high in the library. Thanks for coming and joining
us in this conversation. Uh The fire in the
library is sponsored by the International Archive of Women in
Architecture. The I.A.W.A. And it's
organized by the I. A. W. A. Group
is a group of uh students that started last semester
. Uh We're uh organizing and planning a range of
initiatives to to expand the reach of the lot of
past is existence and presence. So for the 3rd
1, we have invited professors Sharóne Tomer and Joseph
Bedford, which you may know already Sure you do
. Um and we were we we gave them a
very simple challenge, which was go to the archive
, take a brief for the archive. Just wander
around and see what conscious your attention, what you
become curious about and come back and tell us the
story. Uh so both of them have done that
and I'm sure they're going to have fascinating stories and
quite different perspectives. So we're going to start with
joseph the day. So thank you very much for
organizing all of this and inviting me to see the
archive. It's really a big archive. So I
did the throwing up in in the phone book strategy
. I just went through the Finding Aid and picked
somebody to explore in greater depth quite randomly and quite
early on. I'm going to tell you about Zelma
Wilson, an architect from California, whose biography really
stood out. I mean, she's got a really
interesting political life story. So I'll tell you a
little bit about that and how looking at that biography
, I tried to then see some reflections of that
story in the architecture itself. So Salma Wilson was
a um, she's from a quite a political or
radical family. Uh Russian jews emigrated to new york
. Her parents worked in the garment district in new
york, her father and claims to have been involved
in storming the winter palace 1917. Whether that's true
or not, that's that's what he told her and
he affiliates with anarcho sindical is um her mother is
very in her description strong entrepreneurial woman who set up
several dry cleaning shops. She was a member of
the Democratic Party, so she was active nationally and
politically, but also locally. Um for example,
she organized means of teaching mexican women in California too
. So, and to do that, she learned
spanish so she could teach them. So she was
a very active woman and very influential on Selma.
Now Zama experienced a range of um types of discrimination
in her life, which probably were typical of the
time. So as a woman, as a jew
and also as a communist. She talks in her
biography, this bag, by the way, is
actually an oral history transcript that was done at Berkeley
and he's kept there and not in the archive here
, but hopefully we can get a copy here as
well. Um She talks, for example of when
you date um as a young girl, the boys
that would date her would only be from the neighboring
town and they would never take her back to the
local town. And she says that's because of her
jewish back. She also describes um being The first
woman in her class in architecture in 1947. Um
and she describes a lot of the experiences of misogyny
throughout her career as a young architect working in practices
such as um richard Neutra, for example, and
she was fired from her job because of her communist
affiliations. And in her own words, I'll just
give you some of her own testimony to these experiences
of discrimination. She says men were patronizing. Um
, a woman was treated either as if you were
beautiful, you were treated as a kind of pet
of the class or you patronized. Occasionally. I
was getting professor who was very opposed to having women
in architecture. And he would let you know that
you're probably not going to make it, You would
probably not going to even graduate. You were actually
a distraction to the other man in the department.
Getting on with their hard work. This is her
testimony. She said that the male teachers that she
had assumed that the work would not be good because
they felt women did not have three dimensional perception.
Um, and about her experience in in the office
early in her life, she says the problem that
women have is to get the right kind of experience
. It's very, it's not very many architects who
will allow women in their office to obtain that experience
. A woman is seldom made chief draftsman of a
job or a job captain or they were very reluctant
to send women onto the construction site. She also
says that in her own experience running a firm,
she found that a lot of times she was invited
to competitions as a form of tokenism where there is
no chance she would get the job because those large
jobs, she felt that the clients wouldn't interest them
to a female architect. So that's just to encapsulate
some of the typical discrimination she experienced. She married
Mike Wilson, who they met at university. Uh
Mike Wilson is most famous for being the screenwriter in
Hollywood of Lawrence of Arabia. But before that,
he uh was the screenwriter of a communist film called
Salt of the Earth. In 1951, There was
a very much a communist group in the 1940s that
she was part of. And her sister also married
the producer of Salt of the Earth. So it
gives you a sense of a community of Young American
Communists in the 40s. Now the film was boycotted
because it was seen as communist propaganda during the McCarthy
era. And the whole family and all of their
friends were subject to the scrutiny of the commission of
all the house of un american activities. And they
were all blacklisted and eventually they were exiled. They
went into exile for about 10 years in paris.
Um Now, while the film, I want to
play you some brief clips of the film, I
can't get rid of that, I'm just going to
be that. Um so you can get rid exist
. Oh yes, yeah, yeah. Um so
what this film is known to be sort of communist
propaganda film, It's also really interesting for this story
, the degree to which feminism plays a role in
relation to communism in the film. So it presents
um for example, the housework, Childcare and sanitation
is fundamental political issues. Yeah. And from that
day I remember I had a wish. It's not
so simple. I thought for you, but I
pray to the version to forgive me free. I
wish I wish that my child would never before.
So it's really important that the protagonist of the film
is a woman and the whole consciousness that unfolds of
her empowerment as part of the story is part of
the feminism of the film. Now this is highlighted
in particular when she's jailed during at some point during
the end of the film and her husband gets to
experience doing the housework, we find this. Uh
huh, mm. Her, yeah. Mhm.
Mhm. No. Oh, mm, mm.
Ah I don't know, is not going to be
, but he always just to heat it up water
to watch this stuff. I'm telling you something.
The first strike is ever settled, which I doubt
. I never go back to work for that company
. A letter ain't so hot running water for us
. Sarafina union demand from the beginning you're telling me
All right. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah.
Actually there to constantly nice baby and domestic savings.
The roman question he calls it woman question. Yeah
. The problem what to do about So what does
he want to do about him? He says give
them equality, politician, job equality is involved.
And also sex equality. What do you mean?
Especially because you know one of my laundry is one
of them. Again, he's some organizer, that
journey. He could to organize a wife right out
of your home. Yeah. And then at the
end of the fill the drama over her demand to
recognition and respect in the relationship with her husband culminates
in a speech um that she gives when you go
you be still and if you can't understand dr fool
because you can do in this, you can win
anything without. That's never tried. Yeah. Mhm
. Yeah. Well, I'm going to bed now
. Sleep for you, please. Yeah. So
the story is the unfolding of her demand for recognition
and empowerment. Yet while the film um certainly displays
this, it stops short of criticizing the gender division
of labor within the family and the very nature of
the nuclear family itself. Now, I'll just say
that I'm sorry. So. Well, um so
equality was a key part therefore, of a quality
of women was a key part of the classic quality
in the communist community at the time. And Zelma
actually said in her biography that she had the idea
of the impression that in a communist society women would
be far more equal. She said in Communist countries
, 50 of architects are women. Now when the
film was made, um sure she was promptly fired
from her job because it was, there was a
message, there was an article in time out about
the film. Her boss heard about it and she
was fired. Although they didn't say why she was
fired. They fired her over using the wrong color
in scheme and a project. And but it was
not only this film and her connection to her husband
, that is really the political heart of the story
because she was very political herself. She was known
later on in life, being the center of the
social network around where she lived, hosting salons.
She was a big organizer. She organized something called
the Architect Panel, which she described as a socialistic
endeavor of that Architects panel, which was kind of
forum that brought together Hundreds of architects in California in
the 50s. She says that um she was trying
to be a useful member of society. We had
this architect panel thing going where we're trying to raise
everyone's level um and make architects more aware of their
social responsibility. It was for architects who wanted to
talk about architecture relative to the whole social structure,
the whole social international structure. And it provided a
possibility for people to get together and talk about other
issues than just aesthetics or what period of architecture they
were into. We talked about social issues relative to
the built environment and this group, the Architects Panel
also disbanded, sort of cracked a bit under the
pressure of the scrutiny of the McCarthy era. And
everyone went their separate ways. And 1956 was the
really decisive moment where the film has been banned.
She achieved her license and was ready to practice and
set up her own firm. But at that point
her husband managed to get documents to um to escape
to paris, which was very hard to come by
and he only got these documents by an accident of
the visa surface service. So he left within a
week To make sure they didn't change their minds.
And then she went and joined them and they spent
the next 10 years in Paris where rather than being
an architect, she did a sculpture degree at the
echo the Boza. And about the same time Stalin
was invading hungry And it became increasingly difficult for her
generation of Communist Americans in the 50s to Deny,
as they had done some of the darker sides of
communism. So their political affiliations waned during this period
of exile. And when she returned, she's uh
set up a practice in California and had a very
successful practice, which she ran between 1964 and 1996
when she died. And she did many projects.
And she was recognized, for example, as one
of only 21 women who made fellows of the A.I
. A. Um, And there's actually 100 and
1200 fellows of the area and only 21 women.
And she was one of those, She says,
1200 Fellows of the A.I. A. Um,
so how the question for me was this story um
, of the political nature of her life and various
levels of discrimination she experienced reflected In the architecture that
she built for 20 or 30 years. So I
wanted to see if when I went to the archive
, if I could find themes to do with her
life in her projects. And I didn't manage to
look at a lot of projects because it's slow process
getting the roles and unfolding them. But I looked
I focus on the early projects, looked at some
residential buildings, then try to look at some institutional
projects. Um, so I'll just show you quickly
, just five projects and make a couple of observations
about them. The residence is that she did early
in her practice from the late 60s. From my
first impression seem to do very little to challenge the
idea of the nuclear family or bourgeois society or individualism
. And this is probably a lot to do with
just the nature of the typical um detached home in
California. Many of the houses have a lot of
land all around them. There's no suggestion in the
house of a relation to a neighboring house, of
the house being part of a community. And what
struck me was the degree to which in the um
the houses had a very private spaces embodied in the
bathroom, which is often the deepest place in the
house where you retreat into your privacy. Um so
at the very least, um for example, um
every house has an on suite by default, in
in the way she's designing it and they're separate bathrooms
for the different, let's say, structure in the
family, for the Children and for the adults In
a residency in 79, this is probably very typical
of California house, but I'm just putting it out
there as a contrast with what a communist vision of
society would be and how it would be expressed.
For example, in the socialist housing of Red Vienna
or something like that. It's here, this is
a temporary home for for being there for a couple
of months for holiday. But to enter into this
bedroom, you go through what seems to be at
least three levels of thresholds, retreating increasingly into privacy
. So the parents of the household will go into
their bedroom, then they'll go into their room,
where they have all people, their clothes, then
they'll go into the bathroom, and then even the
toilet will be tucked around the corner in a niche
. So by the time they're sitting on the toilet
there in a very spatially nested part of the house
, I take this to be a representation to some
degree of the kind of privacy that is built into
the typology of Western architecture. So here is that
very deep structure before you get to sit on the
toilet. And similarly, in another residency from the
early 70s, every house has that kind of embedded
bathroom and multiple bathrooms for different people. And also
the same thing in some of the community projects,
this was a meditation center, the same space given
over to the bathroom and its privacy. And in
a couple of institutional projects you can read not only
the individualism inscribed in the project, but the way
gender is specialized. So, for example, in
the police Facility that she designed in the 70s,
um the male and the female bathrooms are separated across
different parts of the facility, with the male bathroom
being next to where the prisoners were kept, whereas
the female bathroom is placed further away and it almost
next to the storage area across the other side of
a room dedicated to dispatch and records. So the
structure of the project itself in a way Aasif eyes
different roles that men and women played In 1970s and
policing. And finally, um, A child care
center that she did in the early 80s. And
what struck me about this was, this is for
many age ranges of Children. And you can see
just in the way that the bathrooms are labeled The
development from age three or 4 to age 10 of
how bathrooms are treated in relation to gender. So
I'll just show you these, um, for bathrooms
. So for the infants, the bathroom is simply
a single bathroom, non gender and nominated. It's
one bathroom for all the infants, whether they're boys
or girls. The same goes for toddlers. And
it's labeled on the plan as a restroom. But
then by the time you get to preschool, you're
meant to go into the boy's bathroom and a girls
bathroom. And not only are they distinct the label
, but they're also symmetrically disposed on either side of
the main hall. So you can, in a
sense, see the way Children are schooled into,
um, the acknowledgement or the labelling of the gender
roles, especially in school. Um, so that's
just all I had to show you. And just
as a sort of wrap up comments, it seems
to me that in so far in the way that
salt of the earth went a long way for its
time and and bringing feminism into the conversation about communism
, but stopped short of challenging the way labour was
divided in the domestic space in the household, um
, and stopping short of challenging the nuclear family that
maybe her her own architecture could be said to similarly
stop short of challenging such things as the individualism of
contemporary bourgeois society, as it's expressed in the private
home and the specialization of gender. And I'm not
saying this to sort of blame her. Uh,
I'm saying that this is very much like a matter
of the times in which she lived. It was
an aspect of architecture which she wasn't able to challenge
, or at that time it wasn't considered to be
necessary to challenge. Thanks. Yeah. Oh,
so I want a totally different exploration, um,
mostly in scale. I think actually some is similar
questions. Um, instead of the pins I tried
to I went in with very big theoretical questions um
, about the idea of an archive that's for architecture
, that's fundamentally about gender. Um, and I
just so my presentations just throwing out a lot of
questions based on the different types of material that I
went looked at, and in some ways I think
that um I think my question almost was inspired,
was inspired quite a bit by something that I think
Donald said at the first fire in the library,
which was that the I W. A. Is
international archive of Women in Architecture. And you know
, I think it was you that said this very
women in architecture, not women architects. And that
question is been like sitting in my mind. Well
, what does that mean? And so I went
into the question, what does it mean to have
an archive of women in architecture? And I want
to make there wasn't a kind of question, like
a defensive one, Like you need one, but
I do need one. It was wow the implications
of that. Or what are the questions that raises
? Um and so I think I'm interested in what
does a gender centric lends into architectural production Tell us
because it's not just about architecture is an artifact that
what I'll be talking about, What I think an
archive is really interesting. Architectural archive is interesting for
is it's an archive to some extent of architectural production
. This is where you get to see how people
make, how architects make the things they make.
So that's why it's interesting to go into an archive
instead of just looking at buildings. Both interesting.
But that's one of the things I think is really
interesting about an archive. Um, so I'm really
interested in what are those things that are normally invisible
that are brought to light by having an archive like
this? So if you bear with me, there
are sort of two trains of thoughts that I followed
. I want to talk about. One of them
is just the idea of a gendered archive. Um
and the other one is about gender and architecture.
Um So um and unfortunately a lot fewer images because
it was just these theoretical questions I was asking.
Um So I ended up going down this sort of
small short rabbit hole, shallow rabbit hole of questions
about archives in general and gender. And um Sam
, who's the archivist for the I. W.
A. Gave me all these great readings about gender
and subjectivity and archival practices and because I'm I'm a
historian, so yes, I'm interested in questions about
what archives are. Because um archives are these for
one. Archives are the places where we bring together
what we know. Um I was in a really
interesting conference and African Studies conference a few years ago
. Um and it was in in Africa and South
Africa. And so there were all these questions about
, we're trying to rewrite African Studies, trying to
rewrite knowledge where the archives, how do we find
different knowledge? Is how do we find different stories
? Stories that haven't been heard before? Then?
There's this question that was kind of like running through
the whole conference of where are the archives? And
you think about archives are something that are typically produced
from above the places of power. Those in power
get to build the archive, which means that it's
sort of the official story. That's what we technically
get in archives. Um And I think that's something
like the I N. W. A. Is
interesting because it's sort of deploying that institutional power of
the university, but trying to tell a story that's
a different one because it is about gender. Um
And there was a really interesting quote that came from
one of the readings I did, um which says
that history is not what happened in the past but
rather what is communicated about the past. So everything
happens in the past, but history is actually about
what's communicating about the past. Um So I went
into the I. W. S. Asking what
is how is the gendered nature of identity represented?
Um And the thing about archives is there always gendered
in some sort of way, Identity is always somehow
hasn't. But often it's sort of hidden, it's
invisible, it's silent those differences. Um So there's
never any neutrality. Can't pretend to be neutral.
Um So what's interesting about this is this is an
archive that's intentionally not neutral. That's what it's all
about, is that explicitness. Um So one of
the things I was interested in is how subjectivity,
so gender or other types of subjectivity, how they
bear upon architectural authorship, which I think is exactly
what joseph's is talking about. And I just want
to talk and think about going into the I.
O. W. A. From you is really
interesting because it reminded me about what's so special and
exciting about archives, um which is you get this
insight not into just a complete work, um,
but into the thoughts and the interpersonal relationships and I'll
show you like what I always do. The first
thing I do want to go to an archive is
look at the correspondence because that's where all the good
juicy stuff is. What do you do? The
same thing? Uh Actually, it's the best go
straight to the correspondence fast because it's also where you
see people's thought, what they're thinking about what they're
interested in. And then there's that question which is
the one you're asking how when we're looking at something
like architecture, how do you start to develop a
conversation between what people are thinking about and particularly maybe
in their personal lives, and what they produce as
professionals and where those overlaps and where are the disjuncture
. Um, but I think that it's interesting to
look at an architectural archive as architects not as necessary
, historians are scholars, because it does show what
architecture thinking. And so, you know, none
of us work in a bubble. We sit down
on our desk and, you know, we may
have a prompt, um, but we're not going
to think about it in a bubble. There's always
some sort of context or some sort of questions.
And so part of those are, and we,
you know, often look at precedents, we look
at people have done before, but I think a
really interesting president, how people thought about what they've
done before, what they're interested in. Um,
so what I the reason business up here is I
was interested in, well, what if what is
the I w a mean as an archive in terms
of what sort of things does it collect? How
does it go about telling this story or trying to
build up this story of women in architecture? Um
So part of it is papers of individual women architects
, which is exactly what um joseph looked at,
and the part of that includes drawings. So like
you're saying there's all those drawings and I went through
those tiny, that also a couple of those.
Um the thing that I realized really interested me was
exhibits about women in architecture. So records of people
telling stories of women in architecture. And then um
what I think is interesting is there's a whole collection
of books about women in architecture, so I spent
a little bit of time looking at those. Um
So the two books on the left I looked at
in the archives, the one on the left I've
never seen before. It's by Wendy Bertrand, the
Middle one I knew quite a bit in the third
book. I'm not sure it's in the collection,
but it's a really sort of seminal book. So
what's interesting about these three books is they actually come
at things from a very different way. Um The
first one is really personal histories. And there's this
nice quote in the introduction to that book, that's
what the one Enamored with Place. Um It says
mary Catherine Bateson that is book composing a life helped
me recognize an inner urge to make the invisible more
visible to provide myself as one more mirror of woman
. one More Female Architect& Our Social History.
And she says I still plan to send my archive
to the A. W. A. Um so
that my experience will be documented alongside those of other
women architects. Being part of a women focused collection
is important for visibility. If the accounts of women
architects are only sprinkled here and there, much in
the way we have worked our stories get lost in
history. My hope is that a sizable collection will
encourage scholars to dissect the evidence, discovered details in
our experience and acknowledge our values, not just our
buildings. I thought that was really and that starts
to sort of answer some of those questions I was
asking. So it's about there's kind of almost a
critical mass sort of point that argument that she's making
, she's saying you need to have more so that
there is recognized. There are women in architecture and
you can maybe start to see patterns of different types
of experiences, different sets of values, different sets
of issues that come up up the second book,
which is called, You should all look at this
book if you have and it's a really, really
great book. Um It's called The Architect Reconstructing Her
Practice. And that's an edited volume. Um and
it's one that I knew before. It's really an
exploration of the gender nature of professional practice. So
it's really much looking at the professional practice of architecture
and what it reminded me of as I was looking
at it is that the marginalization that women experience in
the architectural profession is something that's political. It's not
accidental, is not incidental, not to say that
someone, anyone or any body has planned this,
but this is something that's political please marginalization. Um
And then the third book um which are very has
um I'm saying I w has it um Gender space
Architecture is really, really interesting because it's also an
edited volume with a lot of essays, but it
brings together conversations about gender really broadly with those about
gender and space. Um and then specifically about architecture
. And I think it's those kind of cross conversations
, like there's a wonderful essay and they're about women
in medieval italian towns and how we don't find traces
of them. How hard it is to see the
traces of women's lives in these towns or urban histories
are so often male histories, because that's the record
we have, is how men move through space,
how they experience space. So where are the women
in these histories? Uh huh. So I think
um to sort of kind of wrap up conversation about
like gender and an archive, I think with this
archive with the idea of an archive about women does
um is it helps to put sort of issues on
the map. Um for one breaks silence is about
invisibility. So this idea that women are invisible though
I've got some graph later that shows that you actually
don't quite exist in all realms of the profession.
Um And it really counters the impression that architecture is
a male profession. Um And it illustrates, you
know, the women architects, there's some very successful
women architects. One of the things that I loved
finding in the archive was a story um was this
history that I traced a little bit of a woman
lou to Maria rigs and who was an f fellow
of the A. But there's all these correspondents,
letters of people nominated her to be a fellow of
the A. I. A. And so and
saying, you know, somehow people claim they've never
heard of this woman, but look at this body
of work, it's so amazing. So first I
kept seeing all these clippings ever work. I'm like
, I've never heard of her. And then I
found these letters going back and forth. All these
people nominating hurts was really, really great stuff.
Um so the archive, um it's sort of a
collection of voices. It's a way of telling stories
, which I think is really a wonderful thing.
Um and then, um so then there's all the
whole another set of questions I was asking about the
idea of gender and architecture, women and architecture and
what the idea of women in architecture and I realized
I was thinking through it, there's kind of two
separate questions or relations, one of them's gender and
architecture, And the other one is gender in architecture
. Um and gender and architecture brings up a lot
of questions kind of about how people experience space use
space, about how we design and think about gender
as we design architecture. Um I was even thinking
and that's why I only thought of it really,
like I didn't get the image up there. Um
If anyone knows this is amazing set of photographs that
Cindy Sherman did When she dressed so Cindy Sherman.
If you we've all seen her work, you may
not know it's her, she dresses up as different
characters and then takes these self portraits, these photographs
doing it since the 1970s, 19 eighties. Um
But she's got this set of photographs where she um
photographed herself in these spaces in new york city in
ways that really highlighted how vulnerable women are in urban
space. So some of those kind of like dark
streets and she sort of like this lone figure on
the street and she completely changes her appearance and all
of her photographs which sort of totally dresses up.
Um but if these really, really interesting set of
photographs that makes the point of us to make people
particularly men realize that women experience urban space differently.
There's a vulnerability about being a woman in space that's
different. So that's part of the question about gender
and architecture, but then gender in architecture is a
whole another set of questions and I'm not really having
any conclusions, I'm just throwing all these things.
Um but one of the things I was thinking about
, I went I happened upon and I have to
say the first time I went to the I.
W. A Sam just brought me these cards that
just had a whole bunch of different stuff on them
, so that's where I can start to see stuff
. And um so I was looking at Beverly Willis
notebook, Beverly Willis was the SAN Francisco architect.
If she's passed away, she's still alive, what
do you mean? Um So she ran runs,
does she still practicing? No, she has a
sense, that's you, she's got this center um
but she had a practice in SAn Francisco for a
long time, a very significant um female architect.
So I was looking through one of our sort of
sketchbooks, project notebooks and what is realizing is just
looking through the notebook, you just get this insight
into how someone thinks about space, how they sketch
the questions they asked here. She's clearly trying to
figure out some proportionality and you know, I think
it says somewhere at 1984, this is the most
modern stuff um and all its glory, but these
are the sort of drawings and thought processes that you
don't get a record of. You don't understand when
you just look at a complete work, um you
have to look at these sort of personal papers to
look at this stuff and then it raises the question
about, and this is I think kind of a
question that you're asking, what does it mean when
someone who's the person who is making the architecture,
the author is gendered, that they have a gender
perspective on things, you know? And I'm looking
through her work, I'm like, look any differently
than it was a male architect. But then how
incredibly normative is that to say that somehow the normative
physician of architecture is that it's male. Um And
should architecture be any different? Is there anything different
depending on the gender of the architect themselves? So
that was a whole sort of set of questions,
which might be interesting. Um But then what I
did for most of my visit is looked at exhibits
and this one particular exhibit. Um So this was
this pretty large exhibit organized by the ai a traveled
for three years. Um what is interesting is that
as you go through the records of the show,
you realize how It was not an unusual show.
There were actually from the kind of late 1970s onwards
. A lot of exhibitions being done about women in
architecture, which is also interesting. But what's really
, I mean, one of the first, like
really great juicy things is is that opening? And
this is in the catalog? Um The opening page
is this quote from Pietro Belluschi says, I cannot
hold conscience recommend architecture as a profession for girls.
Yes, I know some women who have done well
at it, but the obstacles are so great that
it takes an exceptional girl to make a go of
it. If she insisted on becoming an architect,
I would try to dissuade her. If then she
was still determined. I would give her my blessing
. She could be that exceptional one. Clearly that's
where they got the name of the exhibit to the
exceptional one. But the vote is just sort of
too much. Um, But it brings up this
question of the of what it means to be a
woman in architecture. So this is was put up
by AC. S. A. I think in
2015. So these are pretty real recent stats so
you can see women are Little more than 50 of
the population in the us. I think. I
don't know if it's quite accurate. There's a little
more than 40 of our charter schools. I thought
we were more than that but maybe not More than
40%. 40 some percent of articles. It's so
the latino keeps going fairly well. Big drop between
and car record applicants. So most, most women
who start architecture school get all the way through and
take their A. R. S. And get
in car registered, but then they actually become a
members, which that's a whole other questions is a
measure of validity. Um, Then another bit of
a drop to school directors. So all the way
you're down from like 42 to like 25 are school
directors. And it just keeps dropping again. How
many from our employee architecture, employment employers, architects
, I guess is what that means to Dean's,
another big drop and keeps going and going so clearly
our profession has agenda. Um, but what was
really, really interesting about the, the exhibit archive
to me and as I say, are the correspondence
files. And these were correspondents, as they were
putting assembling the exhibition, they had a board of
directors who advisors, who, you know, gave
him advice on how to do it. And there's
some great step in here. So, I mean
, the first thing I am struck by the lack
of historical context for the exhibition. Uh part of
the story about there was another exhibition. Why do
we need another one? What questions what new material
is going to be raised? Uh Do you have
a mythological approach that will make us more physical of
simple definitions of explanations for step for the status of
women in architecture? So how does the exhibit going
to raise these questions? How is it going to
make people aware of issues that exist in the profession
? Oh, with scholarship. Uh, I think
the next thing that uh really interesting is what relation
to the exhibit have to the area is this exhibit
focusing on A. I and members will consider the
ways in which the institution defined the profession and how
that definition shaped women's work in architecture. And that's
a really, really important question. Are we our
profession? So we're shaped by institutions, what the
A. I. A. Says that architects are
, who they are, what they do, shapes
, who can enter the profession, who can succeed
in the profession, who excels in it quite a
bit. Uh So whether or not, I'm not
sure. Unfortunately, it's both unfortunately, fortunate when
you look through the archive of an exhibition like this
, you don't get a sense, I couldn't get
a sense of what the exhibition looks like as a
whole. But I saw all sorts of stuff that
the people that went to visit the exhibit would have
never seen, which was really great. So,
all these questions, I'm not sure how much these
questions actually were able to be sort of manifest followed
through, but they're very interesting. Um, well
, consider why if the guy was Not biased,
why there were a few women in, it certainly
should be acknowledged that the big jump to membership after
1975 was spurred by feminist activism. The task force
, I guess there was a task force, gender
and architecture within the area. Um, very interesting
. This is part of the same letter, merely
illustrating their work seems to be insufficient. We need
critical design analysis will demonstrate what makes the work significant
. So, again, this is a question that's
not even a gendered one. But as we talk
about architecture and exemplary architecture, how do we measure
that? How do we talk about what is significant
, whose work is significant? What makes it significant
? What are the parameters of metrics that does that
work? Uh They were using? Um This is
a really interesting one I think. Just to think
about as a designer, um I would argue that
one parameter conclusion would be the availability of plan and
section drawings, photographs alone do not allow us to
see the building as an architectural design, but only
as images. So when we look at photographs,
she is arguing that we don't can actually see the
thinking that went behind the design act. That's the
plans and sections. We see what someone's thinking what
the design is actually about as a piece of intellectual
creative work. Um There's some largest juicy good stuff
and it's letters. And then this is the last
last one I photographs. This is by someone else
, um a male person. Which might be a
drastic. Um, so, so there's a couple
of things. So in the paragraph that starts off
with first, um, seems to me the exhibition
is to celebratory. I know that the area is
sponsoring it and obviously doesn't want to criticize itself.
It's still the issue of women and the difficulty they
have faced in professional architecture tends to be glossed over
. You must have my emphasizes, you must note
in no uncertain terms that the profession has been traditionally
male dominated and women have had a hard time.
But here's what something really interesting to go down to
the next paragraph. I think you should note that
women who are interested in architecture were frequently shoved off
into landscape architecture, interior design or decoration with terraces
, architectural history criticism, etcetera. This was written
in The late 1980s, early 1990s, and what
I think is really interesting is that I don't think
maybe I'm wrong, a lot of people would not
make that statement today that we may be, I'm
coming throughout this from being an academia and scholarship for
too long. We no longer consider landscape architecture and
interior architecture to be sub disciplines to be secondary to
architecture. They are, we've luckily gotten to a
point now where we say no, these are as
important, often more important than what architects do with
. So it's not that you can't make it,
an architecture seems to be a landscape architecture or someone
who does interior architecture. Um Obviously as a historian
, um I take great offense that architectural history is
also something that I'm being shoved off into. Um
so I think that that's an interesting perspective. So
I guess that I wanted to just sort of kind
of sum up they're saying, I think what if
the reason I brought all this up and just a
whole bunch of unanswered questions um is it be nice
to have a conversation about what are our, I
hate to say an hour kind of gender concerns and
aspirations, you know, it's one of them is
possible that we're just in empowering women to enter architecture
and to do so in a really full full way
so that we, you know, don't get stuck
with these steps um in the diagram. Um and
to do it in all possible guys is that there's
a lot of different ways that one can be in
architecture, you no one can be an architect,
landscape architect, what could teach, can theorize and
right, there's a lot of different ways, all
very valid to be in architecture. Um I guess
another maybe an aspiration is about giving validating women as
architects and giving them agency. Um And then I
think there's just questions about the full making of the
built environment and full participation in the profession, but
I think also very much questions about the making of
the built environment and how maybe that can be thought
of in a broader, more inclusive and more powerful
way. It's I don't. Mhm. So we
would like to now for questions what you're looking,
especially the speech that will continue the conversation. Yeah
. Okay. Green just I should I guess that
was the question addressed. It's such an interesting question
. So, you know, a person had this
really politically active life and then the work especially sort
of the kind of like you're saying the social relations
they're embedded in the work. Aren't that don't question
any normative survivors. And I wonder how much what
do you think it goes back to the full question
that Corey sets up about architecture in class. So
you don't know. Cory was an italian Marxist architectural
historian and he very famously talked about critiques of capital
and architecture and what he said, why I've always
understood is that it's impossible to have an architecture that
criticizes the critiques capital. You can only have an
architectural history of the critics capital because architects are inherently
based in capitalistic relations. You know, we have
clients, they pay us and that just so limits
what's possible to do that that's ever possible to how
radical and architecture can never be its architectural history.
You understand what you said the same one. Um
as he just wrote a paper comparing Colin Rowe and
Fury on the question, the whole paper wasn't about
that, partially about that can position um as a
sort of a way of framing the difference. The
fury ended. Mhm. The small book architecture in
Utopia by saying that architect should abandon all hopes in
design, which he italicized and put in quotations,
they should abandon design itself as a vehicle of class
struggle. And I've always seen Colin Rhodes um penultimate
chapter Color City, which ends with another italicized phrase
um Survival through Design. Where through is italicized as
some kind of response. And it was written a
year after furries book came out in english. So
I tend to favor Mhm. The idea that design
and ferro it was composition. For me, it's
um some combination of composition and the structural nature composition
in the way inscribes social relations in the plan.
Um And as you know, it's for me it's
Robin Evans is the other comrade in arms. Um
I don't know, maybe maybe I'm a little overly
optimistic about how much you can achieve in the,
in the reconfiguration of the plan of one particular building
. Um, because really typology and the general nature
of typical platforms is sort of overwhelming bathrooms, corridors
, uh, all the ways that architecture structures social
relations. Um, it happens on such a wide
scale that designed by one architect of one house doesn't
necessarily really challenge a type, a logical question.
But nonetheless, it it is a battleground on which
to address the nature of the psychological problem. Um
, so I think architects have a lot to say
when they about the inscription of politics in the plan
, when they designed. And I think, I
think Fury threw his hands in the air a little
too soon. But isn't he saying it's somewhat because
, I mean, you've got great examples like that
, the ship, the house and that's the house
that, you know, totally abandoned or rethinks the
house that we all know that rethinks those relations you
guys do. You're not, everyone might know it
Those of you are 4th. Yeah. Right.
Similar house. But what it does, it's a
house for it was a house for two couples.
Each of them had sort of a sleeping room,
but they basically came together. It was two couples
. It's got three arms because there's each one,
each couple has their own sort of arm and a
courtyard. And then there's a bar that connects them
in between and the bar has the kitchen at one
. And, and I guess it's the primary sort
of living space. And then it's just sort of
one big space in each arm, isn't it?
Sort of a kind of sleeping studio sort of space
with back. Right? And you're sharing they're sharing
kitchen area. Yeah. There's a great forests conversation
. Yeah. And it's in the middle of west
Hollywood. So it's not off backwards anywhere and you
guys can go see it. So you get next
time you're on the west Coast. Yeah. I
think it's free. It's not it's cost very little
. Um But but but yeah, so that's the
house that does it. But I'm just wondering like
was she limited by her clients? Well that's where
I should have got into the correspondence files because I
tried to judge it from the plans and when I
talk about the prison facility, she may have struggled
and fought with the clients over the particular way they
wanted to locate the the bathrooms. I have no
idea. And so I think that's something to explore
more in the archive. But I just read it
solely on the surface of projects as they were built
. And even if she had struggled by the time
the projects were built, there wasn't much evidence of
a struggle. So yeah, I'm just curious like
how much a struggle is there? Yeah. Thanks
, interesting to know. But it's also I think
interesting because it's never like one reason or cause being
with her so many layers overlapping a different scale spirit
city. So you have I was I was thinking
when you said how architecture structures were living and I
was wondering does it? And it's like, well
in some cases it does and in some cases it
tries to respond to whatever is in places that responding
to some cultural I want perspective. In other cases
it's trying to modified that and then there's a smaller
scale of the actual person on relationships with that particular
architect and that your client. So there's so many
layers that it's I think it's difficult to to think
of one reason because that will cover, okay all
cases. But I think that what's important is to
understand that question as they are. What are the
wanted for the parts that come together? The variables
come together that dictate. It's not remember this is
a related related and I have to kind of the
title of the book. It's here in the library
without that experience about that. Which one? Right
? Think the tail has something exciting. Was looking
a material inside and out. And I was going
through a really beautiful drawings and answer this page talks
about how, for example, as a family residents
should be cited a way that your neighbor will not
see the male with meeting his wife. What I
mean, This is what you were writing this book
and I was like, it's not that he's a
crazy man. It's like, I mean, it's
just like, it's part of a much larger culture
understanding or whatever is accepted at the time, But
how that thought would structure architecture, How would determine
how you cite your house on the top? What
would sort of, please to create some privacy?
Yeah. It's interesting the cultural fashion. I see
that as you're showing the bathrooms in the preschool.
Yeah. Um, and there's certainly culture moving from
California to Virginia, California. It's like, there's
, there's nothing written anywhere. And except the thing
is, you can take your, you can go
into a bathroom of the opposite sex Until at least
age five May at the age of six Virginia.
There's rules, there's laws and it's like aged four
. But um, so, I mean my consume
in preschool just finished preschool, they always, they
have the kids going back together and it's very much
like help each other audio track because they do it
together. It's only in only now in first grade
that my daughter seems sex separated bathrooms. So yeah
, it's very much a cultural break. Yeah.
I always take the bathrooms that's really the last stand
. Uh, in terms of the inscription of social
forces in the plan, it's um, I mean
, for example, in our houses, we don't
tend to have male and female bathroom. Yet in
our institutional buildings, we feel we must I find
that a very powerful and persistent think how can we
have acknowledged the domestic space? There's no, there's
no reason to distinguish. And then in the school
building, one must distinguish too. So I also
started to think looking at these plans even of the
way having an on suite bathroom was a privilege of
adulthood and as a child, you and your sibling
, I have to share a small bathroom on the
corridor. And then at some point, maybe you
will be privileged enough to have an unsweetened have that
private space. So the increased privacy is something you
it's almost a reward for adulthood. And these are
subtle ways in which we inscribe privacy. Ideas about
privacy into architecture and also about stats. The privilege
of sweet is totally about stats and calling it the
master bedroom still. Yes. Yeah. And the
sleep. Uh huh. But I think that going
back to that original question that we're asking, I
think again, rather than deciding to be imposed on
doing this bond on how is it? It's just
understand that that we could about. Yeah. And
I give you how we practice architecture that reality.
Yeah. We are structuring, being structured right,
determine yeah, relationships and more so. I think
it's a interesting how important That's very interesting about domestic
. That's our country is going to and it's Mhm
. It's very interesting. He was. And if
you start to look at these things lots and lots
going on with that foods people. Nice studio.
We should have had joseph come talk to us less
sinister, interesting like that. I don't know course
, knowing that you should. Right. It's a
dancing. It's the future garage residents check. Yeah
. A garage. I think so. I promise
not to say yeah. As much as we have
so. Mhm. Yes. She won't art studio
at she answer this. Working on the special could
have used swiss based. Mhm. Uh huh.
Uh huh. Because it's a gigabyte this book.
I still hear the entire film. I think it's
wrong. Dance, Dancing, Future Era. All
right. You too. Yes, sure. I'm
told you do. Yes. Thanks. You could
tell it was coming. Yeah. Yeah. And
I think it's like it's really quite a few that
it raises the question. What what was that?
I think the structure of living this fact or was
it customer at that time In the 60s to have
dancing group? I don't know. I'm looking also
at the plant that they use life in the house
and when you look at how they label the spaces
there space for sitting. Mhm. That's it.
That's the activity that's been nowadays. Six. So
I wonder if it's something of that nature. Um
A lot of our projects are in, if I'm
pronouncing this correctly. Oh Jack. Okay. Where
she lived all her life and hosted all of this
salons with ex blacklisted people returning and all living together
in the same village and many of these projects and
residencies in that location. And it seems to be
progressive almost hippie called community. Just a lot of
meditation retreat projects, a lot of projects to do
with care and healing. Um but yet nonetheless,
even in what I imagine to be a very progressive
liberal community, the architecture residences are still, in
my view, expressions of individuals, I guess that
probably speaks to how liberalism progressive liberalism is, you
know, is quite open to individuals and she probably
turned away from, I think communism in the 40s
was something that a lot of people were enthusiastic about
. They didn't know anything about what Stalin was doing
And a lot of people left the party in the
mid 50s. And so I'm a bit unsure about
the degree to which she was really strongly communist affiliation
. Do you know anything about after the paris?
If she was, She said they left the party
in 56 before they went to Paris, although they
could have returned to the States if they have written
a letter denouncing them denouncing themselves, are saying apologizing
and saying they have no affiliation, no connection of
desire to and they refused to write those letters.
So that shows some fidelity with earlier Political Views in
the 14th. Um but everything she describes in terms
of organizing this forum for discussing politics and the way
she describes the relationship, architecture and social structure.
She doesn't talk about that anymore after her exile and
return. So, so all of the architecture is
built probably in the period when her politics has softened
a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I've only
been researching looking into her life for a weeks.
Not an expert. I think that I mean,
I think it's fascinating just to hear these stories and
to see how uh huh being as we're seeing the
archive is actually big. I mean, sometimes it
feels small and think of how many women I've been
practicing any in any possible way in all possible ways
. Ah So 400 150 election. See small number
. Right. But it's still a big a big
resource and a very wonderful resource. That's just nice
to see how we can set your roots and you
come out finding range of questions and right bits and
pieces of information th this part. No, sir
, to your house. And that that's what is
needed in order to Yeah. Too. Right.
Yes. As many a lot of the histories about
, wow. Yeah. So what's needed is this
these journeys into the archives to find? All right
. What? That's crazy. Yes. Okay.
one more thing perhaps about the because it's for comfort
and the woman who started the fight talk, You
can see the number of 400 business solution. Of
course. Sometimes, particularly if you say it's an
apartheid seeking of almost all of whatever that number is
paul. But one thing that the bylaws of the
it's just that this archive of many. Mhm.
one thing it would be is a repository, hearing
, health for connections and to the best guard doing
this. A clearing house. A link to other
articles. In other words, all the work someplace
else. But it's interesting about the nature what both
don't have to be certified. Yeah. See.
Yes. Hi concluded. Yeah. But also that
it has punk to us in many ways, for
instance our team okay house or just who made several
buildings eastern part of the state at least by.
So that's a precio board advisor on our board sleeping
market. It's about the big here in the when
the question is going out if you know something.
So Mark. And then he remembers yes. Famous
circle rest now that's yeah. I just wonder it's
worthwhile to save where kids. So the collection is
built up. We don't have all the Sure well
it's something people watch. It's in a way of
election. I wouldn't say that of course because.
Mhm. So one of the first board advisors was
the archivist of media. The idea except for history
dispersed. It's well that was you and saw one
. Yeah it's collect once on a woman who saw
herself right. Writer of histories and he made this
a saturday collecting obviously see so he could visit medical
stores and himself before I think so it's this very
steve election that this is No we have for example
what you're going through the stalling. I saw that
this brochure was there and I was surprised that postcard
that I put Uh huh. Art Museum in Cincinnati
. That Russ they sold inside. Thank you.
So it's really important collection. Those per se.
Yeah, don't like the idea much. We have
. Just first you see that a collection should be
place a long time. So if you go for
the archive of that person spending True, it's most
effective problem. But I think I'm not the other
position. Maybe not too like chopped me. Mhm
. Oh but I think there is something rather about
public. A few pieces. Yeah, because it's
so surprising you're right. Just four. It's cool
. I don't any other bi curious. Yes.
If you dig hard enough maybe you find but if
the field is generous, there are some Yeah.
So long as long as the different holders of somebody's
archive or no, each other and where the work
is. As long as it's in the knowledge base
, it's fine. Does't have to be placed.
Aldo Rossi's archives split up between six different locations.
Just as a quirk of history. That's what Rossi
scholars now have to deal with. Fly between Rome
Canada various other places, but they all know that
you can still search the entire Iraqi collection. And
also, I mean something I'm thinking about and then
comes to my own research. There's just a privilege
of even having an archive, but it also has
an archive. What I dealt with with so much
of my dissertation research is finding some sort of archive
. There are these buildings are these interesting things.
These buildings are Cape Town trying to find, there's
no archive, you know, and some of them
, you know, the closest thing to an archive
, which was like a gold mine would be a
project file from someone's office that they let me just
go through and scan anything I wanted. But there's
no arc because there, that's still where archiving is
sort of a active privilege to say that someone is
significant enough or they recognize or someone else recognizes on
the signal enough that they want to put all their
stuff together and keep it in some place some way
. So I think that's part of it. Also
, I think that's probably maybe one of the things
that's really interesting and strategic about such a dispersed archive
. Is that, yeah, someone doesn't have to
have a whole collection Once all day with five buildings
gets put together and then you have a whole bunch
of people with just one in five buildings that starts
to mean something together as I understand it. Alison
Smithson's archive is still sitting in the shed at the
bottom of the garden, so you should try and
snap that one, wow. And I was wondering
if okay, Yeah. How it's still shit.
Um, Their family home in a shed, in
the government. The only way you can get access
to it is to contact the family, go visit
the matter. Very easy to see it, wow
. Should really be some so second kind of hers
and vince are just, they're together yeah. Together
. So the only thing that I things have to
be careful, I can get it to thank you
so much. Thank you for you.