- Welcome to the School of
Architecture and Planning.
For those of you who
are not here regularly,
I'm Joyce Hwang,
Associate Chair of the
Department of Architecture.
Welcome, we have a very
special event tonight.
We are going to be kicking off the opening
of this fantastic exhibition
that you've probably all
passed through downstairs
called Now What?! Advocacy,
Activism, and Alliances
in American Architecture Since 1968
and we are very happy and honored
to have three of the four
curators here with us
to talk about the exhibition.
This is, and I'm not sure
if they're gonna be mentioning this,
but this is an exhibition
that I've been following for a while.
It's been, I can't even
remember when it opened.
- Just last May.
- Just last May so (laughs)
but it's a very important work documenting
very important issues in
architecture and in the world.
It started a year ago and
since then it's been going
from New York to Los Angeles to, I think,
San Francisco, Montreal, Geneva,
I don't know if I missed any cities.
But it's been making,
and it's already booked I
think for another year out
at the Chicago Architecture
biannual and other places.
So we're very privileged
and happy to have the exhibition here.
So thank you very much.
And also thank you to Julia
Jamrozik and Bruce Majkowski
and some of the students
for really taking the lead
in organizing this here as well.
So I'm just gonna do a quick introduction
of the three curators who are here.
Lori Brown is a Professor
at the Syracuse University
School of Architecture
and is co founder of ArchiteXX
and a Licensed Architect.
Her two books are Feminist Practices:
Interdisciplinary Approaches
to Women in Architecture,
which is an edited collection
of international women
designers and architects
that began as a traveling exhibition,
and Contested Spaces: Abortion
Clinics, Women's Shelters
and Hospitals which is
examining the impact
of legislation on highly
securitized spaces.
Her two current book projects include
Birthing Centers, Borders and Bodies
and co editing The Bloomsbury
Global Encyclopedia
of Women in Architecture.
In 2016 she received a
Beverly Willis Architecture
Foundation Leadership Award
for her work in increasing recognition
of gender inequities in
the building industry.
Sarah Rafson, in the center,
is an architectural writer,
editor, and curator who
founded Point Line Projects,
an editorial and curatorial agency
for architecture and design.
She was the 2017-18 Ann
Kalla Visiting Professor
at the Carnegie Mellon
University School of Architecture
where she is now teaching.
And she won the Columbia
University Buell Center
Oral History Prize for
her graduate research.
She currently serves on
the board of ArchiteXX
and has worked on exhibitions
at the Centre Pompidou at the MOMA
and has edited two books,
Parc de La Villette
and Builders, Housewives,
and the Construction of Modern Athens.
And finally, Roberta Washington.
She is the principal of her own practice,
Roberta Washington
Architects, PC since 1983.
She's designed and overseen
the design of schools,
housing projects, and cultural centers
including the African Burial
Ground Interpretive Center
in Lower Manhattan.
She holds a Batchelor
of Architecture degree
from Howard University
and a Master of Science and Architecture
from Columbia University.
Roberta is a past president
of the National Organization
of Minority Architects, NOMAs,
and a past New York City landmarks
preservation commissioner.
Since 1997 she has researched
and written about early
black women architects
with biographies appearing
in important books
like the Biographical Dictionary
of African American Architects.
Additionally Andrea
Merrett is also a curator
for this project.
She unfortunately is not
able to be here today.
But she also an incredible contributor
to the project as well.
So please help me welcome
Lori, Sarah, and Roberta.
(audience clapping)
- Thank you very much Joyce.
And we also wanna extend our
extreme gratitude to Joyce
and Julia, and Bruce, as well
as the students Sarah, Mike,
and Katie for their help in
installing the show downstairs.
And we're very thrilled to be here
and part we have some NISCA
funding that helping us travel
through New York state so
we're very excited to be able
to have one of our stops
be here in Buffalo.
Before we get started I want
to just highlight something
that we're currently having a
call for which ends May 31st.
Part of our mission is
to bring more awareness
around women's contributions
to the discipline
and so one of the things
we're doing in collaboration
with Dale Cohen is a
call for student films.
And we're asking students
who have either been taught
by a woman architect, a woman professor,
have worked for a woman in a design field,
who's been educated as an architect
to make a one to two minute film
about that person who's
been inspirational to you
and we're going to have
a screening of them
at the Architecture Film
Festival in New York City
in October and then we hope
to have this also travel
across the country and beyond.
So the call is global in scope.
We've had some very exciting feedback
across the world from this.
So please, we hope you'll be willing
or interested to contribute.
You have amazing faculty here
so this is our current call out.
So to get started.
Alright Sarah.
- Yeah, oh wait, I think I
have one of these things.
- Oh sorry, you do, you double do.
- I think I'm mic'd differently.
So I, thanks Lori and
thanks to all of you guys
for having us.
My name's Sarah Rafson.
I'm just gonna give you
an overview of the project
that you see downstairs
in the Hayes Hall atrium.
This exhibition, Now
What?! Advocacy, Activism,
and Alliances in American
Architecture Since 1968,
a mouth full.
It is really the first show
to document the five decades since 1968
through social movements
in the 20th Century
and how architecture and design
has been an important player
in advancing the causes
of these social movements.
Our exhibition tells
this little known history
revealing the links between
the U.S design community
and larger political movements.
And although there has
been some work done on
this specific components of this history,
and I think some of your faculty here,
looking at Despina you know she has done
a lot of work on pieces of it.
It's usually been done in silos,
like history of only women or
about gender or about race.
And our contribution is really
to take an overarching approach
that brings these histories together.
So you might ask, why now?
We started to notice
over the past few years
that there's been a new wave of activism
emerging in architecture
and design disciplines.
And they've been drawing
attention to critical issues
like race, class, gender, and sexuality.
But we realized that
these actions were happening for decades
and the new activists didn't
necessarily realize the depth,
the historical depth behind their actions.
And we also realized
that access to knowledge
about these histories
was widely inaccessible,
even to those people who were
motivated to seek them out.
So what we decided to do
was organize a project,
this exhibition, that was
about learning the many ways
that organizations and
professionals have advocated
for marginalized communities
throughout the country.
This is as much a project
about showing the history
as it is about learning.
So let me show you how it works.
We decided to organize a timeline
from 1968 until the present day.
And you'll see that there are
visible gaps in that history.
Gaps like these exist because
so much of the history
of grassroots activism
really remains to be written.
Among the missing in action,
as Robert will discuss,
are the black women architects who,
like African-American
architects in general,
have made only the faintest
indentation in history books.
Now what we're trying to
convey a broader picture
of the struggle for diversity and equity
in architecture nationwide
and so for that reason,
again, we used this
modular timeline format
to allow space for new
stories and contributions
to be added at each location
as the exhibition travels.
So between Los Angeles and
San Francisco for example,
we added over 50 new panels gathered
from visitors to the exhibition.
And I'll give you a sense of how
that actually works in a bit.
So we know there are a
lot of students, faculty,
and designers here in
Buffalo and western New York
that are working on this
topic so we're excited
to learn from you guys
about these pressing issues
and how these have evolved through time.
In fact I met somebody
who's writing the history
of the 50th anniversary of the school
so really your school's
history maps directly
on to the timeline downstairs.
(audience laughs)
But, I mean, aside from that other issues
that are pressing in
the region specifically,
whether that's conversation
about accessibility
or indigenous knowledge
or the legacy of the
Seneca Falls Convention
that's nearby, we're curious to learn
from you how that maps onto
this history of architecture.
So at the large table, what you see
in the middle of the
gallery, we have cards,
well here they're Post-its
so I hope you don't mind
the Post-it aesthetic,
but we're using these cards
that are color coded by theme
to guide your contributions
to the timeline.
So tell us about the
events, the organizations,
the exhibitions, the
publications, the classes,
the courses that you've taken,
that have shaped your understanding
of architectural activism.
And at the end of the
exhibition on June 1st,
we will review these suggestions
and commission writers,
perhaps some of yourselves,
to write a little blurb
about the topic, which we'll have not only
in future shows but also
in our online catalog.
So I'm gonna pass the mic to Roberta,
who's gonna be talking--
- Let's see here
- Oh yeah.
- I have to--
- Um, about the missing
- I can just move over.
- black women's voices that
she's been doing research on.
- Just gonna stand over here maybe.
Is it this one?
- I think so.
Oh maybe the other one, yes.
- Okay so the exhibit--
- Right up.
- Hm, sorry,
now I have two hands.
(all laugh)
So the exhibit is, as you've heard, deals
with much more than just
one particular facet
or one particular group of
individuals who are trying
to be recognized in
architecture but I'm looking
at just this group as, like an example,
let us say of, of the kinds of struggles
that any particular aspect
of architects might have to face.
So starting with black architects,
so this is about black
architects who are women
but to do that you have to
look at black women as part
of two groups that are under
represented and unseen usually.
And this is black architects
and it's women, right.
In terms of black architects, in general,
black architects are only about 2%
of the total number of
architects in the country.
Did it go up?
In terms of women, there
are about 450 black women
and they are only 0.2%
of all of the architects
in the country.
In terms of where we came from
or how black women evolved
into architects in this profession,
you'd have to look at where we were
when other architects
were getting their start.
Because black women and black men
were enslaved for a long period of time.
The first black architects,
unlike the first architects in general,
could only take place after
the Civil War, for instance.
And so in this timeline we're showing
that the Civil War happened.
Reconstruction took place
between 1868 and 76,
at which time Louise
Bethune started working,
who everyone here knows I'm sure,
but she started working in an
architect's office in 1876.
Robert Taylor, the first
black architect to graduate
from a school of architecture,
went to Tuskegee Institute
and helped with Booker T.
Washington set up a school
for black students in
architecture and as we know,
because we are here in
this country we do know,
that in terms of education for women
and for African-Americans,
there were restrictions
and there were quotas and so
it wasn't possible for women
or for African-Americans
to get the same kind
of education that was
available to white males.
The first black architect
opens his office in 1902
and the first black women works
in an architect's office in 1915.
And that's Ethel Madison Furman
who was the daughter of a contractor
and grew up in Richmond, Virginia
and you see in the photo on the left
that she is representing her father
at a conference of black contractors
at a bi-annual conference
of black contractors
at Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia.
But she worked, she went to New York,
in New York City she worked
for a black architect in 1915.
And she listed her occupation
as architect but this was all
before architecture
licensing came into being.
But this is the women who
designed more than 30 houses
for doctors, for teachers,
for important black people
of the time in Virginia.
And this is one of her projects
that is on the National,
the Register of Historic Projects.
A second woman who worked
before licensing came in
was a woman who did not work traditionally
as an architect but who
instead was an artist
who wanted to do both.
She went to Colombia University,
she's also from Virginia,
she studied art history and art teaching
at Colombia Teacher's College,
and went back to Petersburg, Virginia
and set up a school of architecture
at a traditionally black college there.
But her main, this is a
house that she designed,
which is also on the National
Registry of Historic Places
and is considered one
of the first houses done
in the international style.
But she was probably
best known for the fact
that she started a whole sector
in Sag Harbor, New York
for African-Americans.
She and her sister bought
land and parceled it out,
sold it to up and coming
African-Americans,
who then built their homes there.
And one of her hopes
was to design as many of
those homes as she could.
And she did design eight
at least and maybe more
but she is, I suppose,
best known for this house
and some other work that she
did in Petersburg, Virginia.
And then we look at what
happens after licensing.
And this is the first known
black woman to get licensed.
And this is Beverly Greene
and she was from Chicago and
she got licensed in 1942.
And she went to the
University of Illinois.
Oh yes, this is still on, yes, okay.
But she was politically connected
and she was a very active person
in terms of her interest in architecture
and she knew several black
architects of the time.
One of the things that she
did though was she worked
with a group of black
politicians and architects
from Chicago who were interested
in having a housing development done
on the south side of Chicago
for African-Americans.
And they actually proposed
this idea to the government
and even the location
before it was announced
that the city was going to do this.
And Beverly Greene was one of
the people who was involved
in the project and involved in the design.
She worked in several architects' offices,
including Roderick
O'Neal who was an early,
who was the second licensed
black architect in Chicago,
but she also worked
for Edward Durell Stone
and his office in was about 1948
and she worked in Marcel Breuer's office
and she was one of two women who worked
in his office between 1949 and 55.
Louise Harris Brown is also
a person who was licensed
in Illinois, who was from Kansas,
and went to school in Kansas.
But she got her interest in architecture
was actually related to a chance meeting
for a course that she had.
She went to Chicago to visit her brother
and he suggested that she take a course
that he'd heard about
that was being taught
by a newcomer Mies van der Rohe
and it was like a summer
course and she took this course
and it was about architecture
and after that she did go back to Kansas
and she got her license
and she got her degree
and eventually became interested enough
in the kind of work that
Mies van der Rohe did
that she also studied
structural engineering
and got a degree in
structural engineering.
And here we see her working in the office
of the main structural
engineer for Mies van der Rohe.
And this is an article
about her that was written
in a black periodical, Ebony Magazine,
that talks about her being
one of the few black women
who worked in a structural
engineer's office.
And one of the things
that she worked on is this project here
and the structural
engineer gave her credit
in a reference letter for the design,
the structural design, of this building
and several other of Mies
van der Rohe's buildings.
But this, but Louise Harris Brown decided
that she wanted to try work on her own
and she went to Brazil because she thought
that Brazil would be better
in terms of her being able
to find clients and work.
And it did turn out well for her.
This is the 50s, we're
moving fast doing it.
So this is Norma Sklarek, who
becomes the first black woman
to receive the AIA Fellowship
and the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award
and she was licensed in 1945,
which makes her perhaps the
third black woman licensed
as an architect.
And this is Henrietta
Harney from New York City,
who was also licensed in the 50s.
Norma though is the best known
of the black female architects.
She was very active,
she was active in various organizations.
And Norma and also the first
architect who I talked about,
Beverly Greene, got the kinds of projects
that they got in a lot of cases
because they were in organizations.
They were in organizations
that involved important, big architects.
Architectural firms that could hire them
and so they were able to get those jobs.
But Norma graduated from Columbia,
worked with an organizing called CANA
which was the Counsel for the Advancement
of the Negro in Architecture.
And then later left
New York for California
where she was able to work
on really large projects
and she worked for many
years until she retired
and working for these kind
of firms, large firms,
and she worked with two other women
in an architectural firm of her own.
So she got to experience both areas of it.
And during the 1960s there
were several other women
who got licensed, some of
them worked in agencies,
some of them had their own firms.
In the 70s there were women
who, women like Nada Williams,
who became J.C. Penny's store,
the typical store designer
for several of their stores
and was one of the first women,
black women or any women, to join the
Store Manufacturer's Marketing
Organization Association.
And one of the organizations
that was started
with black women was one
that was started in 1983.
And that was something that was
started by Garnett Covington
who was a licensed architect,
who became licensed in 1983 also
but who was Pratt's first
black female graduate
and also had graduated from Howard.
And this is just a sample of
the statement of purpose for
that organization which led
then to other organizations.
And by the 1990s of course
there were many women
in all states who, black
women, who were licensed
and some worked for themselves,
worked with their family,
worked with their husband.
There are also cases of people
who worked with their father.
And so architecture is spreading,
in terms of being seen as an occupation
that black women could tackle.
And so I think, in closing out we just say
that what the exhibit
tries to do is to show how
these architects, how the
black women architects
and others who were feeling
that they were left out
of the process and who were
looking for ways to relate
and to improve their situation,
how they came together.
And usually it was in organizations
which took them out of just the,
knowing just the people who
they normally associated with
and bought them into contact with others.
And I think that the
exhibit is a good place
to at least look at how black women,
but other groups of so called minorities
have made changes because they advocated
and they worked to make
sure it happened, okay.
So that's it, hello, hello.
- Great, so I'll just speak very briefly
about our theoretical framing
because it was important,
can I get the clicker, sorry,
because one of our inspirations
was Susana Torres exhibition
that opened in 1977 at the Brooklyn Museum
which was Women in American Architecture,
and one of the things
we were interested in
was really thinking about
and paying homage to the
role feminism has played
in architectural education and practice,
but also wanting to think about
and demonstrate the much larger umbrella
that feminism is engaging now
and has been for many decades.
So we're taking a different
approach intellectually
from the 1977 exhibition,
which is an intersectional approach.
So this was the 1977 exhibition
that opened at the Brooklyn Museum
which was incredibly important
for raising awareness
about women's contributions
to architecture
in the built environment.
It traveled widely across the country,
received incredible media attention,
both within our discipline
and main stream media outlets,
and it really helps show
that women are, were,
a part of the discipline.
And it also intersected at the time
with the women's movement,
which has been criticized
in some ways as a white,
middle-class movement.
So one of the things we were
really interested in was
to expand upon that and
think intersectionality.
And we're taking this term,
and there was a publication
with that exhibition as well,
we're borrowing the term
from Kimberle Crenshaw,
who's a legal scholar.
And she talks about the
issues around say 1970s,
more broadly second-wave
feminism, and she talks
about the vestiges of bias or domination
that is intrinsically negative frameworks
in which social power works to exclude
or marginalize those who are different.
The problem with identity
politics is not that it fails
to transcend difference,
as some critics may charge,
but rather the opposite,
that it frequently conflates
or ignores intergroup differences.
And one of the things she talks
about in terms of the failure of feminism,
especially from second-wave,
is that it fails,
the failure of feminism
to interrogate race means
that the resistance strategies
of feminism will often replicate
and reinforce the subordination
of people of color,
and the failure of antiracism
to interrogate patriarchy means often
that antiracism will frequently
reproduce the subordination of women.
So we were very interested in using
this as a platform to
think far more broadly
about the role feminism
has continued to play
and thinking about issued
around the environment,
gender identities, issues
of race, class, and gender.
So we are using this as our
theoretical frame in which
to gather information and
showcase it within the exhibition.
Additionally at the time
or around in the 80s,
Patricia Hill Collin has
also talked about the matrix
of domination which describes
an overall social organization
within which intersecting
oppressions originate,
develop, and are contained.
So it's important for us to think
about how feminism has evolved over time
and its influence on a much larger series
of issues of social justice.
Is that you?
- So I know many of you have passed
through the lobby downstairs, the atrium,
but some of you haven't.
So what we thought we'd do is try
to give you some highlights from the show,
a couple of through lines
for when you do visit.
Also, I don't know if you
notice, there's a lot there.
So that's kind of the point.
We're trying to show you
a really wide variety
of activist intentions so
that you can sort of find
what resonates with you.
We thought we'd go through the different,
the four themes that we have
running through the show
so that you can see
what resonates for you.
We start with advocacy, representations
academy, and workplace.
And we're each gonna kind of
narrate one strand for you.
So it's starting with Roberta.
There you go.
- Okay, Now What?!
addresses four major themes
in four colors throughout the gallery.
Every entry is, every entry
in the timeline is color coded by theme.
When you're adding to the
timeline, choose a color, a card,
with the color of the theme
your addition references.
The representation.
Representation discusses
the role of visibility.
We believe that who we see matters
and a series of examples
in the exhibition addresses
how public programming
and organizations have
played in representing,
mobilizing the profession.
We start with the 1968 American
Institute of Architects,
a convention, when American
Civil Rights leader
Whitney Young charged the profession
with thunderous silence in face
of pressing social issues of the time.
He challenged architects
to consciously seek out minority people
and foster their entry
into the profession.
Three years leader the
National Organization
of Minority Architects
was founded to do just that.
At the same time, women began to form
their own professional organizations
to overcome the discrimination they faced
within the discipline.
Although the profession
is more diverse today,
it is far from representing
the society it builds for.
During the 1970s, when women were fighting
for better professional status,
as a part of the Women's Movement,
architects of color organized themselves.
The Nation Organization of
Minority Architects, NOMA,
was founded in 1971 to champion diversity
within the profession.
As the Civil Rights Movement
challenged all barriers
to the full integration of
African-Americans into society,
advancement in the
professions became possible.
NOMA seized among the climate of the times
to increase the number
of minority architects
and I guess I need to just say here
that there were other
organizations before NOMA
that worked to challenge the status quo,
such as CANA which I
mentioned before which was
the Counsel for the Advancement
of the Negro in Architecture
and the National Technical Association
which was started in the 1930s.
However the contribution
of African-Americans
and other minorities to the
American built environment
is still underrepresented.
For example, as you saw
the history of black women
has never really truly been
documented in a sustained way
and that documentation
is just happening now.
But for black women, as you saw,
there are several organizations now
and several different approaches
to how to both encourage,
invite, seek out, and find
women who are struggling
to find a way to hang in and
to advance in the profession.
So I think that the exhibit,
in terms of representation,
you'll see that it's not just women,
it's not just black women,
that there are different
women and different types
of members of society who are
represented in this exhibit.
- So yeah, some of the examples you'll see
in the timeline is a series of brunches
by the Black Women in Architecture
in the Baltimore, Washington area
and more recently founded by Tiffany Brown
from the Detroit city, 400 Forward
which has been founded
by the Knight Foundation.
400 being the number of
licensed black women at the time
of her founding this and her
desire to increase that number.
So Lori's gonna talk a little bit
about advocacy through design.
- So in this category we
wanna include examples
about how architects have
merged their advocacy
with their design work.
So for example, the Architects'
Resistance was organized,
an architecture racism
protest accusing SOM
of supporting the
oppressive apartheid regime
in South Africa through it's completion
of a 51 story tower in Johannesburg.
In Architecture in the
Nuclear Arms Race 1969,
the Architects' Resistance
opposed a new fallout
shelter building program
for architects and educators sponsored
by the Department of Defense
and endorsed by AIA leadership.
Several years later, in
1981, Architects, Designers,
and Planners for Social Responsibility
was founded as a voice for architects
and design professionals to
oppose the threat of nuclear war
and the militarization of
the Reagan administration.
And the Reagan administration,
sorry, a bit of misspeak.
Their work continues today.
As of 2018 they have declared victory
when the AIA amended their code of ethics
to meet ADPSR's demand
that the profession prohibit
intentional violation
of human rights by design,
especially the design
of execution chambers
and spaces for solitary confinement.
In 1969, the Stonewall Riots
that followed a police raid
of the New York City Stonewall Inn
in New York City is
considered by many the start
of the modern fight for the
LGBTQIA rights in the U.S.
and many architects and
designers were involved
with this fight, particularly
after the AIDs crisis
unintentionally outed so many
who had remained closeted
in their design offices.
The Organization of Lesbian
and Gay Architects organized
in 1994 and founded the
first Design Pride event.
The group also created the
first map of LGBTQ spaces
in New York, which eventually catalyzed
in the site's recognition
of a historic landmark.
We feature a couple of films
by Housing Works History,
an oral history project by Gavin Browning
who interviewed the architects
who worked with ACT UP
to provide housing for
AIDs victims in the city.
We also showcase work by QSAPP,
a group of students at
Columbia University,
who explore contemporary queer topics
and their relationships
to the built environment
through theory and practice.
Their exhibition, Coded
Plumbing, responded
to the HB2 bathroom bill in North Carolina
just a few years ago as
well as in nine other states
by developing new restroom
guideline standards.
In 1973, Noel Phyllis Birkby
began to teach a series
of workshops on women's
fantasy environments,
with the desire to answer the question,
what environments would women create
and how would women
organize these environments
if they had carte blanche to do so?
This design exercise was an extension
of the women's liberation movement.
In the 1990s two Yale
students Amy Landesberg
and Lisa Quatrale founded Liquid Inc.,
a practice that challenged
patriarchal norms
of design through body-minded
architecture gestures
and highly influenced by
Jennifer Bloomer, I would add.
More recently Feminist
Architectural Collaborative,
co founded by none other than
a UB alum Gabrielle Printz
has grappled with the
profession's affiliation
with wealth, power, and
privilege while claiming space
for the female body in the manmade world.
Doctor Alyssa Mount Peasant's
roadside marker series
is a personal archive
that considers the spacial implications
of memorial markers and political signage.
As a Tuscarora Scholar
of Native American and Indigenous Studies
at the University of Buffalo,
Doctor Mount Peasant's travel
draws her along the highways
and back roads of New York State,
which has been contested
space for over 200 years
and her peoples' homeland for much longer.
- Great, and I'm gonna go through some
of the examples from the
academy that we have here.
Starting in 1968, which was a big year
for student movements and protests
and that includes architecture
and design students as well.
So as you see here, Columbia
University's Graduate School
of Planning, Preservation,
and Architecture was on strike
and one of the outcomes of this protest
was to welcome minority
students into the school.
And a short lived experiment
which Sharon Sutton chronicles
in her recently published book,
When Ivory Towers Were Black.
In 1975 seven women planners
and architects resolved
to merge their feminist values
with their design education.
And what they did was they founded
this Women's School of
Planning and Architecture.
Has anyone heard of that before?
(crowd murmuring)
I have one.
(Lori laughs)
Okay, when I was a student I
found this pretty inspiring
that actually there could be a separate,
that instead of women entering
into a institution defined by men,
what would it look like to
define a school for and by women?
So this was a space for feminist action
and a vision of spacial
and environmental design
that was a departure
from design professions
that existed before hand.
The group disbanded after
four summer sessions
but their impact lingered in
institutions across the country
because a number of these women,
which you know, you'll see downstairs,
ended up teaching in
different institutions,
like Pratt, USC, NJIT,
and so you'll see a couple
of their studios in the boards below.
I'm gonna talk also about workplace,
how organizations have
fought against employment
and workplace discrimination
and expanded definitions of practice.
This is probably an unfamiliar
image for many of you.
It was for me as well until I did research
into an archive called
the International Archive
of Women in Architecture.
What you see here is the catalog
by a little known collective from Chicago
called the CARYATIDS, that
stands for, get ready,
Chicks in Architecture Refuse to Yield
To Atavistic Thinking
in Design and Society.
(audience laughing)
CARYATIDS.
This is a collective of
over 70 Chicago architects,
not just women, and it
was founded in 1992.
This is the catalog of
their only exhibition,
More Than the Sum of Our Body Parts,
which challenged the AIA
to address the wage gap,
the glass ceiling, family leave policies,
gender bias and treatment on the job,
sexual harassment in the workplace,
family workplace issues,
and attrition rates.
And I'm quoting from the catalog there.
Many of you know that
those are still issues
that are very much present
today over 20 years later.
In a similar spirit, in 2013,
13 architects founded
the Architecture Lobby
to address their frustrations
of the profession of architecture.
How hard architects and designers
worked for little reward,
the debt taken on during school,
projects that rarely had social relevance,
and firms that did not
pay interns overtime,
et cetera, et cetera.
I'm again quoting from them.
The organization continues to grow
with chapters across country.
Is there one in Buffalo yet?
No.
This is, these are
chapters that exist that,
like architects, try to
blend professional practice
and student organizations
so I'd encourage you
look into what they do.
But, I mean, these ideas
clearly resonate here
because, as we know, this
is around the same time
that in Buffalo a number of practitioners
and academics convened in 2012
to reconsider models of
architecture practice.
Beyond Patronage, organized
in part by Joyce Hwang,
a symposium, now a book that
you'll also see downstairs
if you haven read it already,
that rethinks typical hierarchies
between those in power
and those in service.
So we have many more
examples for you downstairs,
these are just a few.
But we are really thrilled
to be joined by an activist
who holds lots of these values
in close personal
practice, Robert T. Coles.
- Thanks, thanks.
So I'd like to introduce him to you.
I don't know if you know that
you have living in Buffalo
an architect who has spent
probably his life advocating
for many of the issues that we've talked
about here today and that
are part of the exhibit.
He is, this is an article
actually about him,
when the house that he designed,
which is on Hobart Parkway--
- [Audience Member] Humble Parkway.
- Humble Parkway,
was declared a landmark by the,
is this Federal landmark right?
- [Audience Member] National, right?
- National landmark rather, yes.
So this article just
talks about his house,
the design, and how he did it.
But his practice has been over the years,
up until recently, a practice
which really covered many
of the aspects of what's
necessary in terms
of so called minority architects
to realize in terms of how to get ahead.
He is, I think, an activist,
a person who's also a teacher
and has been a teacher,
and who's practice has been representative
of what happens when
African-Americans really organize
and really understand how the
game, so called, is played.
I'd like to ask him to
speak on a couple of issues.
Not, it's not gonna be a long talk,
but he has I think
something that is important
to say in terms of the issues
that our exhibit addresses.
So Robert, if you can come forward.
Maybe I'll just do this.
But one of the things that's
most interesting, I think,
about his career is that he was one
of the few black architects
who was present at the AIA
when Whitney Young delivered his address
that we've alluded to, both in the exhibit
and here in our talks.
And so maybe Robert, that a place
to start in terms of talking
about your reaction to that speech.
- So you can just--
- [Robert] Good afternoon.
- It's okay.
- I'm sitting in this wheelchair,
not because I want to
but because I have to.
I have Alzheimers coupled
with having had a stroke a year ago
and so I am basically unable to walk
and I have to depend upon
other means of transportation.
One of those means of
transportation was a JITNEY
that was supposed to get
me here a half an hour ago.
(audience laughs)
But uh (chuckles) at
least me made it so far.
I'd like to maybe start
out with a commercial.
I have in the last---
- You know you can put this down.
- Alright I will.
- You don't need to hold it.
- I have in the last several
years produced several items
which are of interest to you I think.
One is a book which is a ...
- The book is part of the exhibit.
- The book is, yeah there's a book
Architecture and Advocacy
(audience chuckles)
and I produced it while
I was in a nursing home
about a mile from here.
The book basically tells about
my career as an architect
and I think you might find it interesting.
The other is a book that
I'm working on right now
which is about the 100
African-American Fellows of the AIA.
There are 100 of us and I thought
that would be very interesting
if people found out
about who we are.
It, you can circulate that around.
By the way, that's my wife Sylvia
who's holding up the books
and so forth.
(audience laughs)
Sylvia has been my partner
for 66 years. (laughs)
We celebrated our 60--
(audience applauding)
We celebrated our 66th anniversary
on March 28th of this year.
And she has been my partner
in all my different ventures and so forth.
Let me tell you about by advocacy.
I've often thought of myself
as an architect by day
and an advocate by
night but I've found out
that those two things
were not separate, no.
I looked at the world as I see it
and I think I would like
to make changes in it
and so in my career as an
architect I basically have tried
to bring about as many changes as I could.
About 20 years ago I was
walking through my neighborhood
and I saw a construction being developed
by a group of volunteers
and I was concerned
about what they were doing.
As they worked on
what they thought was a teenage center
in my prodigious college neighborhood.
About a week later I came by and I noticed
that all the work had stopped
and I couldn't figure out
what was going on and I talked to the city
and they said this group of people
who were working on a project,
although they were well-meaning,
essentially they were not
doing it in accordance
with the codes of the city.
And I said, there is a need
for perhaps an organization
that could help people who
are interested in development.
And so out of that incident I created the
Community Planning Assistance
Center of Western New York.
It was a community design center
that assisted community groups
and their design problems
and they created a number of projects
in Buffalo and western New York.
The other thing that I was involved in was
what happened in the 70s,
this was very disturbing.
Cities were burning,
there were riots in Newark
and Los Angeles and even in Rochester.
And I was concerned about what
might happen here in Buffalo.
And so we got together and
created an organization
called the Eastside
Community Organization.
And we deiced to bring
Saul Alinsky to Buffalo
to see if he could
communicate with the community
and get the community to
communicate with themselves
to create an organization
that could stem the violence
that raised during the riots.
We created the organization called BUILD.
BUILD was created by Alinsky
and the riots of 1967,
they took place in Buffalo,
there was very little negative
activity in the community.
The community was talking to itself
and that was very important.
I also was concerned
about this University,
where it was going.
And so in 1964 the state of New York
created the State University of New York.
The state of New York created it
and the university was looking to expand
from the north campus
and the south campus.
And some of us felt that the idea was nice
and would be on the waterfront.
And so in 1964 we began
to develop an organization
called a Committee for a River University
that tried to get the university
to build on the waterfront of Buffalo.
We thought it would have been
an ideal thing to happen.
There was a lot of
dialogue that took place
where we got into what
the university could be
and what its responsibility
was to the community.
But we lost that battle
and we did not succeed
in getting the university
to build on the waterfront.
However as we look at
what's going to happen,
at what is happening in downtown it may be
that we created dialogue
that made it possible
for the university to move into the city
and be a part of this city,
which we think is very, very important
and so the Community
for a River University,
although not successful, we think was able
to develop a dialogue with the city
and create something that was worthwhile.
Now with regard to Roberta Washington.
I've known Roberta for about 20 years.
I had her speak at the Carnegie Mellon
when I was teaching
there and I also worked
with her on a project in
New York City, PS-233,
was one of the first joint ventures
that was very successful
and I think it did a lot
of good for the community.
Let me address more
definitely my participation
in the Whitney Young address in 1968.
Yes I was there in Portland
when Whitney Young spoke.
There were about 4000 people there.
There were probably only seven
or eight African-Americans architects.
It was a peaceful day and nobody thought
that Whitney Young would
speak the way he did
but he challenged the
profession to do something
with regard to the society
that it had at that time.
As you know, architects tended
to be inward I think how many have been,
I hope you guys aren't those.
(audience laughs)
But ...
I was particularly interested in
that I had gone to school
at University of Minnesota
with Whitney Young.
He was in Saint Paul as
head of the Urban League
and I felt it was very interesting
that he was gonna be
speaking to the architects.
When I listened to him with this group
of maybe 4000 architects,
you could hear almost a pin drop
as he challenged the profession
to be much more involved in the city
and the urban crisis that we were facing.
I met also while I was
there, Charles Kahn,
who became the Dean at
the University of Kansas
and Charles was very much interested in
what Whitney Young said and
Charles Kahn invited me to go
to the University of Kansas,
as well as Whitney Young,
and also Charles McAfee.
And so the three of us spent
about two weeks together
at the University of Kansas
where we worked on a project
which had urban connotations.
Charles Kahn was a gradate
of University of Nebraska.
He practiced in Wichita, Kansas
and he's still practicing today.
In fact he has two daughters
at home who are both FAIAs.
A very interesting family.
While I was at Kansas,
Charles Kahn invited me
to essentially become
the Langston Hughes Professor
of Architecture at Kansas.
Langston Hughes was born
in Kansas, in Lawrence,
and actually spent about
9 years of his life there.
And every year they had a professorship
that rotates between the various schools
at the University of Kansas and one year,
the year about that I was there, they,
the scholarship rotated to
the School of Architecture
and so I was asked to be
Professor of Architecture.
It was very interesting at Kansas.
I looked at what was going on there.
I would go into the University of Kansas
about two or three times a
year and when I was there
I noticed that things were
changing in architecture.
At that time there were probably
about 2500 African-Americans
in practice who were in a profession.
I think there were probably
about 5000 females at that time.
And I noticed that the number
of African-Americans was
diminishing in the profession.
And I was very much concerned about that.
And this was a time
when we had Richard Nixon as the President
and the things that were
going on in the White House,
Nixon actually banned, put
a ban on the development
of housing, low-income
housing, in the profession.
And low-income houses were many of us
who were practicing who
where African-Americans
were involved in.
So as we looked at what
was going on in the school
and also what was going
on in the profession,
I wrote a paper which
became famous. (chuckles)
And that was Black Architects:
An Endangered Species.
I circulated that paper
to an number of people
and it was published as an editorial
in the Progress of Architecture
and it probably made me
famous as an architect.
I do practice as an architect
or I did practice in Buffalo
and in the eastern United States.
I did probably 50 buildings
that are here in Buffalo and the country.
AUB we did the Physical Education Complex.
And we have projects in New
York City, one with Roberta.
We've also done work in
Washington providence
and also Dallas, Texas.
Our profession's been
very satisfying for me.
And my practice, though
it is not active now,
has been very satisfying
and it's something
that I think young people
need to think about.
You can make a different really
and it's important you think about that.
I was reading the New York Times today
and I saw an advertisement
which was the words of Jackie Robinson.
"The impact that you can
make is really dependent
"upon the impact that you
can make upon others."
And I think it's something
that you can think
about as you go through your life.
I'll be 90 at my next birthday
and it's been a very satisfying life.
If anybody would like to
see any of my buildings,
they're cataloged in the book
that I hope you will buy.
(all laugh)
It's available through Amazon.
And also I think that the last building,
I did was probably my most satisfying.
The first and the last building.
The first was the John F.
Kennedy Recreation Center
which is located in downtown Buffalo.
It was my thesis project as a student
while I was a rising student at MIT
that became a real project.
And it's located on
Cedar Street in Buffalo.
The other project is
the Merriweather Library
which is located on Utica and Jefferson.
And if you wanna find it,
if you just go down Main
Street toward downtown,
when you get to the Utica
Rapid Transit Station,
which is also my design,
(audience laughs)
hang a left and go two
blocks and you'll see one
of the most interesting
buildings in Buffalo.
(audience laughs)
It's the Franklin Merriweather Library.
Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- Is it okay if I take your chair away?
- What?
- I'll take your chair
away if that's okay?
- Do you wanna sit here?
- No I'll just move down.
(panel members chattering)
- [Robert] Thank you.
- What's that? Yeah you can sit here.
- Oh okay, great.
- I'm just gonna sit these here.
- Well thank you so much Robert
for sharing your thoughts
with us and thank you to the speakers
and to the curators for
sharing the exhibition with us.
We are, we have a just
a few minutes I think,
we're running a little bit late,
I don't know how long you wanna go on for.
So Beth and I can start
some questions for the group
and we can also invite some questions
from the audience after maybe
a couple of questions here.
Do you wanna start?
- Okay sure, sure, first of
all, I'd like to thank all
of the curators of the
exhibit for a wonderful,
wonderful display that is just chock full
of information and resources.
And so for somebody who's
my age its, in a way,
like walking down memory
lane on the one hand
and on the other hands it's learning all
about some new change agents.
And so I found it particularly compelling
and I wanna thank you for all of the work
that went into this.
I have one question for you
that I'm so happy to see
that you started the exhibit
with the Whitney Young
1968 speech to the AIA
and if you, Roberta talked
a little bit about the fact
that he was speaking with
this group of architects
and this group was really
representing all architects
at the time, and he told them
that they were distinguished
by their thunderous silence
and complete irrelevance.
And so when you think about those words,
that can hit you hard.
Those are big insults.
If Young were giving a
similar speech today,
to whom do you think he
would want to be speaking,
in which areas of design would
he find thunderous silence
and complete irrelevance,
and what would be the diversity issues
that he might be wanting to address today?
So any, this can go to any of you.
And you can answer part or all.
(panel chuckles)
Roberta, you're a stout heart.
- I think he could probably
speak to the same group.
Some things changed but not
as much as I think could have.
One example of something that changed,
is that as a result of that
the AIA made some changes
and they did institute a scholarship fund
and they looked for ways to incorporate
to bring more black architects
into the organization, per say.
But I think in terms of the
position of black architects
in the profession, that there're
still issues of inequality.
But I'm not sure that those are all things
that can only be addressed by the AIA,
I think that there are
a lot of other channels
that also need to be looked at.
So I think that his talk was relevant then
and could still have some meaning now.
But I think that so much
has changed since then
that architects are
looking for additional ways
to make that dream of
Whitney Young's come true.
- I think for me one of the
things that's interesting,
even kind of thinking
across our generations
who are part of the curatorial team,
is I would take a far harder
line and say, in some ways,
so little has changed, in that
it's incredibly frustrating
that more has not happened
since that thunderous silence
and one of the things
I find really exciting
about the content in
probably post 2000 content is
that there's so much energy and vitality
from the kind of younger
generations moving upward
and that's where I think the
real potential for change lies.
Not to say all of us in this room aren't,
like on the academic side aren't,
and the professional side
aren't a part of that,
but I think the energy and the push
from those who are in school
or who have recently graduated is, for me,
quite hopeful because
it's not gonna happen,
it has not happened at
the institutional level
from our profession.
It's gonna have to come from the academy
and from recent graduates.
And I think that, to me, we see
that sprinkled history through
where these things happen,
it's kind of a grassroots, bottom up,
that then the AIA or professional
organization then has to,
at some point, respond to.
So I take a much more hard-line stance
and want far more
radical change to happen.
And I think he would be arguing,
in some ways, quite the
same speech as he was then.
When we look at the income disparity,
racial disparity across this
country, across the globe,
like there are some significant
things our discipline needs
to be attacking and engaging
and being a part of those conversations
and we're not there
enough from where I sit.
- Yeah, I echo that cautious optimism.
I mean I guess that's
where our title came from.
It's Now What?! with a question
mark, exclamation point
because in some ways
we're throwing it back
to the audience to talk about what's next
but also to talk about how
these things kind of
come up again and again.
You know, now what?
The same issues.
And I would have said at the
beginning of this exhibition
that, of starting the exhibition project,
that it is the young
activities who are starting
to address things like the
boarder wall, immigration,
homelessness, abortion,
I mean, this is part of Lori's or sort of,
it is now that we're starting to take on,
we're starting to close those areas
where there is thunderous silence.
But in the process of this
research, when we find out these,
you know, organizations like
ADPSR in 1981 are starting
to campaign against nuclear
arms, then I see that there,
you know, it's nice when we sort of see
these groups taking up issues
that we really should
be doing more on today.
The childbirth studio that was happening
in 1977 is still radical today.
- So I just turned it off.
- So before I pass the
microphone to a few people
in the audience, I'm curious
if you could talk a little
about this timeline
format of the exhibition?
I think it's really
compelling that you see it
in a timeline, although oftentimes
when one sees a timeline,
you think of it as sort of announcements,
like this happened and
this happened and so forth.
Could you talk about
how, like what importance
that format has for the
way you want the project
to be perceived?
- Let Sarah go here.
- Yeah, I'm happy to pick that up
and then I'm sure these two can chime in.
We started with,
we went through a lot
of different iterations
but the timeline felt appropriate
because you can find
yourself in a timeline.
And that's what we really
want visitors to experience
when they go into the gallery
is you see your birth year
or the year you graduated or the year
that something that you did happened.
And you sort of look for
yourself in that timeline.
We really need this to be
a participatory exercise
because of how many gaps
you'll see when you go down.
So that was one format.
Also just to help us in that exercise
of breaking down silos between movements.
To look at how many things
were happening on top of one another
but might not have been
necessarily interacting
with each other at the same time.
- And I think it was also important for us
to historisize what was happening
in the broader
socio-political environment.
And to understand that architecture is,
in some ways, responding,
although it may be slowly sometimes
and in few occasions quite quickly,
but that to understand
that within a larger frame
and trajectory so that we're
not operating in this vacuum.
But actually there's been a
lot of things over the course
of 50 years and beyond,
that we have been thinking
about and responding to.
But to prioritize some of the key things
that were happening chronologically
was really important as,
for us but also for people
who are participating
in reading the exhibition as well.
- And I think that the
timeline format makes
it easier for observers or people
like who just are gonna
see it for the first time
to be able to place events
and maybe to notice
that events are missing.
Because you may know of
something that happened
and you know it happened
at a particular time
and when you get to that
timeline year, it's not there
and so I think that
having it chronological
in that manner makes it, makes it easier
to trigger your own
thoughts and gives you more
to add to the exhibit.
Because the exhibit has as one of its aims
to pick up ideas and information
from people who are seeing--
- You're off.
- Oh, so maybe it is off.
Okay, sorry.
(audience laughing)
So yeah, so it makes it
easier to people to contribute
to the exhibit because
it gives you a focus
in terms of a period and
you may know of things
that happened that you're expecting
to see in an exhibit like
this that aren't there
and seeing the timeline
then triggers that memory
and makes it possible for you
to make your own contribution,
which in turn then makes the
exhibit better in several ways,
including making it more relevant
to observers and people who see it.
So I that the timeline works for that.
- Alright, again, could
you just expand, oh sorry.
(panel murmuring)
Could you just expand on
how people contribute?
I know you've explained it in your talk
but I think emphasizing
that one more time
might be really helpful.
- Can you just pass that?
- There are strips,
oh I already saw one in--
- Yes, okay go ahead.
- So there are colored strips
that represent categories,
various categories of the exhibit.
And so if you see something
and you want to make a comment,
oh here, you can take one these strips
that represents the
section or the category
that you want to comment about.
So either you can ask a question,
you can suggest something
that should be there that's not there,
you can just give your
thought about something
that is there.
So it's a way to make the
exhibit more interactive and to--
- These are on the tables?
- Yes, right.
- Okay.
- And so we're able from
city to city to pick up ideas
and information about what's happening in
that particular area or
what people in that area,
you know, think of the exhibit
and how they would respond
and how they respond.
And then it makes it the
exhibit something that grows
and changes and that's
like a living organism.
- Yeah and don't be shy if you don't think
you have the full citation,
the full idea, the full name.
Whatever it is.
I mean, it's our job as curators
and we have curatorial
advisers and researchers
that we work with to really
dig into those deeper.
You're gonna provoke us to
look into a certain direction.
And that's really important.
We don't know the whole story.
We know there are a lot of
grassroots stories out there,
a lot of stories that we
just heard, Robert, from you.
In particular, I mean,
just half of the things
you said we didn't have on there
so I guess that you guys have to race down
and add those
(audience laughs)
on the Post-it notes to the timeline
so we can make this a bit more complete.
- The panels can probably
take a couple of questions,
one or two questions.
There is the exhibition opening
which is happening downstairs afterwards.
There's a reception with food
that Julia has organized as well.
But if anyone has a couple,
one or two questions now?
Despina?
No.
(all laughing)
Oh Julia.
No pressure.
(panel laughs)
- So this is a big question.
So you don't have to,
you can just take a little slice of it.
But ...
I know that the focus is on the U.S.
but I just wondered if you
wanted to saw a few words
about sort of the bigger global picture
since today advocacy is so intertwined
with a global perspective.
And it was at that time too.
And so, you know, how you parse that
or bring that into the exhibition,
even though again, you know,
it's focused on the U.S.
- Thanks, we had to make
a curatorial decision
to limit it to North America.
Although we are in conversation
with places in South America
and in the U.K. for it to travel
and it's gone to Montreal
where content specific
to Canada has been generated
and we're in conversation
about how do we now include
that, what does that look like?
But we realized in part,
and not that we wanted,
we don't want to operate in a vacuum
but we also realized if we
took on the whole global scope
that this would never finish.
We would never actually
get to have the exhibit
because it's so daunting to think about
and I think in various ways,
I know at least some of
my own work is dealing
with more of global intersections
and women's contributions
but I think it was
really important to think
about the specificity of North America
because we were trying
to really engage the,
our national community and audience.
So it's something that we wrestle with,
in how do you think about scale
within such a large curatorial structure?
And it was really, in some ways,
a matter of how do we get
this done in a certain amount of time?
So part of it was really logistical.
And even in our chronology
we don't reference things
beyond the kind of North American context.
And so that in some ways can
be very easily a critique,
I think, of the kind of limitation
that we put on ourselves,
kind of, from many perspectives.
- But also we thought it was important
to have some specificity
in terms of the policies,
organizations, and, you know, framework
that happens within a country
that is sort of specific.
And you know, when we
talk about, you know,
which publications do we include,
we talked about publishers
based in the U.S.
but, you know, a number of
scholars published elsewhere
and they might not be visible.
But when we talk about the
ADA passing or a certain,
you know, AIA policy
or something like that,
those things are very
national specific or,
you know, specific to the U.S.
and we thought we could address
them more specifically
by limiting the scope.
- I agree.
(panel laughs)
I think that in terms of whether
something is very specific
or not, especially whether
we do it in several countries
or other countries, it
really depends on how,
what you can do.
I think that what you do
is based on what you know.
And that yes, there are issues
in other countries all over the world.
But maybe to get it right we
should start with our part,
our corner of the world
and then expand from there.
So I think that there
may be people working
in other countries who
are doing similar kind
of explorations of these same issues.
But I think that we
have to start somewhere
and maybe starting where you are
and going out from there is good.
I once gave a talk, I
was invited to Germany,
to Berlin, to do a talk
about, what was it?
It was architecture,
minorities in architecture.
And at first I was afraid
to go because the whole idea
of I don't know anything
about Germany and how can,
and they were having a
conference about minorities
in architecture and I was
trying to figure out like
what would that be?
And as it turned out there were people
from other countries who felt like,
who were minorities in Berlin, in Germany
and so they had issues.
And they could relate, you know.
And when they told their
stories of discrimination
and what they felt in terms
of how difficult it was for
them to work in Germany because
they were from other places,
it was the same story basically, right?
So I think that there, yes there are cases
where we're very similar
but I think that you have
to be from there to tell your story.
That's what I think so.
(panel murmuring)
- And we went over but
there is food at the end so.
(audience laughs)
- Hi, I'm really excited to
see the exhibition downstairs
but I'm wondering, who would
be your ideal audience?
Right now it's a bunch of architects.
Who would be your ideal audience?
- I'll speak for myself.
I think there are two ideal audiences.
I think there's the person who had no idea
that architecture had any
social relevance at all
and that has no
(audience laughs)
basic understanding of
what an architect can be.
And then there's the also,
the architect, you know,
the architecture student is
a really important audience
because I think, even if
we're steeped in this culture,
we have such a limited understanding
of what the history of our discipline is.
So I think that both of those audiences
at the same time are
super important to me.
- I'd agree.
- And I think also the audience
could be people who do think
that they know it all.
(all laughing)
And who are then
confronted with some facts.
Or some issues that they
had never thought of.
So, but of course those people
would be less likely to come
because they think
they know it all.
(audience laughs)
But it would be good if they did.
- Good point, can I say
something about that?
I actually think what
you're saying is right on
because I think Beth and I,
we were just talking earlier
about how, you know,
we think we know a lot
about the history of women in architecture
but we actually don't when you look,
or about diversity of architecture,
when we looked at this exhibition
we were kind of astounded by
a lot of the things that we,
so I think it's an
incredible resource actually
for the students here to,
you know, just go down there
and spend time looking at, you know,
spend one day looking
at one panel (laughs)
and then move the next
day to the next panel.
It's actually kind of
incredible all the, kind of,
amount of information that's
represented down there.
- I mean one of our goals
in curricular intervention.
So it's not just that you
go and you see these things
but we really, this will become a book,
we want to intervene in bibliographies,
we want to expand who
students are exposed to.
So it's, you know,
there's a multi faceted,
I would say, purpose of, or
inspiration for the project.
But in order for people to become aware
they have to also learn about it
and it has to become mainstreamed
within architecture education.
So that's also one of the
reasons it's important
that this does intersect
in schools of architecture
as well as beyond is so
that people gain exposure
but then it become embedded
in bibliographies eventually.
- So perhaps all of you
have someone in mind
who you think might be,
who might benefit from this show.
Whether they're an architect or not
and you can bring them and
say, maybe it's a relative
who never really understood what you did,
and you can bring them and show
that what you do really does have meaning
outside of the field.
We think that, you know,
using this also as a personal
device is really important.
- Great, I think with that
we should probably wrap it up up here
and go downstairs to see the
exhibition and enjoy the food.
And you can certainly
talk with the curators
with more questions downstairs.
So thank you everyone for coming.
(audience applauding)
(gentle music)
