March 11, 2015 • 46 mins
Are men better at designing buildings? Cristen and Caroline explore this question the has perplexed the architecture industry since Louise Bethune became America's first female architect in the 1870s.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from how stup
Works not Come. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And the theme for this week
is if she builds It? Because on Monday we talked
about women in construction actually on the site building the buildings,
(00:25):
and we trotted out lots of dismal statistics. So today
we're going to talk about women designing the buildings, women
in architecture, and things get a little better. Yeah, I
mean things, things are not as bad in in architecture,
although they're still certainly not glowing. What I found interesting
in researching this episode was how hyper aware people in
(00:49):
the industry are of the issues that women face and
the issue of not having enough women in the field. Um,
that doesn't mean that people are necessarily doing anything about it,
but I appreciate that people are hyper aware and are
drawing attention to it. As opposed to construction, we're basically
(01:09):
women are the only ones talking about women. Yeah. Well,
and when it comes to architecture too, there's also seems
like there's been this constant focus just in general, of
gender when looking at a building and at public spaces
because a lot of times, these giant monuments and skyscrapers
(01:31):
are considered very masculine, phallic, masculine, phallic, very phallic. Yes,
the Washington Monument is like a giant penis in the
middle of Washington, d C. It's true. So if we
go though to the very beginning of the history women
in architecture, focusing in on the United States, they had
(01:55):
to fight this idea that women couldn't supervise construction. And
we're addressed at the same time, which does kind of
hearken to our construction episode two. It's it's like, Wow,
this is no place for a woman and her dresses
and shoes transgressing all over the place. Basically, you know,
if you're you're if you're a woman, you're too feminine
(02:18):
to be an architect, But if you're an architect, you're
too masculine to be a woman. That's there's all sorts
of weird dynamics going on about expectations and norms, but
we do have lots of rad ladies to talk about.
We do, starting back in eighteen seventy three with Mary L. Page,
she was the first woman to earn an actual architecture degree.
(02:39):
Way to go, Mary, Yeah, that was at the University
of Illinois Urbana Champagne, so a way to go University
of Illinois. But the real first woman not to just
get her architecture degree but actually build buildings in the
United States is Louise Bethoon, who was born in eighteen
fifty six in Waterloo, New York. And as the story goes,
(03:00):
a family friend once sarcastically joked to Louise, you know
you should do Louise, you should be an architecture or something.
And Louise was like, huh, I actually like the sound
of that. I think I'll I think I'll do just
that and do what she did? Did? I love that story.
Just twenty years old, she became a draftsman at the
(03:20):
Buffalo office of Richard A. Waite and F. W. Cockins.
And at the time you might think, like Buffalo, what's
up with Buffalo? Well, it turns out Buffalo was an
architectural hotbed at the turn of the century, and it
attracted big names like Henry Hobson, Richardson, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham,
and Frederick law Own instead he of the Garden Fame,
Oh yes, well in one but when founded her own
(03:45):
architectural firm with her would be husband. And also that's
another theme. We'll see a lot lots of husband wife
teams in architecture. And so she becomes, by virtue of that,
the first woman to start her own architecture for and
here's a great thing about Louise, she had no time
for the gender wage gap. In she refused to put
(04:09):
in a bid to design the women's building for the
Chicago's World Columbia Exposition because female architects would only make
a thousand dollars. They had a thousand dollars to give,
and that was it compared to the minimum ten thousand
dollars that male architects were going to be paid in
addition to other fees that they would also collect just
(04:30):
for their designs for the World Columbia Exposition. So she
was like, you know what, No, I'm not gonna Why
would I do that. I'm worth more than that. It
cost a lot to maintain a penis um. But the
the designer of that building was Sophia Hayden Bennett. She
was the first woman to receive an architecture degree from
m I T in eighteen ninety, but she ended up
(04:53):
getting really sort of pushed around by jerkish male architects,
came down with so called brain her, was sent to
a sanitarium and never designed another building. And in fact,
the men around her sited her reaction to all of
this as evidence that women weren't cut out for this work. Yeah,
Sofia Hayden Bennett is is a sad story to pick
(05:16):
things off. Yeah, sorry, a cautionary tale of of going
for that lower that lower women's wage. Um. But going
back though, to Louise Bathoon. She was also a founding
member of the Women's Wheel and Athletic Club because yes,
she also thought that bicycles were awesome for female emancipation.
(05:36):
Well yeah, but she also rode in groups with fellow
lady cyclists, sort of critical mass style, in order to
provide protection, you know, safety in numbers. They're not going
to harass us as badly if there's a whole bunch
of cycling ladies together. So, in other words, Louise Bathuon
was one progressive galpel Yeah, we like her, we like
her a lot. Uh five. With the lobbying assistance of
(05:59):
Dan Neal Burnham and Lewis Sullivan, be Thun became the
first woman admitted to the Western Association of Architects, and
this makes her a recognized professional architect, and a few
years later she becomes the first woman admitted to become
a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Now, her
architecture wasn't particularly innovative. It often focused on utilitarian, simple structures.
(06:24):
She built schools, public buildings, things like that. But still
standing in Buffalo is Hotel Lafayette. That is considered her
greatest work, and it is a lovely structure. But I mean,
she wasn't she wasn't wowing people with these crazy new designs.
But still she was the first woman and she was
actually building buildings, which is pretty cool. But the second
(06:45):
name we got to talk about is really the first
big name for women in architecture, and Julie Morgan is
a pretty incredible figure. Yeah, Julie Morgan grew up being
really good at math and it helped. She had a
mother who encouraged her instead of telling her to get
back in the kitchen. She ended up going to engineering
(07:05):
school at Berkeley in eight ninety and with the help
of a mentoring technical drawing professor and a couple of
influential friends, she decided to pursue architecture after graduation, and
she went straight for the best. She went to Paris
et de Boza in eighteen nine six, where she ended
up taking three entrance exams. Why three? Okay? So she
(07:31):
failed the first two times, which might have been influenced,
she later found out by professors who were not really
interested in letting the first mademoiselle into their hallowed halls.
And she didn't let that deter her though. She went
for the third try, and in a letter home, she wrote,
I'll try again next time anyway, even without any expectations,
(07:53):
just to show the June field are not discouraged. Pardon
my poor French. I think that meant she like, girls
are not to be messed with. That's exactly what she meant,
and her efforts paid off. She was the first woman
to graduate from the Paris School and was the first
woman to be licensed as an architect in California. And
(08:13):
the thing is, Caroline, I really like the fact that, hey,
it took three times to get into this, and there
was also a ticking clock because they cut off admission
at thirty years old and she was twenty nine. Had to,
you know, pass this exam also had to get all
these points by working on certain buildings, and she did
(08:36):
all of it by the time she was thirty. But
it's I don't know, I feel like it's a nice
lesson of Hey, you know what, when even when you're trailblazing,
you don't always make it the first time, and that's okay, Yeah,
try to try again. And she eventually opened her own firm.
Her first boss was rumored to relish in her cheap
labor as a woman, so it's good that she went
her own way. But at that firm, she provided mentorship
(08:58):
and training for both in and women, and every member
of the firm was able to participate in a profit
sharing plan. And what's so great about her focus on mentorship,
which you know Kristen and I hammer home in our episodes.
A lot her apprentices when they left her from under
her wing, were known for their thorough training, so it
was known that she was not only a smart cookie,
(09:20):
but that she was able to really provide an excellent
training ground for her apprentices. And after she went independent
between n and nineteen thirty nine, she worked tirelessly on
what is her most famous building, which is the Hearst Castle,
built for William Randolph Hearst, and it's this massive complex
(09:43):
in California, and she was often working eighteen hour days quote,
subsisting on coffee and chocolate bars. Sounds like an ulcer. Yeah. Um,
And I mean this Google image seriously, the Hearst Castle,
because I cannot explain to you. I mean, I probably
could explain to you were footage wise, but I don't
have the stats in front of me. But it is massive.
(10:03):
It is so huge. Can I talk to any more
about how big? It is? Clear I should get a
job at the Architectural Review. Well, so you might think, okay,
well that's a really long time nine working on the
Hers Castle, working eighteen nowadays, surely she didn't have time
to do anything else. That was her one contribution. Nay, No,
(10:24):
she designed more than seven hundred structures. Part of this,
and part of the lives of many women in the
architectural field, is that she never had any kids. She
didn't have a family life that she was taking up
part of her time. Her entire life was dedicated to architecture,
and she really didn't mind. She said that her buildings
(10:46):
would be her legacy. And I mean, and what a
legacy to leave behind seven hundred plus structures and and
too while she was working on that hers castle, she
would have to take all of these train rides followed
by car rides out to this, uh, this massive expanse
while she would still be working on other projects. She
was the queen of multitasking. It seems like. Yeah, there
(11:08):
was one male architect colleague of hers who said he
went down there to the hurt, the site of the
Hearst Castle building, just to check it out, and they
worked all day. She was like, yeah, I watched her
work all day. We got back on the train and
I skipped work the next day because I was exhausted.
She went right back into work. Julie Morgan never slept well.
Then she was finally awarded the American Institute of Architects
(11:31):
Gold Medal in two thousand fourteen, a little bit after
her time. Yeah, to which some of the people said, oh,
that's great. Yeah, Julie Morgan absolutely deserves his honor. But
it's two thousand fourteen polling on. But this also is
indicative of how the architecture industry is playing catch up
(11:52):
in terms of recognizing women's contributions. But it's we've also
got to look at the context for sure of the
era in which more in and between we're working by
there were only forty practicing female architects in the United States,
and our first licensed architect was a woman by the
name of Marian Mahoney Griffin. Yeah, in, Alice Hands and
(12:16):
Mary Gannon formed the first female architectural partnership. This is
just kind of a side note, but I thought it
was really interesting that they, you know, had this first.
But also they were really focused on social justice and
building affordable housing, particularly for working women at the time.
So interesting to see what kinds of buildings women want
(12:38):
to focus on, even back then at the turn of
the century. And that same year, Marion Mahoney Griffin becomes
the second woman to graduate in architecture from M I
t remember that the first female graduate was Sophia Hayden Bennett,
the one who came down with brain fever. But Mahony
Griffin was hired my gentleman named Frank Floyd Right, It
(13:00):
was actually his first hire, and her renderings of his
designs a helped hone the Prairie School style and be
popularized rights work. In other words, Marian Mahoney Griffin was
instrumental to the fact that we all know and recognized
Frank Lloyd Right's work today. Yeah, and just three years
after Right hired her, Griffin became the first. That's when
(13:23):
she became the first licensed female architect in the US.
And to round out our lists of architectural trailbazers, we've
got to talk about Norma Merrick Scaleric, who graduated from
Columbia University and architecture, one of two women, by the way,
in her class. But she had a hard time finding
a job because she was black and female. Yeah, she
(13:47):
said that she didn't know when she didn't get the
job she failed a job interview if which one was
working against her more um. But despite all this, in
nineteen fifty four, she became the first black woman to
earn an architect's license. In nineteen fifty nine, she became
the first black woman member of the American Institute of Architects,
and in nineteen eighty became the first black woman elected
(14:08):
as a Fellow of the ai A. So, while Scleric
was working at a firm in Los Angeles, so she
didn't design many of the projects she supervised, even though
she was perfectly capable to do so simply because at
that time clients apparently would have balked at seeing a
black woman designing their projects. So I mean, she's an
(14:30):
example of just continually having to fight essentially racism throughout
her career. Although in nineteen eighty five she becomes a
founding partner of Seagulls, s Cleric and Diamond, one of
the largest all women architectural firms in the United States,
but it lasted only she lasted only four years there
(14:51):
because it really didn't attract big scale projects that she
liked to take on. Yeah, and then in she retired,
and she's really remembered for mainly for the terminal one
at the Los Angeles Airport at l A X and
the American Embassy in Tokyo. And we figured too, we
should highlight a few more influential female architects of the
(15:15):
twentieth century that are important to know, because for me,
at least, it was really instructive just to see the
range of architectural styles and the kinds of movements that
women were influencing at the time. So Mary Jane Coulter,
for instance, developed the National Park Service Rustic Style a
(15:37):
k A architecture. She designed a series of buildings at
the Grand Canyon, for instance, and throughout the American Southwest.
And her work was really flourishing um around from around
nineteen o five through the nineteen thirties. So that's something
I mean, it's a very particular style that a lot
of us would recognize if we've been to a national park. Yeah.
(15:59):
And then Ellen or Raymond in worked with m I
T scientists and solar power researcher Maria Telkis to construct
the Dover Houses in Dover, Massachusetts, and these were the
first occupied solar heated homes in the United States. Look
how far we've Oh no, wait, we haven't come very
far in terms of solar houses. We're trying, we are,
(16:19):
some of us are trying. We need to summon the
spirit of eleanor Raymond back. Perhaps. There's also Hilda Reese
who's an architect, designer and curator who helped bring Bow
House esthetic state side, especially after that school was shut
down during World War Two. There's Eileen Gray and her
iconic house E ten seven, who is a pioneer of modernism. Yeah.
(16:44):
She built the house with input from her lover and
actually the letter the name of the house eight seven
represents letters in their names that after she and her
lever Jeans split up, this guy who's known as La
Corbusier came to stay at the house and he ended
up defiling it by painting murals all over the place,
and the house has since fallen into disrepair. Yeah, look,
(17:07):
corbuc A, what would you do such a thing. He's
a jerk who probably didn't like women being all up
in architecture. And then there's Leno Bobardi who was born
in Italy, but most of her work has been in Brazil.
She's a modernist architect who has been known for these
large public buildings that she's done, such as the S E.
S C. Pompeia Cultural Center, which kind of exemplifies how
(17:32):
she approaches has approached spaces, trying to take sort of
the human element into it as well. Um She once said,
quote the spirit of modern architecture is unwavering and shaped
by a love of humanity, which some people would probably
say hints at more of a feminine design aesthetic. Yeah,
(17:53):
I mean, when you you it's it's hard to read
anything about architecture, especially women in architecture, and not come
across the view whether it's held by the writer or
just reported on by the writer, that women do things
this way, men do things this way, and that women
are very social minded, they're very uh, we're carrying and
(18:14):
we're nurturing, and so we want to design curvy shapes
that are all focused on bringing people together, whereas men
are just designing you know, glass and steel penises, lots
of lots of phallic buildings. So in the first half
of the podcast, we trotted through some of the trailblazing
names of women in architecture who have been building buildings
(18:35):
for the past century or so. And now we're going
to get a little intellectual for a minute. We're gonna
move away from the actual structures and talk about more
I guess of brain structure, this question of whether men
and women design buildings differently, because the longstanding answer has
been yeah, I mean, of course, because there are biological
(18:59):
arguments against women's just basic capacity for architecture, beginning with
our mere physicality. Yeah. Just like when women first started
entering the field, people were like, oh, you're too feminine, Nah,
how are you going to do anything as masculine as
I have an idea um, people are still questioning women's
(19:20):
physical strength, and so at the turn of the century,
people were arguing that architects need a strong athletic body,
and that was considered impossible for a woman to possess
without transgendering herself in the process. Yeah, this is coming
from paper architects in skirts, the public image of women
architects in Wilheim, Germany, and there was lots of concern
(19:44):
at this time over women in particular having vertigo, likely
in conjunction with ideas about hysteria. Um so, for instance,
on building sites there was just this presumed female propensity
for disease else So it's like women should have nothing
to do with us because first of all, our uterus
is gonna be going a little a little out of
(20:06):
whack that promotes vertigo. So if we're building a building,
we will fall to our death at some point. Well
this well, yeah, I mean, and the whole concern over
strength and ability and whatever. I mean, it's the same
stuff that we talked about in our construction episode, where
people are so concerned about women being too small and
weak to lift things, when in reality the stuff that
(20:27):
you do on the job site is so rarely about
brute strength and more about just being smart and safe
and quick witted honestly. Yeah. Well, there's also some interesting
class panic too that ties in. And it also is
an interesting parallel with our conversation about women in construction,
because when it comes to architecture and design, this was
considered an appropriate field for a middle or upper class
(20:52):
woman to pursue because it requires more education. They might
have the funding to be able to go to college,
but at the same time they were still caught in
this gendered catch twenty two because these wealthier women who
would have had the most access to college were considered
too soft and frail for architecture because their money and
lifestyle and luxury made them soft as opposed to the sturdy,
(21:17):
working class woman who might have had the braun but
not the financial access to architecture. So we're so screwed. Yeah,
I mean, basically, if a woman had a feminine body,
she was inherently considered unfit to be an architect. But
if a woman was an architect, then she inherently couldn't
be feminine at the same time. Yeah, Plus, we were
(21:38):
wearing all sorts of crazy clothes that were totally a
liability on construction sites, and so you have somebody like
Margaret pick who at the turn of the century recommended
loose reform trousers, which just sounds to me like stretchy pants,
although my stretchy pants would not be safe on a
construction site anyway. She also recommends high boots and a
stock almost to the ankles, as painters and stone may
(22:00):
since where so it's like, okay, if you have a
bifurcated garment, just cover that stuff up, yes again, and
get the smock. I mean, I mean, I will say
that that does sound a lot like what I wear
in the winter boots, trousers and a drapey shirt. Um.
We also found a source gender studies and architecture space
Power and Difference by Dorta Coleman, that really gets into
(22:25):
the sort of the historical outline of how women supposedly
see spaces differently from gentlemen. So, for instance, Coleman sites
Henry Atherton Frost, who in nineteen fifteen founded the first
architectural school intended exclusively for women, the Cambridge School of
(22:46):
Architecture and Landscape Architecture. So that's a great thing, but
at the same time Frost definitely thought that there was
a sex difference in design, noting how women are drawn
to housing developments instead of individ dual homes because we're
all about community and socialization, right, Yes, so, not so
much aesthetics, more about the social function of things like
(23:09):
community facilities that we really supposedly have an interest and
a focus on social and human interests. And not that
there's anything wrong with that, it's just that women have
historically been pigeonholed. Is just like, oh, they're just They're
only going to build like a school, whereas I'm going
to build like a powerful uh a space school school
(23:32):
and space. Beat that lady. It's it's so tall and
felt like that it is going to reach to space.
You can also at this point make a drinking game
for the number of times we say phallic in this podcast.
Um but that that sentiment, though, is still echoed in
Yes dated but A nine survey by Progressive Architecture found
that forty of both male and female architects believed there
(23:57):
was a difference between the designs of men and women,
and they said women are best at designing buildings again
for home, healthcare and school sounds very familiar, and men
are the best at building representative and commercial architecture, which
I mean that just sounds like our you know, separate
spheres period. Yeah, exactly. And you know a lot of
(24:17):
this comes down to arguments about our visual spatial skills.
This is stuff we talked about in our episode on Legos.
We talked about this in our interview with the Goldie
Blocks founder. So it's the idea that you know, boys
can go outside and roam and learn about how buildings
are built and develop those visual space visual spatial skills,
I got it, whereas girls are much better at things
(24:39):
like language skills. But the whole thing is that we
don't ever doubt that boys can eventually develop those language
and writing skills, but we somehow doubt that girls can
ever catch up with visual spatial skills that boys are
supposedly better at. Yeah, and this leads us to a
lot of analysis and scholarship in the seventies and eighties,
(25:03):
in particular on architecture and feminism. There actually is something
called feminist geography and feminist architecture, which is exploring how
he's sort of trying to separate what is a biological
sex difference from just our gender roles, kind of getting
in the way of what we think people can and
(25:23):
can't do. And I mean, it really does get interesting
when you think about public space, private space, the domestic sphere,
the public sphere, and what men and women build and
how they build it. Um. There's definitely a lot of
feminist ideology that can go into analyzing all of that,
(25:45):
and we we honestly don't even have time to get
into it. Um. But in the book Design and Feminism
Revisioning Spaces, Places and Things, it sites the article emphasizing
how female design principles are quote more user friendly than
than design oriented, more flexible than fixed, more organically ordered
(26:06):
than abstractly systematized, more holistic than specialized, more complex than
one dimensional. And again it asked the question of whether
this is a result of the dominance of male design principles,
because that's the thing that comes up a lot too.
It's like, well, I mean, is this just an issue
two of women being forced to conform their feminine design
(26:31):
aesthetics to an overwhelming male design paradigm. Yeah, I mean,
christ is right, there's so much, potentially so much that
we could talk about with just with these issues about feminism,
but also men and women seeing things differently. Whether that's
ingrained or nature versus nurture. It makes it has made
me look outside a little bit differently though, pay attention
(26:53):
to buildings a little bit more closely. Obviously I can't,
you know, immediately look out and identify, oh well that
I know the our chitectually build that. But when you
start looking to at for images of all of these
buildings and spaces of the women we have sided and
will cite what we're going to talk about more contemporary
female architects in just a minute, when you look at
(27:13):
the buildings they build from my untrained I I don't see,
oh well, of course that's a lady building and shaped
like a tampon. That's not phallic, that's the tampon, you know.
Like so it does get kind of the philosophical aspect
of it gets really interesting, and unfortunately we can't indulge
(27:34):
it too much in the podcast because it could be
a spiral. Because when you look at Julie Morgan, who
did the Hearst Castle on that giant compound, I mean
you could you could talk about how, okay, well she
designed something for a man, so she compromised her feminist
or her female or feminine vision or no she's such
a great architect that she can design for anyone. Or no,
maybe it was masculine because it was her vision. Like,
(27:56):
h you know, it's yes, we need to talk about
when then in architecture and where we've been, where we're going,
where we are now. But it's almost like you kind
of just want to shout, like, let people do their
own designs, build y'all buildings. Echoes of the fountain head
reverberating through UM. The industry though, let's talk about the
(28:17):
industry today because it could use some renovation, And like
you mentioned earlier, Caroline, there's a lot of awareness of
this issue of this gender gap in architecture, but a
lot of head scratching about well, how do we even
fix this? Doesn't even really need fixing because women earned
(28:39):
half of all us undergrad degrees in architecture but only
make up twenty of all licensed practitioners, so that's a
big drop off of what's going on there. Yeah, I
mean there's a lot of theories that's the same same
stuff that we've talked about in any of our STEM
episodes or that we talked about in our Construction episode. UM,
(29:00):
but a lot of those theories revolve around childcare, around money,
around sexual harassment and discrimination and things of that nature.
And there was this op ed by Maria Smith in
Architectural Review that points out that the question isn't really
that simple. It's not black and white, and it boils
(29:22):
down to a kind of a variety of answers, and
in terms of the job being not as creatively fulfilling
as many people, both men and women expected to be,
the fact that the education, the architecture education itself prepare
students poorly for the actual work. So basically saying, you know,
like our women not going to put up with a
(29:45):
job not being as creative as they expected or not
doing the work that they expected, whereas men are gonna
just deal with it and plow through until eventually there's
some like big name starchitect. Yeah. I mean, Maria Smith
definitely seemed unsatisfied with a lot of the go to
answers for the question of why that drop off from
(30:07):
to And I mean she highly's the fact that, yeah,
there is awareness. She cited a women in Architecture survey
which found that of women and see of men said
that the profession is too heavily male, but it's still
it seems like every article that we read about this
(30:27):
kind of answered some questions but also raised more questions. Um,
the issue of not so friendly female work environments has
been pretty firmly established. There is often echoed to this
traditionally macho culture pandering to so called starchitects, and then
this dismissal of supposedly feminine design values and being like,
(30:50):
oh no, stay away, stay away, dampon buildings. Yeah, all
the curves in those champons. Um. But also there's this
intensive education track. You know, we just mentioned education, but
the intense track means that you often are licensed until
you're late twenties, and so that's bumping up against women
being you know, ready to have kids or get married. Yeah,
(31:11):
and I think that even getting it by the late
twenties is ambitious. I want to say that one statistics
that on average you're getting it at age thirty four,
which is right, especially for women today. That is prime
child having time. If that's in your if that's something
you want to do. Yeah, but I mean talking about
(31:33):
men versus women leaving the field. A survey that was
cited in Gender Studies and Architecture, Space, Power and Difference
found that None of the guys in the survey cited
as problems the long hours, the gender related discrimination, healthcare needs, deadlines,
or needing to spend more time with family as why
they left. They were simply no longer interested, or they
(31:54):
just wanted to make more money. Let's talk about money
for a second. There are some not so favorable employment statistics.
For instance, if you look at the top tier architects,
the people who are heading up firms as of two
thousand eleven, at least only seventeen of principles and partners
at architecture firms where women in the top five firms
(32:16):
in the US are all pretty much male dominated. And
there's also a pretty consistent wage gap in firms and
also as sole practitioners, women consistently earned anywhere from seven
to seventeen percent less than men. But again, men are
consistently likelier to ask for more money at every performance review,
which kind of echoes back to the fact that they
(32:39):
might be likelier to leave because they're like, hey, I
just want more money. And you also have to take
an account that twice as many female architects are unemployed
today compared to men. Yeah, I mean, this is something architecture.
I'm sure has been recovering since then. But during the recession,
people in architecture were out of a lot of jobs
(33:00):
and it seemed to hit women disproportionately compared to women.
Although where does it seem best, at least statistically for
female architects who have the most jobs Scandinavian women, because
in pretty much every like quality of life measurement, Scandinavia
always rules when it comes to women. Yeah, it's yeah,
(33:23):
gender inequality. What gender that? Um. But you know, let's
look at the education and mentorship aspect of things. You know,
we talked about mentorship a lot on the podcast. UM,
but there was a study on architectural training in Germany,
the US, and Canada that found there were very few
female professors of design. They were more commonly found in
(33:43):
architectural history and environmental psychology. And so this raises the
question of whether architectural education promotes a male dominated practical model. Thus,
you know, sort of mitigating these supposed sex differences in
the final design, whether you're a man or a woman,
if you have someone who is male training you, you
might adopt their outlook. Basically. Yeah, in gender studies and architecture,
(34:09):
cited a couple of women in architecture who think that, Yeah,
that's absolutely the case. Jane Park, for instance, said, quote,
architects who are women and or come from a working
class background have to acquire an outlook similar to that
of middle class males, the dominant group in the architectural profession.
This is why we shouldn't expect buildings designed by women
(34:30):
to have any qualities distinct from those designed by men. Yeah.
And Janice gold Frank also agrees, but notes the differences.
She says, my own impression is that men and women
designed differently, their approaches to design reflecting their upbringing and
life experiences. Women often emphasize feelings of well being and
harmony in a building rather than a structure's visual impact.
(34:50):
These differences are not drastic, however, as women building and
designing today have learned their trade from men. So I
mean again, though it seems like with that I shotion
of doy designed differently, the answer always wants to be yes,
which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but just some architectural
(35:11):
food for thought. And really, I'm so curious to hear
from any architects or students of architecture, just people who
are familiar with architecture to weigh in on this. But
when it comes so to so few women being at
the top, that means, of course, it's less likely for
female up and comers to get mentored by other women
(35:34):
at the top. And we haven't even mentioned motherhood, childcare.
This is a big issue, yeah, and this whole yeah,
the issue of leaving to become a mother or once
you've become a mother. And Alison Brooks, who's the director
of Alison Brooks Architects, says that cost of childcare is
the number one reason that women leave. And Jessica Reynolds,
(35:54):
the direct a director at VPPR, says, you know, it's
not an accident that many well known female architects are childless,
just like Julie Morgan who said, you know what, no kids,
that's fine, My buildings will be my legacy. Yeah. Well,
and I think this ties into Architects Journal survey where
in percent of women respondents said that they felt like
(36:16):
having kids would hold their careers back, but interestingly, of
male respondence to the same survey didn't think that women
having kids would affect their careers. Women's careers, it's interesting
that men have that different perception that like, why would
you think that? Well this, Well, one thing that was
noted to in terms of the culture of firms and
(36:39):
when people leave, is that there's a distrust of people
leaving and then wanting to come back. It's like, no,
once you're gone, just go. That's so strange. Probably, well,
the I mean think about all of the time invests
in the same way. I don't know. It seems even
more intense almost than law, which is a ton of
(36:59):
hours every week. You're always buried in work, but it
seems like there's at least more room to come and
go with that, whereas architecture seems even more rigid. Well,
that's another thing that I help our listeners tell us
about because I am curious about that. Yes, in dynamic
for listeners who aren't to wear Caroline and I are
not architects, although when I was twelve, I did want
(37:20):
to become one, and I drew a number of really
boring houses until I realized, you know what, Kristen, I
don't think this is your strength. I'm sure you had
all the important elements, Kristen, the sun in the corner
at the box, the triangle, the triangle, roof, the rectangle chimney.
There were flowers outside, and I had and I can
(37:41):
still remember it so clearly. I had a cool card
again that I would wear while drawing my little architectural plans.
But I felt like kind of tied the whole thing together.
I'm sure it did. Yeah, I'm sure I was. At
the time, I was wearing my red stegosaurus sweatshirt that
how a picture of a stegosaurus with the words stegosaurus
(38:01):
under it. Butting archaeologists over here and they're kidding. Yeah,
I like neither one of us. We didn't ben here
we are and here we are those who those who
can't do podcasts, Oh, which man out. But so let's
let's talk about women who are doing things outside of
the podcast studio today. There are plenty of interesting names.
(38:23):
But again, you know, Chris and I were not architects,
and we don't know everyone in the field. But we
can provide a few names of women who are out
there kicking. But there's Zahahadd who is probably the best
known female architect living today. In two thousand four, for instance,
she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize,
which is the industry's top honor. Yes, sah deed. You
(38:44):
also might know her from the Daily Show because Jon
Stewart had a lot to say about her design for
a stadium and cutter uh that he said, look like
a vagina, And it does look like a vagina. Does
look I'm sorry, it does look like a vagina. But
she was not happy with at and she said that basically,
you wouldn't be saying that about a stadium a man designed.
It's just because I designed it. And it's like, well,
(39:06):
I'm pretty sure, I'm okay. But isn't her frustration understandable
now knowing what we know about architectural history. But I thought,
you know, so it's a very curt Obviously it's a
very curvy stadium. If you want to go google it
right now, Um, it's very curvy. And she has a
great quote, because there's all of this talking about how
women and men supposedly have different design ideals and aesthetics
(39:28):
and everything, she has a great quote that why would
you design at just one angle? Why would you just
go straight up? There are three hundred and fifty nine
other degrees? And so I like that. I like that perspective. Um.
There's also the amazing Denise Scott Brown, who was snubbed
for the very same Pritzker Prize in nine but it
(39:49):
was awarded to her husband Robert Venturi that year. Uh.
And they the thing is like one can't exist without
the other. They definitely had careers and education and all
of that stuff before they met where they got married,
but basically once they came together and combined forces, they
were they were a much greater force of nature. And
so a lot of people, particularly some students at Harvard
who were protesting this snub, said that you can't you
(40:12):
can't have one without the other. She needs to be
recognized too. And and Scott Brown has been enormously influential
her Her focus has been on buildings in Los Angeles
and in Las Vegas. And she's also she's pretty feminist. Yeah,
she's pretty out about feminism and has said before like,
if you're a woman in architecture, you need feminism to
(40:34):
get you through. And she also called the Pritzker Prize
I quote that old white man's award, to which I
wonder if husband Robert was like, hey, well now her
husband signed that Harvard petition to get her on the
award as well well. And didn't they in follow up
to that be like, well, we're not going to give
you the award, but we're going to honor a woman
(40:55):
who died a really long time ago, Julie Morgan. Here
you go. Oh no, that was sorry, that was the
ai A giving her a gold medal. Yeah. I mean, basically,
the Harvard students were protesting the idea that the prize
jury was upholding some idea of this lone wolf male
starch attect that hey, you can't have Robert Venture without
(41:16):
Denise Scott Brown and so screw you, guys. But it
is kind of especially gross when you read about them
and you realize that her husband is often considered this
like quiet and easy going type, and she's considered a brash,
loud mouth, and so I just love it that she's like, well,
so screw you. Yeah, she probably doesn't consider that an
insult either, nor should she. Well, also in Chicago we
(41:40):
have Jene Gang, who is a highly respected architect, and
the Aqua Tower in Chicago is the tallest building designed
by a woman, which is a little bit of a
backhanded accolade, which some people are saying, like, why why
even add that qualifier in there? Stop stop ghetto wise
saying our buildings and new cares um so, and those
(42:05):
are only three names. There are a lot of other
names that we could continue taking off because there are
women who are building incredible buildings and creating incredible spaces
and innovating in this field and calling attention to that
fifty percent to drop off. And uh, we want to
(42:27):
hear perhaps from some of you who are in the field.
What what do you think about women architecture. Is it
important for women to build buildings to be you know,
whether it's on a construction site doing the actual physical
labor of building and building or doing the design work.
And why does that make a difference? And I'll tell
you what, some feminist architects would have a lot to
(42:48):
tell you about it. So I want to hear from you.
Mom Stuff at house Stuffworks dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And I've got a couple of messages
this year with you. Now, well, I have a letter
here from autumn. She's writing in about our undepense episode. Uh.
(43:10):
She says, thanks for the wonderful episode on the history
of underwear. It was both fascinating and amusing. It made
me think of a story that I'd love to share.
When I was a kid, we had a bin of
dress up clothes that we used for play and Halloween costuming.
In it were many old things that belonged to my
grandmother and great grandmother. Basically, my mother felt bad about
throwing out anything old when my grandparents died, so all
(43:31):
the things got tossed in the box and forgotten. When
I was sixteen, my high school put on the musical
Filler on the Roof, which is said in nineteen o five.
Searching through all the old clothes, I found a pair
of very full draw string cotton bloomers, complete with split crotch.
My mom and I determined that they had belonged to
my great grandmother, who lived from eighteen eight six to
nineteen fifty nine. Not sure of the exact age of
(43:53):
the bloomers, but we guess they predated ninety. I thought
they were perfect to be part of my costume, and
more than proudly on age with tights underneath. It felt
really neat to have historically accurate underwear beneath my dress. Backstage,
someone noticed that the bloomers had a split crotch and
called me out on it. When told that they were
my great grandmother's. Jokes started circulating about my crotchless great
(44:16):
granny panties. It was all in good fun and proof
that we kids knew nothing about underwear of the past. Sadly,
the one hundred year old cotton did not last after
its stage outing. It got a rip and I put
them away. Ten years later, I was in another production
of Fiddler and felt sadly underdressed without my ancestral underwear.
The idea of what my great grandmother would have thought
(44:37):
if someone had told her that her underwear would be
worn as a costume and of play one day amuses me.
If I try to think of my own cheapie Haynes
cotton hipsters being worn a hundred years from now, it
seems impossible and just plain weird. So thank you for
your letter Autumn. Well, I've got a let her here
from Genevieve about our episode on Hollywood's first female directors,
(44:59):
and he writes, I have to say I learned a lot.
I graduated from film school almost two years ago and
had no idea about Alice key Blache, Lois Webber, or
many of the other amazing ladies you covered. I'm so
excited to start watching your films. When I first started college,
I thought I wanted to be a director, but it
was in school that I learned to edit and appreciate
the art of making film into its final product. Right now,
(45:21):
I'm an editor for a wedding videography company, nothing glamorous.
My girlfriend and I live in Long Beach right now,
but when she finishes film school is semester, were moving
to l A to be closer to all the real
jobs and quotes. I have to admit I'm a bit
nervous about breaking into the industry. Many of my friends
have told me horror stories of sexist bosses and the like,
which concerns me even more since I'm a pretty, butch
(45:42):
looking woman. My biggest fear is being judged by my
appearance before my work can speak for itself. If I
had my dream job, I would be mentored by a
female editor like Thelma Schoonmacher or Joan Sobel. You two
are awesome. I'm a new listener and have since gotten
my cousin on this smnty train. All the best, Genevieve, Well, Genevieve,
(46:04):
first of all, I just want to congratulate you for
following your dream. If anything, that is awesome and you
have all the skills ladies, so you're gonna be awesome
in l A. And I can't wait to see some
incredible film that you're going to edit. So thank you
in advance for that, and thank you in advance for
all of everyone else's letters. Mom. Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address and for links
(46:25):
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including our sources, so
you can follow right along. Head on over to stuff
Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it staff works dot
com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from how stup
Works not Come. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And the theme for this week
is if she builds It? Because on Monday we talked
about women in construction actually on the site building the buildings,
(00:25):
and we trotted out lots of dismal statistics. So today
we're going to talk about women designing the buildings, women
in architecture, and things get a little better. Yeah, I
mean things, things are not as bad in in architecture,
although they're still certainly not glowing. What I found interesting
in researching this episode was how hyper aware people in
(00:49):
the industry are of the issues that women face and
the issue of not having enough women in the field. Um,
that doesn't mean that people are necessarily doing anything about it,
but I appreciate that people are hyper aware and are
drawing attention to it. As opposed to construction, we're basically
(01:09):
women are the only ones talking about women. Yeah. Well,
and when it comes to architecture too, there's also seems
like there's been this constant focus just in general, of
gender when looking at a building and at public spaces
because a lot of times, these giant monuments and skyscrapers
(01:31):
are considered very masculine, phallic, masculine, phallic, very phallic. Yes,
the Washington Monument is like a giant penis in the
middle of Washington, d C. It's true. So if we
go though to the very beginning of the history women
in architecture, focusing in on the United States, they had
(01:55):
to fight this idea that women couldn't supervise construction. And
we're addressed at the same time, which does kind of
hearken to our construction episode two. It's it's like, Wow,
this is no place for a woman and her dresses
and shoes transgressing all over the place. Basically, you know,
if you're you're if you're a woman, you're too feminine
(02:18):
to be an architect, But if you're an architect, you're
too masculine to be a woman. That's there's all sorts
of weird dynamics going on about expectations and norms, but
we do have lots of rad ladies to talk about.
We do, starting back in eighteen seventy three with Mary L. Page,
she was the first woman to earn an actual architecture degree.
(02:39):
Way to go, Mary, Yeah, that was at the University
of Illinois Urbana Champagne, so a way to go University
of Illinois. But the real first woman not to just
get her architecture degree but actually build buildings in the
United States is Louise Bethoon, who was born in eighteen
fifty six in Waterloo, New York. And as the story goes,
(03:00):
a family friend once sarcastically joked to Louise, you know
you should do Louise, you should be an architecture or something.
And Louise was like, huh, I actually like the sound
of that. I think I'll I think I'll do just
that and do what she did? Did? I love that story.
Just twenty years old, she became a draftsman at the
(03:20):
Buffalo office of Richard A. Waite and F. W. Cockins.
And at the time you might think, like Buffalo, what's
up with Buffalo? Well, it turns out Buffalo was an
architectural hotbed at the turn of the century, and it
attracted big names like Henry Hobson, Richardson, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham,
and Frederick law Own instead he of the Garden Fame,
Oh yes, well in one but when founded her own
(03:45):
architectural firm with her would be husband. And also that's
another theme. We'll see a lot lots of husband wife
teams in architecture. And so she becomes, by virtue of that,
the first woman to start her own architecture for and
here's a great thing about Louise, she had no time
for the gender wage gap. In she refused to put
(04:09):
in a bid to design the women's building for the
Chicago's World Columbia Exposition because female architects would only make
a thousand dollars. They had a thousand dollars to give,
and that was it compared to the minimum ten thousand
dollars that male architects were going to be paid in
addition to other fees that they would also collect just
(04:30):
for their designs for the World Columbia Exposition. So she
was like, you know what, No, I'm not gonna Why
would I do that. I'm worth more than that. It
cost a lot to maintain a penis um. But the
the designer of that building was Sophia Hayden Bennett. She
was the first woman to receive an architecture degree from
m I T in eighteen ninety, but she ended up
(04:53):
getting really sort of pushed around by jerkish male architects,
came down with so called brain her, was sent to
a sanitarium and never designed another building. And in fact,
the men around her sited her reaction to all of
this as evidence that women weren't cut out for this work. Yeah,
Sofia Hayden Bennett is is a sad story to pick
(05:16):
things off. Yeah, sorry, a cautionary tale of of going
for that lower that lower women's wage. Um. But going
back though, to Louise Bathoon. She was also a founding
member of the Women's Wheel and Athletic Club because yes,
she also thought that bicycles were awesome for female emancipation.
(05:36):
Well yeah, but she also rode in groups with fellow
lady cyclists, sort of critical mass style, in order to
provide protection, you know, safety in numbers. They're not going
to harass us as badly if there's a whole bunch
of cycling ladies together. So, in other words, Louise Bathuon
was one progressive galpel Yeah, we like her, we like
her a lot. Uh five. With the lobbying assistance of
(05:59):
Dan Neal Burnham and Lewis Sullivan, be Thun became the
first woman admitted to the Western Association of Architects, and
this makes her a recognized professional architect, and a few
years later she becomes the first woman admitted to become
a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Now, her
architecture wasn't particularly innovative. It often focused on utilitarian, simple structures.
(06:24):
She built schools, public buildings, things like that. But still
standing in Buffalo is Hotel Lafayette. That is considered her
greatest work, and it is a lovely structure. But I mean,
she wasn't she wasn't wowing people with these crazy new designs.
But still she was the first woman and she was
actually building buildings, which is pretty cool. But the second
(06:45):
name we got to talk about is really the first
big name for women in architecture, and Julie Morgan is
a pretty incredible figure. Yeah, Julie Morgan grew up being
really good at math and it helped. She had a
mother who encouraged her instead of telling her to get
back in the kitchen. She ended up going to engineering
(07:05):
school at Berkeley in eight ninety and with the help
of a mentoring technical drawing professor and a couple of
influential friends, she decided to pursue architecture after graduation, and
she went straight for the best. She went to Paris
et de Boza in eighteen nine six, where she ended
up taking three entrance exams. Why three? Okay? So she
(07:31):
failed the first two times, which might have been influenced,
she later found out by professors who were not really
interested in letting the first mademoiselle into their hallowed halls.
And she didn't let that deter her though. She went
for the third try, and in a letter home, she wrote,
I'll try again next time anyway, even without any expectations,
(07:53):
just to show the June field are not discouraged. Pardon
my poor French. I think that meant she like, girls
are not to be messed with. That's exactly what she meant,
and her efforts paid off. She was the first woman
to graduate from the Paris School and was the first
woman to be licensed as an architect in California. And
(08:13):
the thing is, Caroline, I really like the fact that, hey,
it took three times to get into this, and there
was also a ticking clock because they cut off admission
at thirty years old and she was twenty nine. Had to,
you know, pass this exam also had to get all
these points by working on certain buildings, and she did
(08:36):
all of it by the time she was thirty. But
it's I don't know, I feel like it's a nice
lesson of Hey, you know what, when even when you're trailblazing,
you don't always make it the first time, and that's okay, Yeah,
try to try again. And she eventually opened her own firm.
Her first boss was rumored to relish in her cheap
labor as a woman, so it's good that she went
her own way. But at that firm, she provided mentorship
(08:58):
and training for both in and women, and every member
of the firm was able to participate in a profit
sharing plan. And what's so great about her focus on mentorship,
which you know Kristen and I hammer home in our episodes.
A lot her apprentices when they left her from under
her wing, were known for their thorough training, so it
was known that she was not only a smart cookie,
(09:20):
but that she was able to really provide an excellent
training ground for her apprentices. And after she went independent
between n and nineteen thirty nine, she worked tirelessly on
what is her most famous building, which is the Hearst Castle,
built for William Randolph Hearst, and it's this massive complex
(09:43):
in California, and she was often working eighteen hour days quote,
subsisting on coffee and chocolate bars. Sounds like an ulcer. Yeah. Um,
And I mean this Google image seriously, the Hearst Castle,
because I cannot explain to you. I mean, I probably
could explain to you were footage wise, but I don't
have the stats in front of me. But it is massive.
(10:03):
It is so huge. Can I talk to any more
about how big? It is? Clear I should get a
job at the Architectural Review. Well, so you might think, okay,
well that's a really long time nine working on the
Hers Castle, working eighteen nowadays, surely she didn't have time
to do anything else. That was her one contribution. Nay, No,
(10:24):
she designed more than seven hundred structures. Part of this,
and part of the lives of many women in the
architectural field, is that she never had any kids. She
didn't have a family life that she was taking up
part of her time. Her entire life was dedicated to architecture,
and she really didn't mind. She said that her buildings
(10:46):
would be her legacy. And I mean, and what a
legacy to leave behind seven hundred plus structures and and
too while she was working on that hers castle, she
would have to take all of these train rides followed
by car rides out to this, uh, this massive expanse
while she would still be working on other projects. She
was the queen of multitasking. It seems like. Yeah, there
(11:08):
was one male architect colleague of hers who said he
went down there to the hurt, the site of the
Hearst Castle building, just to check it out, and they
worked all day. She was like, yeah, I watched her
work all day. We got back on the train and
I skipped work the next day because I was exhausted.
She went right back into work. Julie Morgan never slept well.
Then she was finally awarded the American Institute of Architects
(11:31):
Gold Medal in two thousand fourteen, a little bit after
her time. Yeah, to which some of the people said, oh,
that's great. Yeah, Julie Morgan absolutely deserves his honor. But
it's two thousand fourteen polling on. But this also is
indicative of how the architecture industry is playing catch up
(11:52):
in terms of recognizing women's contributions. But it's we've also
got to look at the context for sure of the
era in which more in and between we're working by
there were only forty practicing female architects in the United States,
and our first licensed architect was a woman by the
name of Marian Mahoney Griffin. Yeah, in, Alice Hands and
(12:16):
Mary Gannon formed the first female architectural partnership. This is
just kind of a side note, but I thought it
was really interesting that they, you know, had this first.
But also they were really focused on social justice and
building affordable housing, particularly for working women at the time.
So interesting to see what kinds of buildings women want
(12:38):
to focus on, even back then at the turn of
the century. And that same year, Marion Mahoney Griffin becomes
the second woman to graduate in architecture from M I
t remember that the first female graduate was Sophia Hayden Bennett,
the one who came down with brain fever. But Mahony
Griffin was hired my gentleman named Frank Floyd Right, It
(13:00):
was actually his first hire, and her renderings of his
designs a helped hone the Prairie School style and be
popularized rights work. In other words, Marian Mahoney Griffin was
instrumental to the fact that we all know and recognized
Frank Lloyd Right's work today. Yeah, and just three years
after Right hired her, Griffin became the first. That's when
(13:23):
she became the first licensed female architect in the US.
And to round out our lists of architectural trailbazers, we've
got to talk about Norma Merrick Scaleric, who graduated from
Columbia University and architecture, one of two women, by the way,
in her class. But she had a hard time finding
a job because she was black and female. Yeah, she
(13:47):
said that she didn't know when she didn't get the
job she failed a job interview if which one was
working against her more um. But despite all this, in
nineteen fifty four, she became the first black woman to
earn an architect's license. In nineteen fifty nine, she became
the first black woman member of the American Institute of Architects,
and in nineteen eighty became the first black woman elected
(14:08):
as a Fellow of the ai A. So, while Scleric
was working at a firm in Los Angeles, so she
didn't design many of the projects she supervised, even though
she was perfectly capable to do so simply because at
that time clients apparently would have balked at seeing a
black woman designing their projects. So I mean, she's an
(14:30):
example of just continually having to fight essentially racism throughout
her career. Although in nineteen eighty five she becomes a
founding partner of Seagulls, s Cleric and Diamond, one of
the largest all women architectural firms in the United States,
but it lasted only she lasted only four years there
(14:51):
because it really didn't attract big scale projects that she
liked to take on. Yeah, and then in she retired,
and she's really remembered for mainly for the terminal one
at the Los Angeles Airport at l A X and
the American Embassy in Tokyo. And we figured too, we
should highlight a few more influential female architects of the
(15:15):
twentieth century that are important to know, because for me,
at least, it was really instructive just to see the
range of architectural styles and the kinds of movements that
women were influencing at the time. So Mary Jane Coulter,
for instance, developed the National Park Service Rustic Style a
(15:37):
k A architecture. She designed a series of buildings at
the Grand Canyon, for instance, and throughout the American Southwest.
And her work was really flourishing um around from around
nineteen o five through the nineteen thirties. So that's something
I mean, it's a very particular style that a lot
of us would recognize if we've been to a national park. Yeah.
(15:59):
And then Ellen or Raymond in worked with m I
T scientists and solar power researcher Maria Telkis to construct
the Dover Houses in Dover, Massachusetts, and these were the
first occupied solar heated homes in the United States. Look
how far we've Oh no, wait, we haven't come very
far in terms of solar houses. We're trying, we are,
(16:19):
some of us are trying. We need to summon the
spirit of eleanor Raymond back. Perhaps. There's also Hilda Reese
who's an architect, designer and curator who helped bring Bow
House esthetic state side, especially after that school was shut
down during World War Two. There's Eileen Gray and her
iconic house E ten seven, who is a pioneer of modernism. Yeah.
(16:44):
She built the house with input from her lover and
actually the letter the name of the house eight seven
represents letters in their names that after she and her
lever Jeans split up, this guy who's known as La
Corbusier came to stay at the house and he ended
up defiling it by painting murals all over the place,
and the house has since fallen into disrepair. Yeah, look,
(17:07):
corbuc A, what would you do such a thing. He's
a jerk who probably didn't like women being all up
in architecture. And then there's Leno Bobardi who was born
in Italy, but most of her work has been in Brazil.
She's a modernist architect who has been known for these
large public buildings that she's done, such as the S E.
S C. Pompeia Cultural Center, which kind of exemplifies how
(17:32):
she approaches has approached spaces, trying to take sort of
the human element into it as well. Um She once said,
quote the spirit of modern architecture is unwavering and shaped
by a love of humanity, which some people would probably
say hints at more of a feminine design aesthetic. Yeah,
(17:53):
I mean, when you you it's it's hard to read
anything about architecture, especially women in architecture, and not come
across the view whether it's held by the writer or
just reported on by the writer, that women do things
this way, men do things this way, and that women
are very social minded, they're very uh, we're carrying and
(18:14):
we're nurturing, and so we want to design curvy shapes
that are all focused on bringing people together, whereas men
are just designing you know, glass and steel penises, lots
of lots of phallic buildings. So in the first half
of the podcast, we trotted through some of the trailblazing
names of women in architecture who have been building buildings
(18:35):
for the past century or so. And now we're going
to get a little intellectual for a minute. We're gonna
move away from the actual structures and talk about more
I guess of brain structure, this question of whether men
and women design buildings differently, because the longstanding answer has
been yeah, I mean, of course, because there are biological
(18:59):
arguments against women's just basic capacity for architecture, beginning with
our mere physicality. Yeah. Just like when women first started
entering the field, people were like, oh, you're too feminine, Nah,
how are you going to do anything as masculine as
I have an idea um, people are still questioning women's
(19:20):
physical strength, and so at the turn of the century,
people were arguing that architects need a strong athletic body,
and that was considered impossible for a woman to possess
without transgendering herself in the process. Yeah, this is coming
from paper architects in skirts, the public image of women
architects in Wilheim, Germany, and there was lots of concern
(19:44):
at this time over women in particular having vertigo, likely
in conjunction with ideas about hysteria. Um so, for instance,
on building sites there was just this presumed female propensity
for disease else So it's like women should have nothing
to do with us because first of all, our uterus
is gonna be going a little a little out of
(20:06):
whack that promotes vertigo. So if we're building a building,
we will fall to our death at some point. Well
this well, yeah, I mean, and the whole concern over
strength and ability and whatever. I mean, it's the same
stuff that we talked about in our construction episode, where
people are so concerned about women being too small and
weak to lift things, when in reality the stuff that
(20:27):
you do on the job site is so rarely about
brute strength and more about just being smart and safe
and quick witted honestly. Yeah. Well, there's also some interesting
class panic too that ties in. And it also is
an interesting parallel with our conversation about women in construction,
because when it comes to architecture and design, this was
considered an appropriate field for a middle or upper class
(20:52):
woman to pursue because it requires more education. They might
have the funding to be able to go to college,
but at the same time they were still caught in
this gendered catch twenty two because these wealthier women who
would have had the most access to college were considered
too soft and frail for architecture because their money and
lifestyle and luxury made them soft as opposed to the sturdy,
(21:17):
working class woman who might have had the braun but
not the financial access to architecture. So we're so screwed. Yeah,
I mean, basically, if a woman had a feminine body,
she was inherently considered unfit to be an architect. But
if a woman was an architect, then she inherently couldn't
be feminine at the same time. Yeah, Plus, we were
(21:38):
wearing all sorts of crazy clothes that were totally a
liability on construction sites, and so you have somebody like
Margaret pick who at the turn of the century recommended
loose reform trousers, which just sounds to me like stretchy pants,
although my stretchy pants would not be safe on a
construction site anyway. She also recommends high boots and a
stock almost to the ankles, as painters and stone may
(22:00):
since where so it's like, okay, if you have a
bifurcated garment, just cover that stuff up, yes again, and
get the smock. I mean, I mean, I will say
that that does sound a lot like what I wear
in the winter boots, trousers and a drapey shirt. Um.
We also found a source gender studies and architecture space
Power and Difference by Dorta Coleman, that really gets into
(22:25):
the sort of the historical outline of how women supposedly
see spaces differently from gentlemen. So, for instance, Coleman sites
Henry Atherton Frost, who in nineteen fifteen founded the first
architectural school intended exclusively for women, the Cambridge School of
(22:46):
Architecture and Landscape Architecture. So that's a great thing, but
at the same time Frost definitely thought that there was
a sex difference in design, noting how women are drawn
to housing developments instead of individ dual homes because we're
all about community and socialization, right, Yes, so, not so
much aesthetics, more about the social function of things like
(23:09):
community facilities that we really supposedly have an interest and
a focus on social and human interests. And not that
there's anything wrong with that, it's just that women have
historically been pigeonholed. Is just like, oh, they're just They're
only going to build like a school, whereas I'm going
to build like a powerful uh a space school school
(23:32):
and space. Beat that lady. It's it's so tall and
felt like that it is going to reach to space.
You can also at this point make a drinking game
for the number of times we say phallic in this podcast.
Um but that that sentiment, though, is still echoed in
Yes dated but A nine survey by Progressive Architecture found
that forty of both male and female architects believed there
(23:57):
was a difference between the designs of men and women,
and they said women are best at designing buildings again
for home, healthcare and school sounds very familiar, and men
are the best at building representative and commercial architecture, which
I mean that just sounds like our you know, separate
spheres period. Yeah, exactly. And you know a lot of
(24:17):
this comes down to arguments about our visual spatial skills.
This is stuff we talked about in our episode on Legos.
We talked about this in our interview with the Goldie
Blocks founder. So it's the idea that you know, boys
can go outside and roam and learn about how buildings
are built and develop those visual space visual spatial skills,
I got it, whereas girls are much better at things
(24:39):
like language skills. But the whole thing is that we
don't ever doubt that boys can eventually develop those language
and writing skills, but we somehow doubt that girls can
ever catch up with visual spatial skills that boys are
supposedly better at. Yeah, and this leads us to a
lot of analysis and scholarship in the seventies and eighties,
(25:03):
in particular on architecture and feminism. There actually is something
called feminist geography and feminist architecture, which is exploring how
he's sort of trying to separate what is a biological
sex difference from just our gender roles, kind of getting
in the way of what we think people can and
(25:23):
can't do. And I mean, it really does get interesting
when you think about public space, private space, the domestic sphere,
the public sphere, and what men and women build and
how they build it. Um. There's definitely a lot of
feminist ideology that can go into analyzing all of that,
(25:45):
and we we honestly don't even have time to get
into it. Um. But in the book Design and Feminism
Revisioning Spaces, Places and Things, it sites the article emphasizing
how female design principles are quote more user friendly than
than design oriented, more flexible than fixed, more organically ordered
(26:06):
than abstractly systematized, more holistic than specialized, more complex than
one dimensional. And again it asked the question of whether
this is a result of the dominance of male design principles,
because that's the thing that comes up a lot too.
It's like, well, I mean, is this just an issue
two of women being forced to conform their feminine design
(26:31):
aesthetics to an overwhelming male design paradigm. Yeah, I mean,
christ is right, there's so much, potentially so much that
we could talk about with just with these issues about feminism,
but also men and women seeing things differently. Whether that's
ingrained or nature versus nurture. It makes it has made
me look outside a little bit differently though, pay attention
(26:53):
to buildings a little bit more closely. Obviously I can't,
you know, immediately look out and identify, oh well that
I know the our chitectually build that. But when you
start looking to at for images of all of these
buildings and spaces of the women we have sided and
will cite what we're going to talk about more contemporary
female architects in just a minute, when you look at
(27:13):
the buildings they build from my untrained I I don't see,
oh well, of course that's a lady building and shaped
like a tampon. That's not phallic, that's the tampon, you know.
Like so it does get kind of the philosophical aspect
of it gets really interesting, and unfortunately we can't indulge
(27:34):
it too much in the podcast because it could be
a spiral. Because when you look at Julie Morgan, who
did the Hearst Castle on that giant compound, I mean
you could you could talk about how, okay, well she
designed something for a man, so she compromised her feminist
or her female or feminine vision or no she's such
a great architect that she can design for anyone. Or no,
maybe it was masculine because it was her vision. Like,
(27:56):
h you know, it's yes, we need to talk about
when then in architecture and where we've been, where we're going,
where we are now. But it's almost like you kind
of just want to shout, like, let people do their
own designs, build y'all buildings. Echoes of the fountain head
reverberating through UM. The industry though, let's talk about the
(28:17):
industry today because it could use some renovation, And like
you mentioned earlier, Caroline, there's a lot of awareness of
this issue of this gender gap in architecture, but a
lot of head scratching about well, how do we even
fix this? Doesn't even really need fixing because women earned
(28:39):
half of all us undergrad degrees in architecture but only
make up twenty of all licensed practitioners, so that's a
big drop off of what's going on there. Yeah, I
mean there's a lot of theories that's the same same
stuff that we've talked about in any of our STEM
episodes or that we talked about in our Construction episode. UM,
(29:00):
but a lot of those theories revolve around childcare, around money,
around sexual harassment and discrimination and things of that nature.
And there was this op ed by Maria Smith in
Architectural Review that points out that the question isn't really
that simple. It's not black and white, and it boils
(29:22):
down to a kind of a variety of answers, and
in terms of the job being not as creatively fulfilling
as many people, both men and women expected to be,
the fact that the education, the architecture education itself prepare
students poorly for the actual work. So basically saying, you know,
like our women not going to put up with a
(29:45):
job not being as creative as they expected or not
doing the work that they expected, whereas men are gonna
just deal with it and plow through until eventually there's
some like big name starchitect. Yeah. I mean, Maria Smith
definitely seemed unsatisfied with a lot of the go to
answers for the question of why that drop off from
(30:07):
to And I mean she highly's the fact that, yeah,
there is awareness. She cited a women in Architecture survey
which found that of women and see of men said
that the profession is too heavily male, but it's still
it seems like every article that we read about this
(30:27):
kind of answered some questions but also raised more questions. Um,
the issue of not so friendly female work environments has
been pretty firmly established. There is often echoed to this
traditionally macho culture pandering to so called starchitects, and then
this dismissal of supposedly feminine design values and being like,
(30:50):
oh no, stay away, stay away, dampon buildings. Yeah, all
the curves in those champons. Um. But also there's this
intensive education track. You know, we just mentioned education, but
the intense track means that you often are licensed until
you're late twenties, and so that's bumping up against women
being you know, ready to have kids or get married. Yeah,
(31:11):
and I think that even getting it by the late
twenties is ambitious. I want to say that one statistics
that on average you're getting it at age thirty four,
which is right, especially for women today. That is prime
child having time. If that's in your if that's something
you want to do. Yeah, but I mean talking about
(31:33):
men versus women leaving the field. A survey that was
cited in Gender Studies and Architecture, Space, Power and Difference
found that None of the guys in the survey cited
as problems the long hours, the gender related discrimination, healthcare needs, deadlines,
or needing to spend more time with family as why
they left. They were simply no longer interested, or they
(31:54):
just wanted to make more money. Let's talk about money
for a second. There are some not so favorable employment statistics.
For instance, if you look at the top tier architects,
the people who are heading up firms as of two
thousand eleven, at least only seventeen of principles and partners
at architecture firms where women in the top five firms
(32:16):
in the US are all pretty much male dominated. And
there's also a pretty consistent wage gap in firms and
also as sole practitioners, women consistently earned anywhere from seven
to seventeen percent less than men. But again, men are
consistently likelier to ask for more money at every performance review,
which kind of echoes back to the fact that they
(32:39):
might be likelier to leave because they're like, hey, I
just want more money. And you also have to take
an account that twice as many female architects are unemployed
today compared to men. Yeah, I mean, this is something architecture.
I'm sure has been recovering since then. But during the recession,
people in architecture were out of a lot of jobs
(33:00):
and it seemed to hit women disproportionately compared to women.
Although where does it seem best, at least statistically for
female architects who have the most jobs Scandinavian women, because
in pretty much every like quality of life measurement, Scandinavia
always rules when it comes to women. Yeah, it's yeah,
(33:23):
gender inequality. What gender that? Um. But you know, let's
look at the education and mentorship aspect of things. You know,
we talked about mentorship a lot on the podcast. UM,
but there was a study on architectural training in Germany,
the US, and Canada that found there were very few
female professors of design. They were more commonly found in
(33:43):
architectural history and environmental psychology. And so this raises the
question of whether architectural education promotes a male dominated practical model. Thus,
you know, sort of mitigating these supposed sex differences in
the final design, whether you're a man or a woman,
if you have someone who is male training you, you
might adopt their outlook. Basically. Yeah, in gender studies and architecture,
(34:09):
cited a couple of women in architecture who think that, Yeah,
that's absolutely the case. Jane Park, for instance, said, quote,
architects who are women and or come from a working
class background have to acquire an outlook similar to that
of middle class males, the dominant group in the architectural profession.
This is why we shouldn't expect buildings designed by women
(34:30):
to have any qualities distinct from those designed by men. Yeah.
And Janice gold Frank also agrees, but notes the differences.
She says, my own impression is that men and women
designed differently, their approaches to design reflecting their upbringing and
life experiences. Women often emphasize feelings of well being and
harmony in a building rather than a structure's visual impact.
(34:50):
These differences are not drastic, however, as women building and
designing today have learned their trade from men. So I
mean again, though it seems like with that I shotion
of doy designed differently, the answer always wants to be yes,
which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but just some architectural
(35:11):
food for thought. And really, I'm so curious to hear
from any architects or students of architecture, just people who
are familiar with architecture to weigh in on this. But
when it comes so to so few women being at
the top, that means, of course, it's less likely for
female up and comers to get mentored by other women
(35:34):
at the top. And we haven't even mentioned motherhood, childcare.
This is a big issue, yeah, and this whole yeah,
the issue of leaving to become a mother or once
you've become a mother. And Alison Brooks, who's the director
of Alison Brooks Architects, says that cost of childcare is
the number one reason that women leave. And Jessica Reynolds,
(35:54):
the direct a director at VPPR, says, you know, it's
not an accident that many well known female architects are childless,
just like Julie Morgan who said, you know what, no kids,
that's fine, My buildings will be my legacy. Yeah. Well,
and I think this ties into Architects Journal survey where
in percent of women respondents said that they felt like
(36:16):
having kids would hold their careers back, but interestingly, of
male respondence to the same survey didn't think that women
having kids would affect their careers. Women's careers, it's interesting
that men have that different perception that like, why would
you think that? Well this, Well, one thing that was
noted to in terms of the culture of firms and
(36:39):
when people leave, is that there's a distrust of people
leaving and then wanting to come back. It's like, no,
once you're gone, just go. That's so strange. Probably, well,
the I mean think about all of the time invests
in the same way. I don't know. It seems even
more intense almost than law, which is a ton of
(36:59):
hours every week. You're always buried in work, but it
seems like there's at least more room to come and
go with that, whereas architecture seems even more rigid. Well,
that's another thing that I help our listeners tell us
about because I am curious about that. Yes, in dynamic
for listeners who aren't to wear Caroline and I are
not architects, although when I was twelve, I did want
(37:20):
to become one, and I drew a number of really
boring houses until I realized, you know what, Kristen, I
don't think this is your strength. I'm sure you had
all the important elements, Kristen, the sun in the corner
at the box, the triangle, the triangle, roof, the rectangle chimney.
There were flowers outside, and I had and I can
(37:41):
still remember it so clearly. I had a cool card
again that I would wear while drawing my little architectural plans.
But I felt like kind of tied the whole thing together.
I'm sure it did. Yeah, I'm sure I was. At
the time, I was wearing my red stegosaurus sweatshirt that
how a picture of a stegosaurus with the words stegosaurus
(38:01):
under it. Butting archaeologists over here and they're kidding. Yeah,
I like neither one of us. We didn't ben here
we are and here we are those who those who
can't do podcasts, Oh, which man out. But so let's
let's talk about women who are doing things outside of
the podcast studio today. There are plenty of interesting names.
(38:23):
But again, you know, Chris and I were not architects,
and we don't know everyone in the field. But we
can provide a few names of women who are out
there kicking. But there's Zahahadd who is probably the best
known female architect living today. In two thousand four, for instance,
she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize,
which is the industry's top honor. Yes, sah deed. You
(38:44):
also might know her from the Daily Show because Jon
Stewart had a lot to say about her design for
a stadium and cutter uh that he said, look like
a vagina, And it does look like a vagina. Does
look I'm sorry, it does look like a vagina. But
she was not happy with at and she said that basically,
you wouldn't be saying that about a stadium a man designed.
It's just because I designed it. And it's like, well,
(39:06):
I'm pretty sure, I'm okay. But isn't her frustration understandable
now knowing what we know about architectural history. But I thought,
you know, so it's a very curt Obviously it's a
very curvy stadium. If you want to go google it
right now, Um, it's very curvy. And she has a
great quote, because there's all of this talking about how
women and men supposedly have different design ideals and aesthetics
(39:28):
and everything, she has a great quote that why would
you design at just one angle? Why would you just
go straight up? There are three hundred and fifty nine
other degrees? And so I like that. I like that perspective. Um.
There's also the amazing Denise Scott Brown, who was snubbed
for the very same Pritzker Prize in nine but it
(39:49):
was awarded to her husband Robert Venturi that year. Uh.
And they the thing is like one can't exist without
the other. They definitely had careers and education and all
of that stuff before they met where they got married,
but basically once they came together and combined forces, they
were they were a much greater force of nature. And
so a lot of people, particularly some students at Harvard
who were protesting this snub, said that you can't you
(40:12):
can't have one without the other. She needs to be
recognized too. And and Scott Brown has been enormously influential
her Her focus has been on buildings in Los Angeles
and in Las Vegas. And she's also she's pretty feminist. Yeah,
she's pretty out about feminism and has said before like,
if you're a woman in architecture, you need feminism to
(40:34):
get you through. And she also called the Pritzker Prize
I quote that old white man's award, to which I
wonder if husband Robert was like, hey, well now her
husband signed that Harvard petition to get her on the
award as well well. And didn't they in follow up
to that be like, well, we're not going to give
you the award, but we're going to honor a woman
(40:55):
who died a really long time ago, Julie Morgan. Here
you go. Oh no, that was sorry, that was the
ai A giving her a gold medal. Yeah. I mean, basically,
the Harvard students were protesting the idea that the prize
jury was upholding some idea of this lone wolf male
starch attect that hey, you can't have Robert Venture without
(41:16):
Denise Scott Brown and so screw you, guys. But it
is kind of especially gross when you read about them
and you realize that her husband is often considered this
like quiet and easy going type, and she's considered a brash,
loud mouth, and so I just love it that she's like, well,
so screw you. Yeah, she probably doesn't consider that an
insult either, nor should she. Well, also in Chicago we
(41:40):
have Jene Gang, who is a highly respected architect, and
the Aqua Tower in Chicago is the tallest building designed
by a woman, which is a little bit of a
backhanded accolade, which some people are saying, like, why why
even add that qualifier in there? Stop stop ghetto wise
saying our buildings and new cares um so, and those
(42:05):
are only three names. There are a lot of other
names that we could continue taking off because there are
women who are building incredible buildings and creating incredible spaces
and innovating in this field and calling attention to that
fifty percent to drop off. And uh, we want to
(42:27):
hear perhaps from some of you who are in the field.
What what do you think about women architecture. Is it
important for women to build buildings to be you know,
whether it's on a construction site doing the actual physical
labor of building and building or doing the design work.
And why does that make a difference? And I'll tell
you what, some feminist architects would have a lot to
(42:48):
tell you about it. So I want to hear from you.
Mom Stuff at house Stuffworks dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And I've got a couple of messages
this year with you. Now, well, I have a letter
here from autumn. She's writing in about our undepense episode. Uh.
(43:10):
She says, thanks for the wonderful episode on the history
of underwear. It was both fascinating and amusing. It made
me think of a story that I'd love to share.
When I was a kid, we had a bin of
dress up clothes that we used for play and Halloween costuming.
In it were many old things that belonged to my
grandmother and great grandmother. Basically, my mother felt bad about
throwing out anything old when my grandparents died, so all
(43:31):
the things got tossed in the box and forgotten. When
I was sixteen, my high school put on the musical
Filler on the Roof, which is said in nineteen o five.
Searching through all the old clothes, I found a pair
of very full draw string cotton bloomers, complete with split crotch.
My mom and I determined that they had belonged to
my great grandmother, who lived from eighteen eight six to
nineteen fifty nine. Not sure of the exact age of
(43:53):
the bloomers, but we guess they predated ninety. I thought
they were perfect to be part of my costume, and
more than proudly on age with tights underneath. It felt
really neat to have historically accurate underwear beneath my dress. Backstage,
someone noticed that the bloomers had a split crotch and
called me out on it. When told that they were
my great grandmother's. Jokes started circulating about my crotchless great
(44:16):
granny panties. It was all in good fun and proof
that we kids knew nothing about underwear of the past. Sadly,
the one hundred year old cotton did not last after
its stage outing. It got a rip and I put
them away. Ten years later, I was in another production
of Fiddler and felt sadly underdressed without my ancestral underwear.
The idea of what my great grandmother would have thought
(44:37):
if someone had told her that her underwear would be
worn as a costume and of play one day amuses me.
If I try to think of my own cheapie Haynes
cotton hipsters being worn a hundred years from now, it
seems impossible and just plain weird. So thank you for
your letter Autumn. Well, I've got a let her here
from Genevieve about our episode on Hollywood's first female directors,
(44:59):
and he writes, I have to say I learned a lot.
I graduated from film school almost two years ago and
had no idea about Alice key Blache, Lois Webber, or
many of the other amazing ladies you covered. I'm so
excited to start watching your films. When I first started college,
I thought I wanted to be a director, but it
was in school that I learned to edit and appreciate
the art of making film into its final product. Right now,
(45:21):
I'm an editor for a wedding videography company, nothing glamorous.
My girlfriend and I live in Long Beach right now,
but when she finishes film school is semester, were moving
to l A to be closer to all the real
jobs and quotes. I have to admit I'm a bit
nervous about breaking into the industry. Many of my friends
have told me horror stories of sexist bosses and the like,
which concerns me even more since I'm a pretty, butch
(45:42):
looking woman. My biggest fear is being judged by my
appearance before my work can speak for itself. If I
had my dream job, I would be mentored by a
female editor like Thelma Schoonmacher or Joan Sobel. You two
are awesome. I'm a new listener and have since gotten
my cousin on this smnty train. All the best, Genevieve, Well, Genevieve,
(46:04):
first of all, I just want to congratulate you for
following your dream. If anything, that is awesome and you
have all the skills ladies, so you're gonna be awesome
in l A. And I can't wait to see some
incredible film that you're going to edit. So thank you
in advance for that, and thank you in advance for
all of everyone else's letters. Mom. Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address and for links
(46:25):
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including our sources, so
you can follow right along. Head on over to stuff
Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it staff works dot
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.