The Invisible Women of Architecture Chrissie Holligon

The Invisible Women of Architecture

Chrissie Holligon Lower Sixth

Throughout history there has been a misrepresentation of women in architecture. Mainstream architectural history is predominately credited to men. For example, all the architects that I have found to be prevalent in history and whom I have been led to through mainstream research, such as Imhotep and Filippo Brunelleschi, are men. All that architectural history talks about is great men and great buildings, where are the great women?

Early female architects were presented as objects of curiosity (or ridicule) or as lone pioneers. The first known woman architect was Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham (1632–1705) and the design of the 1670’s Weston Hall in Staffordshire was attributed to her. However, historically, often when buildings were attributed to a female architect, phrases such as ‘credited with the design’ subtly erase their authorship. This phrasing of them being ‘credited’ suggests that the authorship of their work is an honour given to them by someone else (probably a man), rather than something they automatically receive and is their right.

The denial of proper authorship leaves young women and students without role models and makes them think that women are absent from the profession. There is a lack of scholarship, research and published books on the work of women architects. Consequently, this makes it nearly impossible to upload a woman’s profile to Wikipedia as there is insufficient female authored research credited by universities. This means that many profiles are deleted, further reducing the recording of women’s contribution to the history of architecture. This inequality is still prevalent in the modern day. In a 2020 report by the ARB,

Throughout history right up to the 21st century, prominent architectural awards are often given to the male half of equal architectural partners. An example of this is the 2013 Gottfried Semper Architekturpreis award which was initially awarded to Matthias Sauerbrauch of Sauerbrauch and Hutton alone, and not to Louisa Hutton who was his equal founding partner. This reflects how the women are often overlooked in favour of their male equivalent. This decision was later reversed after Sauerbrauch objected. Another example of the exclusion of women from architecture is in 2014: Patty Hopkins (the co–founder of Hopkins architects) was controversially cropped out of an image with her husband during the promotion of the BBC documentary ‘The Brits who built the modern world’. This is an example where the woman has been erased in favour of the recognised man who is closest to her, in this case her husband and partner.

Early female architects were presented as objects of curiosity.

Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham

70.4% of architects were found to be male, with only 29.6% female. However, figures from university admissions organisation UCAS revealed that the percentage of female students starting architecture undergraduate courses in October 2021 was the highest ever, at 51.5%. Whilst encouraging, this raises the obvious concern about the drop off of women mid-career which is often brought about by the fact that the long hours expected at many practices means that architecture and childcare are just not compatible. A survey by Dezeen of the world’s biggest one hundred architecture firms reveals that only three are led by women and only two have management teams that are more than 50% female. The survey found that women occupy just 10% of the highest-ranking jobs at the world’s leading architecture

firms, and 16 firms have no women in any senior positions. This means that only one in ten of the top roles at the top 100 biggest international firms are occupied by women, and most of these are administrative or CEO roles rather than lead designer positions.

Often the most common name to arise when considering female architects is Dame Zaha Hadid. Born in Iraq in 1950, she died in Florida aged 65 in 2016 and is known for her radical designs. In 2004, she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1983, Hadid gained international recognition through her winning entry for The Peak, a leisure centre in Hong Kong. For this, Hadid designed a ‘horizontal skyscraper’ at a dynamic diagonal down the hillside. Inspired by Kazimir Malevich and the Suprematists, her aggressive geometric designs are characterised by a sense of movement, fragmentation and instability. This led her to be classed as a ‘deconstructivist’. Hadid’s designs were often too radical to be built, but some of her designs were exhibited as works of art in major museums. Other examples of Hadid’s notable works are the London Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 Olympic and the Jockey Club Innovation Tower for Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her fluid design for the Heydar Aliyev Centre, a cultural centre in Azerbaijan, won the London Design Museum’s design of the year in 2014 – making her the first woman to do so. After a sudden death of a heart attack, Hadid left 36 projects unfinished, including the 2022 World Cup stadium. She received the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, the RIBA’s highest honour in 2016 and was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012.

Historically, women have been underrepresented in the profession and when they did design a significant project, they were still not always given the credit as deserved. Today, the position has changed in that there is significantly more equal representation at the entry level; however, be it for social reasons or a continuing resistance to structural change, there continues to be a major imbalance at the senior level within the industry. One can only hope that the next generation are able to shatter this glass ceiling.