj terminal, and this is
actually I found all this otherwise is a construction photo
. It's half constructed and just kind of see the
support stances going up over there. The hajj terminal
is a airline terminal at this airport that is only
used during the month of Ramadan to accommodate the hundreds
of thousands of pilgrims who come to the city of
Mecca. It's only used for that one month of
the year. When it was designed in the 19
seventies, it was a breakthrough in structural engineering and
in environmental engineering. Up to that point, there
was no ability to structurally analyze fabric structures. So
, um, invented the analysis of fabric structures for
this project. In addition, Jenna has an awful
climate. It's not only in Saudi Arabia where it's
very hot, but it's near the sea, so
it's also very damn, and the hajj terminals were
designed with almost no mechanical cooling. They're naturally ventilated
and naturally very comfortable year round, so phenomenal breakthroughs
. But the hajj terminal, which covers 120 acres
and 2.8 million square feet of space, was a
very small part of the overall project. The blue
circle up on the map shows you where the hajj
terminals are. There was also a partially existing airport
at the time that was very poorly documented. There
were drawings that were incomplete, incorrect. The Saudis
would not permit aerial surveys because they were sensitive about
photographic processes that might capture the image of people.
And so and there was no international, there was
no Internet to communicate. There was no email to
communicate. There weren't even fax machines. You don't
even know what fax machines are right. So there
weren't even fax machines yet, and and calling a
place like Saudi Arabia via analog telephone was not a
really sure thing. So very early in my career
, I became interested in the problem of communicating on
large conflicts. Um, projects such as this.
The way they were doing it then is they managed
to do, and I don't know why it was
Sunday night, but one of the secretaries told me
this. She used to have to come in on
Sunday night because that's when they could get a good
phone call into Saudi Arabia. They would discuss the
project. They would come back Monday morning. They
would have a meeting with the people, called the
technical coordinators to talk about what they learned about,
Uh, we thought there was a building. There
really isn't a building there or we thought we could
, you know, move the road there. It
turns out there's a big building there and things like
that. Okay, which gets us to the process
of technical coordination. Now, this doesn't show.
This isn't quite as good a shot as the other
one, but it does show what went on a
lot in those days. See, these guys kind
of leaning over somebody else's board. They were technical
coordinators. They would go to this Monday morning meeting
and learn what needed to be changed on these thousands
of drawings that were being done by hand for this
airport. And they each had somewhere between eight and
12 drafters working for them, and they would start
Monday afternoon working down the aisle and explaining to each
draft, or what he or she had to change
on his or her drawing and it would take a
whole week, and then they would start all over
again the next Monday. Okay, Now, I
was interested in computers if this was an odd obsession
of mine, and I had actually met the woman
who was doing a lot of the computer applications which
were done in another room, in another building,
right there weren't personal computers. But we have these
clunky text terminals, okay? And one of the
things we were doing, in addition to structural analysis
, was something called KOGO and Coco is a civil
engineering software package. Um, that allowed you to
essentially define the survey points on a site and then
to lay out roads or bridges. Or most of
it was for civil engineering. Taxiways, runways very
handy for a project like this, and also you
can define the edges of buildings and things like that
. So I was actually doing some of this coordinate
geometry work. The other thing we had at the
time was something called a pen plotter. Now I've
actually seen in Chicago these things used as art installations
as odd mechanical objects that nobody knows what they're back
. So this was a long time ago. The
one on the lower left is actually the one we
used, and these plotters actually held pens, technical
drawing pens or felt tip pens or bolted ballpoint pens
. And they could be colored. That was nice
. And then in the middle, you see kind
of how it works. So that silver thing holds
one or more pens. The one we had,
I think, held three pens and you see the
papers rocketed so the little pen holder can move this
way and the paper rolls back and forth, right
? And so if it's just, if the paper
stays still in, the pen goes that way,
you get a horizontal line. If the pen stays
still in, the paper goes this way, you
get a vertical line, and then if you move
both at the same time, you get various diagonals
occurs, etcetera. And that's how an employer work
. Okay, so I thought about the fact that
we had all the coordinates for all the buildings and
roads as we understood them on the project, and
we had a pen plotter. So I went to
the computer group and I convinced them to write some
software that would map the site. Now, this
is not exactly astonishing in 2017, but 40 years
ago it was a significant breakthrough. And so once
we had this, what what were we able to
do? We were able to now generate these drawings
at various scales of various parts of the site,
and we could give them as under lays to these
thousands of drafters, thus incredibly improving the speed of
the coordination process. So that was the first thing
I did to contribute to better communications on large and
complex projects. That was in 1977 1978. And
then we went on to develop our own graphic software
. This is that and it was always three D
. And these are the hajj tents. Very early
computer graphic image of the hajj tents. These would
actually have been generated from the structural engineering software at
the time. So that was kind of the 19
seventies, the 19 eighties. I think the two
big things that happened in the 19 eighties with the
introduction of the PC which brought computing too many more
people, made it more affordable and also the Internet
. Now the Defense Department had been fooling around with
digital communications. You have to remember that telephone at
the time was analog was not digital, right?
Um, but the Defense Department have been fooling around
with digital communications since the 19 fifties. But in
the 19 eighties, a couple of things happened.
One is the TCP IP protocol was invented, and
the other was that the National Science Foundation began to
set up a network, a computer network among research
institutions. So, uh, to communicate research findings
. And again, the screen on the left shows
you the original kind of way. You talk to
the Internet, which was text Okay, 1993.
The first Web browser was invented, and also at
about that time, the Internet was open to general
commercial use for the first time. And that was
the beginning of big, big. Let's shift in
the ability to communicate are large and complex projects.
And within five years we saw smart software companies begin
to introduce technology that used Internet data transport to provide
access to a project website by anybody who gave a
password to who had Internet connections. And that was
I was very excited about that technology because of my
interest in the communication aspects and did some very early
work in trying to see how it would apply.
So here of how here is something called Project Net
and 1999. We joined a large program management team
to present to the Chicago Transit Authority the idea of
using this technology to manage a multibillion dollar capital program
there. And we got the job and we began
to work on it. We implemented it in 2000
and one, and the first thing that happened was
the Federal Transit Administration called us all in and said
, You know, if this technology fails, it's
on you. We will not consider it an act
of God. You're at risk and the agency and
my boss also Now we're going to do it.
And within two years, the head of the Federal
Transit Administration was calling what we did the best practice
. Okay, so this is the thing we implemented
was called Project, and it's not around anymore.
And so you you have a log in and it
knew who you were and based on who you were
, you had access to information about the projects that
you were working on So this is because it was
us. Remember the system administrator? This is all
of the projects that the CK was working on at
that time. Um, and if you went and
once you got in and you picked your project,
it would show you you see the kind of center
of the screen that had some announcements, but then
it would pop up. There's an issue for you
to address. You've got 14 meeting invitations by heavens
and down the left. There there were a series
of icons. New items is open, but there's
a calendar. Their task. There's a team directory
, and then at the bottom you have the modules
, documents, forms, print orders, communications and
reports. So let's go through how some of this
worked. And this doesn't seem really exciting. Now
that it was then this is so we go into
the document structure and we have something that looks a
lot like what you see on a PC, and
we open a folder of drawings and I forget which
is which. The blue ones, I think,
have reference files and the red ones that don't have
reference files or something. But you can view either
one, and you can mark it up and you
can save the mark ups. And you can notify
someone that you've marked up their drawing and all of
that. Okay, so that was that. This
module is the meetings module, and this is nice
because you have your you have your meeting minutes for
all your meetings. And then when you look at
this, then you see that for each meeting,
The way we did it is we did a document
for the meeting minutes. You see that one line
down and then you see a bunch of things called
action items. So in other words, there were
certain things that were assigned for people to do at
that meeting, and we track who was assigned to
do them and whether or not they were done.
You see, in this particular meeting, they're all
closed, so everybody was well behaved. But we
can also pick one of those and drill down and
figure out. Exactly. Here's the elevator report.
Um, here's a new elevator recommendation report. We're
trying to get the right people to renew, and
Augustine is responsible for seeing that got done, etcetera
, etcetera, so you can actually very quickly drill
down into what the issue was and understand what the
resolution was. So now we get onto trickier things
. How many of you have taken professional practice already
? Mm. Okay. How many of you know
what a submittal is? Oh, good. Okay
. So for those of you who don't it's not
hard. Architects have responsibility during the construction phase of
a project, and part of their responsibility is to
big responsibilities. Are answering questions from contractors. And
those are called request for information. And another is
reviewing a variety of Spitaels and middles or things like
I suspect, uh, fluorescent light fixture of a
certain capacity, the contractors going to provide a Westinghouse
fixture. Um, is this fixture okay? And
you have a certain amount of time to kind of
go through it and say yes or no. Okay
. The other kind of submittal is a shop drawing
. So you say I wanted some custom bookcases and
the guy who's going to make them send you a
shop drawing that shows you exactly how he's going to
fabricate them. And you say yes. That needs
my design. Intentional. Okay, So these are
responsibilities of the architect during the during the construction phase
right here. We're looking at a submittal. This
one happens to be a a structural submittal, and
it's currently under review. And if you look at
the blue line over at the right, it says
Mullah Celozzi, these are real people was assigned to
this. Okay, so what Mueller does is he
picks this thing and he gets a little form and
the documents that were submitted to be reviewed or there
, and he can open them and look at them
. And then up here, he types in What
? His answer to this And he say, No
, this channel you're proposing is not acceptable. You
have to use the C five by nine, and
he then actions this as revise and resubmit. This
is not accepted. You have to resubmit the correct
correct member here. And so the moment he does
that, this application shows the the middle is no
longer under review. It's now in revise and resubmit
phase. Okay. And the other thing we can
see if we drill down into the history is exactly
who looked at the same mental when it was first
introduced by the contractor when it was passed on to
the construction manager when they passed it on for the
C t. A engineering and a few other things
that happened with it over time. So you've got
a remarkable amount of information now about what's going on
on your very large and complex capital program, okay
, And the idea that anybody, any executive,
can come in and look, these are our f
so r f I s are the questions, right
? So they don't necessarily have documents. They're just
questions. And so here's a completed or if I
and again we can kind of see yeah, what
the question was and what the final resolution was.
This is coming from the construction manager and it tells
you I want a half inch thick isolations, bad
, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It has some
references to different aspects of the project. And then
if this part can be hidden from the final recipient
But for the internal team you see that in fact
, what the construction manager forward it is again an
instruction provided by Mullah Selassie. And so you can
page down and you can see their names and much
comment about how we should respond to this question.
And you have a history of that. And who
said what? So again, you know, helping
people, you know, Why in the world did
we say that? Whose, Whose dumb idea was
that? Um, you really have some ability to
trace back. So, in fact, we did
this for not just the CDA, but we did
it for many other places. And we continue to
do it today, Uh, and we can measure
that communication is improving. The first thing that happened
at sea to, as it turned out, that
Sita's engineering department achieved three times productivity in responding to
our feet. In other words, one engineer could
process about three times as many are fees in any
given period of time. Then he was able to
previously. And part of that is the ability as
you're looking at this too, you know? I
mean, you're not going through multiple emails to try
to figure out who was it that said he didn't
think that would work? Or wasn't there a conversation
? I mean, it's all right at your fingertips
, okay? And so that's a big help.
Um, and then we found that you know,
if all the activities are going faster, the projects
execute faster, and you can reduce risk of just
making mistakes or forgetting something on large and complex projects
. So the chart we see here is actually a
different point. The only way hallway. And when
we first put a system in place there, they
were starting a$6 billion program with many hundreds of
projects, and they were not staying on top of
it. It was taking them up to 50 days
to resolve a designer construction issue. That's a very
expensive thing. It was taking them up to 30
days to respond for average time. So an average
of 30 days to respond to an RFI which is
way too slow and it was taking 25 days or
so to action is submittal, which actually the time
in which you have to respond to a submittal.
It's actually written into the contract, so they weren't
meeting their contractual obligations on that and you can see
each year that went down alright, So back to
this. The other thing that helps reduce risk is
, you know, if you're the project manager,
if you're an executive, you can go in here
and you can either see along like this that that
shows you well, Okay, We don't have very
many open r f I s here and none of
them are passed to if their past do they turn
red. So that's very handy. We don't have
any overdue. Are good deal my projects going pretty
well, Um, and then also, you can
generate reports that tell you what's going on. We'll
talk about that. So then, around 2000 and
eight. So about 10 years later, we began
to see these products will cooperate custom workflow automation.
So now, purely and simply, we have a
review process. Somebody submits something that goes to redesign
review. It either gets returned to the designer or
it gets closed. It's fine. It's accepted and
closed. It's very simple. With this technology.
We approached a project for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
, which we're still working on, called the Rapid
Bridge Replacement Project. So this is being done via
a public private partnership, and that's saying new form
of project delivery, which breaks all the rules about
how project works. So it's What you do is
you write a contract and a developer says, Okay
, I can do this project for you in three
years and$4 billion under these circumstances, and you
lay out kind of. I mean, it's a
long negotiation, but you lay out the rules from
running the project, which is not nothing. You
will learn professional practice. They're just different. Okay
, the goal here was to replace 558 bridges in
the state of Pennsylvania within three years. Okay,
um, and then the private public partnership would have
a 28 year, 25 year maintenance contract on those
bridges as well. And this is actually a math
of Pennsylvania That shows you all the bridge locations.
Okay, so those were the 558 bridges target for
replacement within three years. This is a fairly impossible
thing to do. Mhm. Okay. I mean
, this is like, not routine at all.
And one of the big risks here because, you
know, it's a negotiation, and there is a
profit incentive in there was. The developers wrote in
a really complicated series of Okay, so you have
to approve roads or roads and bridges are actually very
complicated projects because you have environmental review and you gotta
go through a lot of and bridges. You got
structural. Just a lot of stuff. So there
are 58 to 62 items that have to be processed
, documented and approved before you can start constructing a
bridge. Okay. And they wrote a very complicated
schedule that some of these had to be done in
, you know, 14 days and some had two
months and some have 10 days. And meanwhile,
the department had to figure out, Well, this
is going to have to go out to the because
some of its coordination of traffic. So that has
to go out to the guys in what are called
the transportation divisions. You kind of know what other
construction is going on because you can't close. All
the roads are going to Pittsburgh at the same time
. You know, I mean things like that.
Okay, so that's very complicated. And we said
, Well, there's a lot of risk to the
department that they'll miss these review dates and then what
is the developer gonna do? He's gonna say,
Oh, I need monetary compensation because you prevented me
and I need time extensions, and I need this
and that. So Peter who works for me did
this. I cannot actually take credit for it.
It is a very complicated matrix that shows you they
were up to 62 designs of metal items per bridge
. Um, there are many participants in this review
the development entity as the guy who always has to
submit them. But we had a design review consultant
. We had transportation districts. We had the team
we were on, which was kind of a program
management team. Again. You had the department's central
office, and if it was something like runaway acquisition
or environmental, there were additional reviewers, right?
So there were all in all 24 reviewer roles.
These aren't reviewer people. These are particular review tasks
that had to be done by a group of people
with a particular expertise. Okay. And there were
four discipline leads. And then there were all the
varying review dates, so Peter worked it out.
There were 29 different routing and notification combinations, the
idea being that if somebody has to review something in
something this big, um, I mean, if
you if you multiply 558 times 62 you're talking about
32,000 design some metals being processed in about 18 months
. And that's kind of a little beyond again Human
comprehension. I mean, no human can manage that
on a system. Okay, so that's cool where
we are there. So this is the kind of
logic. Um, what he did was it's very
simple submittal process. And then the computer starts to
say what kind of submittal this is. Uh,
you know, is it the first time you submitted
it, or is it a revise and resubmit submittal
? And it goes through All those little blue diamonds
are logic steps that are performed by the computer,
not by people. And so you can trace,
you know, once the middle, that might go
through all of those logic steps until it actually gets
rounded to someone. Of course, the computer does
that, fortunately very quickly. All right, so
what we have here, this is I think this
is how to submit a similar. Okay, so
this is pretty straightforward. You Okay, so each
bridge has its own website. Okay, so you
go to the correct bridge. It's important to go
to the correct bridge. You get to the correct
bridge, then you say I want to do my
smell. And so it's basically in here. Says
Select an option for this middle, and it gives
you a list of all the 62 types of submittal
, so you don't have to remember the name or
anything. You just pick the one you want to
submit, so we pick one and then it says
, Attach your middle, okay, and all you
have to do here is you drag a A document
from your desktop to that tab and you hit the
happy little yellow submit button up there. And from
the developers perspective, you are done. So many
your your submittal. Meanwhile, this thing is tracking
all sorts of information about this middle and who it
needs to go to. And when it's due and
all that, you can kind of see that down
here you begin to see the multiple reviews. So
the design review consultant says no. I'm returning the
comments department says it's okay by us and every step
you capture those comment. Okay, so again,
you know this particular is a dashboard that's reporting on
graphically reporting on how we're doing on this evidence.
Now you'll notice that total design some little started at
this point is 27,000, 398. That's a lot
, right? And we have to I have to
hand it to this design review consultant 100% on time
performance. They watch their own metrics because they haven't
. And they do. Okay, the department's I
mean, the big fear here was the you know
, you send them out to the field and they're
busy and they don't get back there all 85 above
on time performance. And because the designer you use
of multiple steps of their a day late, you
can pick it up in the next step, right
? And so we've got that kind of thing.
This is the thing that was most of interest to
all the people who are involved in this process.
And it's telling you how many designs and models will
be do every day for the next 30 days.
And you could also kind of get this sort of
report for the ones I have to look at.
Okay, So if you're planning a vacation right around
here, you know, you've got a bit of
a problem and you can start to preview some of
these things and you can get to them before they
get to your step. Uh, etcetera, etcetera
. So that has been immensely successful for$10 on
this, um, not so immensely successful for the
developer, unfortunately, because they didn't get to claim
delays and extra money and things like that, but
I think they were actually counting on. Okay,
So in 2000 and 15, there's something called the
P three the Public Private Partnership Programs Awards, and
this was named the best transport project in the Americas
. And one of the things that was cited in
the award was this centralized review process that minimized delay
risks across the individual districts. So again, this
was a very successful and sort of a really next
step in an improving communications on large projects because now
it just doesn't. You know, you don't look
, and it doesn't just say, Oh, you've
got two things overdue. Now it's notifying people.
You know, when things are moving, you can
you can ask, you know when to get a
report every time a submittal hits the step before yours
. So you know it's coming to you and things
like that and this particular team has really taken to
that is really using the data to manage this unmanageable
project. So that's kind of it for me today
. Thank you for your attention. Yeah, protection
questions, Yes, what's next in terms of that
sort of technology and or that sort of puts on
the horizon as everyone sort without these things informants such
as basically right honestly or something. Yeah, so
that's a good question. Anybody have any ideas on
that? Yeah, Live. That's interesting. This
is all cloud days, right? All of this
is happening. Cloud days. The idea of instant
communication is very interesting. And it's a very key
question during the design, because when it's a very
good question, so hard work, you don't always
want to communicate everything instantly because it may be.
And this is actually something I ran into because again
, I've been doing things like this for a long
time that I set up a computer system a very
long time ago, where every time somebody made a
change to a drawing, everybody else working on the
project sort of saw the change right, and that
was good, except that somebody's boss said, Well
, just try like, you know, rearranging everything
here and all the engineering disciplines responded and changed all
their drawings, and it really wasn't decided upon change
. So managing change is actually, and the ability
to manage change on large projects and communicate what change
you actually want people to respond to? This is
a real design change versus here. A bunch of
options we're looking at is actually a very is a
new area and one where the technology isn't working quite
right yet. So that is a very, very
, very good nice job. Um, in terms
of what's going next, that's one of them,
and that really gets into bim and something called bim
servers. And I'm sure how many would have been
seem much better than our f o. Okay,
um, so building information modeling is a is a
very important technology that really does move our ability to
work with buildings as data, if you will forward
a great deal. But one of the challenges with
building information technology is you really want to manage instead
of managing by the drawing, which is the way
we think about it. Now we're managing by the
model you really want to manage by the individual objects
within the law. And that's one of the big
new issues. So you might say, Okay,
we've decided on the bookcases, but we haven't decided
on the carpet. And so you have a status
for everything in the mob, and the other is
the marriage of this technology, which has been up
to the last year or so extremely document centric with
them and with data centric approaches which are emerging.
So that's those are the areas that were doing some
work in and looking forward to. Oh, sorry
, How do you How does your firm managed the
preservation challenges of handling these massive amounts of structured data
? Because there's some information in those projects that you
have to maintain for legal purposes. Well, we
don't We're do. We're not the designers of record
or the balance, but we work with. We
work mostly. Most of our clients are owner organizations
, and they are very concerned about how they preserve
some of this information. So, you know,
stuff that's files you upload a drawing file, you
upload a model that's fine. You can get it
. You can do whatever you would normally do with
it. Many of them don't know what to do
with it, but that's another, um but some
of the other information you're right is truly structured data
. If you want to get it out of structured
data as opposed to just a kind of imprint of
those forms, um, you know, you have
to figure out where you're going to put it,
that you can use the structured data, Okay.
And then the other is, uh, some of
that information. Like I showed in in one case
, the audit trail of everybody who touched that.
That's kind of really part of the application, and
it's very hard to extract and use that information without
actually having the application presents. And we actually have
done a lot of work over the last 10 years
or so kind of dealing with those issues for other
organizations. It is a big question. Yes,
sure. And these programs Oh, you never know
. Okay, Work in firms where so adding these
technologies pieces to solve squeeze a little more efficiency out
of the process. You have. It was always
, always healthiness or now, So this time profits
in the service make a little about sort of the
balance of how changes in technology, the tools that
we use, uh, impact, sort of quality
of design and architecture and not just from a little
bit more or a little more time to process,
you know? But how has the changing of somebody
told me? Isil is in my hands are the
things I can use to make a design a little
bit further? This place is there are you know
, I mean, the building industry is a great
industry to get into because it's so big and complex
and there's so much stuff. I mean, you
know, you can do pretty much anything to do
really well in the building industry because it's just such
a vast and varied place to be okay. And
so and everybody kind of looks at it from their
own perspective. Um and so, yeah, I
mean, one thing you can measure is efficiency and
the so the kind of technology I was showing today
. The project collaboration management technology, I mean,
certainly can help people be more productive and can get
things done quicker. It moves information around very fast
. It does not improve the quality of the information
at all except for the fact that people can get
to an accurate version of the drawings. In fact
, one of the first things that people this was
really funny. So this is the Chicago Transit Authority
, and they sometimes they do in house design.
We showed some design reviews with their in house people
, but most of the projects they hire outside architects
and engineers. So when we started to introduce this
technology to those architects and engineers, the first thing
the first good thing we heard was that all the
sub consultants they designed sub consultants were delighted because the
architects were required to put their drawings online, where
the sun's could see what they were doing. So
you know, it was very, very helpful for
them in that regard. I think probably the technology
that's going to give us if we use it right
, and boy, it's not being used right right
now is building information modelling. Bim technology has the
ability to really give you much more accurate, high
quality information about your building and really support better decision
making about building so you know, and then the
problem with BIM has all this promise. But object
data structures are lousy at communicating. And so it's
hard if you if you're using them on a project
. And this is what this young man said,
you know, how do we all see what's going
on in a bin? It's much harder than even
seeing what's going on with the drawings. So that's
kind of a challenge I think is emerging and that
we're interested in. But I think it's building information
modeling that really is improving the quality and allowing you
to do things that you just couldn't do before.
I mean, heavens, we are doing things that
40 years ago you couldn't get you just couldn't get
yes. Has this changed the number of people working
because you talked early on in the seventies about the
block long Skidmore, Owings and Merrill wounds of dressing
this kind of technology that is improving efficiency, you
probably need to people Oh, yeah, How is
that affecting? Well, you know, it's probably
the big political debate of our day, and I
have really strong opinions on that, but yeah,
uh, maybe this isn't the place or time.
I mean, certainly there is no industry that needs
the number of people it needed 40 years ago.
And so do we really keep focusing on? People
have to work? I mean, that seems like
a silly sort of session when people have to work
as much or whatever, Right? So that's But
that's a political answer. Not really a technical answer
. And that's what everybody okay? Yes. Why
did you have another one? I have seen him
. Um, yeah, presentation where everything is shown
in the architectural drawings and perspective. So you literally
see the book cases in the room. And I
would think that would communicate a lot of information to
people who are looking at it like Okay, your
carpet? Yes, for cases. And are the
bookcases in a place where it's going to walk you
out the window or the orientation of the sun and
that sort of thing? So things you need to
hold tremendous visualization capabilities that make some of those processes
easier. Yes, then has been proven for a
long time. And it wasn't something new to my
mind that that's old news that has been proven for
a very long time to communicate very well to the
end user. I mean, most normal people cannot
leave drawings, and you know, they can If
you show them a three D model on from multiple
perspectives, that's good. And they can see it
better. And they understand, and they know what
they're getting. The problem is, is actually kind
of what you said. Okay, you see it
in his book cases, but it doesn't have a
carpet or it has a carpet. But in fact
, I haven't really selected the carpet. And then
when you select the carpet, they thought they said
, Oh, I thought the carpet was great.
Well, no, that was just And this is
where the the ability to kind of manage. So
I'm in bed. Any of you use something like
rabbit for Yeah, okay. And so you're drawing
something, and you want to put something in that
model and you go out on the web and you
grab an object and you stick it, right?
Yeah, that's what everybody does. This is terrible
because this object brings with it. Yeah, all
this data that you didn't intend. Okay, if
you are an intelligent object for bim model, order
for it to be in a big model, you
know, has to make a model and you know
all sorts of attributes that you didn't intend. But
if you share your model with someone else, they
go, Oh, she's using the blah, blah
, blah, you know, sink here. Okay
, let's order 2000 of them for this project,
right? And things get very bad. So that's
kind of from the from the actual managing a project
perspective. The problem with them is there's all sorts
of bad information in these files, but it's if
you're a bim user, you look what that is
and you react to it. So that's the problem
. It's really not a problem for designs countries.
But here later on, you should remember that.
Yes, I think it's a very interesting example you
about the color and the color of the carpet and
like a standing kind of color, because that's about
being able to anticipate what a client actually is able
to see. So, perhaps better is better than
extent drawing, but we're still we're still assuming that
it can actually, maybe there's a misapprehension of what
they can see. Remember the first job Iran.
And there was a nice, uh, department of
Park Avenue. We want to pick out Stone.
The whole thing got it wet. Oh, great
to hear it is installed on, the client goes
. That was just the first one I ran out
. Oh, I didn't know. It's going to
be that catastrophe. It seems like a long pause
. And then she says, I love it.
She hadn't seen it before, and she was there
and picked it. We help. I'm not trying
to insult the client. How could I possibly thought
that she didn't see what color that was? Right
? So that's that's a problem that every every kind
of technical capacity will handle. Capacity has to confront
how you know somebody. See what people see is
really difficult. Really? Yes, the modernization of
that. The ability to put on goggles and literally
walk through the project, which is a future that
will be able to literally walk through. It's the
current of them. It's very possible that some of
those problems eradicated or not, you still I mean
, it's a matter to grieve, and sometimes you
just don't know. Typically, in order to be
able to actually move through an environment and comfortable time
, you're reducing the the precision of the display so
there are issues there. So really using the right
tool at the right time for the right thing and
also sort of in the big challenge now. And
the big debates that had to do it is really
developing tools to communicate how serious you are about all
the pieces that are in the model. So I
have something looks like a very complete model, but
I really am not sure that would think I want
to use right. I'm really not sure about the
color of the carpet. And we haven't really decided
between concrete or steel yet, so don't take it
too literally. And so there there are different there
. Couple of approaches were doing that could be a
very long discussion level of development versus model view definition
, contraction you established with the mode of communication content
. Thank you. That was fun. Yeah,
so just the one I showed to put a brief
conclusion on this. Thank you to all of our
participants, both speakers and audience. This concludes our
second i a W a center symposium in this format
. It's had a lot of very interesting information brought
forward, and we have connections that we want to
move forward with, uh, exciting time for the
I A W A. We appreciate you all being
here and look forward to your participation in the future
, which is this afternoon or tomorrow. We are
desiring to connect up with the work of women in
architecture throughout the present period, but also in history
. And for some of you who may not know
women in architecture to us and to our founder no
Kalashnikov, the in is the most important word because
the in means not that you are a licensed architect
, but that you participate in this world of architecture
, which is Christine and others have said is very
generous. It's furniture, It's landscape, It's lighting
, it's materials. It's urban design. It's planning
. It has a wonderful latitude. It's hard to
imagine what it does not touch. So just remember
the end. We have an archive here. Of
course. It has limited square footage, but we
have imaginations. And those imaginations will work on how
we develop capacities in the future. I think we've
seen it many ways with yours, Christine. Each
of them give us an idea. So thank you
so much. Thank you. Okay,