WeToo

#WeToo Preface by Joan Ockman

The symposium at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design that gave rise to this book, “[RE]Form: The Framework, Fallout, and Future of Women in Design,” took place in April 2017. As it turned out, it was a pivotal moment for feminism. Six months earlier the first female candidate for the United States presidency had lost to an opponent who not only was unqualified for the job by any conventional standards but, by his own admission in a videotape that surfaced a month before the election, was a sexual predator. A year later, six months after the symposium at Penn, the #MeToo movement was born when, following revelations about the abusive behavior of a powerful Hollywood mogul, a stream of women began coming forward to add their names to a growing list of victims. The hashtag went viral as the shocking litany of exploitation came to light, from the boardroom to the locker room, from the corridors of Congress to the halls of academe, wherever men exercised their prerogatives with impunity. What was so disturbing was not just the universality of the women’s trauma but the ubiquity of the misconduct. Reports of new scandals seemed to surface every week. Things came to a head in fall 2018 when a female professor agreed to give public testimony at a Congressional hearing about a nominee to the Supreme Court who, she alleged, had tried to rape her when they were in high school. The nominee prevailed, but not without a divisive and wrenching spectacle that played out on national television. Meanwhile new disclosures about hush money paid by the now sitting president shortly before the election, to a porn star and a Playboy bunny, continued to trickle out.

All of this is more than well known, yet it is worth rehearsing the chronology of events in relation to the architecture profession and, in doing so, to place the present publication into a larger picture. Oddly enough, architecture was late to the public reckoning. At another academic conference, this one held in early 2018 at Yale School of Architecture, titled “Rebuilding Architecture,” the speakers in a closing panel devoted to architecture and the media responded to a question from a woman in the audience who demanded to know why architects, notorious for bad behavior toward women, had escaped being implicated in the current publicity. Reacting sympathetically, the speakers—including three seasoned journalists—expressed frustration about how difficult it was to get the story out: women architects were reluctant to go on record, fearful of the impact on their careers and the scrutiny it would bring to their personal lives. Finally, however, #MeToo found its way to architecture when, in March 2018, a reporter for the New York Times broke a story on the front page titled “5 Women Accuse the Architect Richard Meier of Sexual Harassment.” The women interviewed described incidents spanning four decades in which the now eighty-four-year-old architect had assaulted them. The immediate result was that Meier took a leave of absence from his firm, and the New York Chapter of the AIA quickly stripped him of a 2018 design award; seven months later Meier’s firm announced that his departure was permanent. Also around the time the Times article appeared a “Shitty Architecture Men” list—a crowdsourced spreadsheet containing allegations from anonymous accusers of sexual and other misconduct against more than 100 men (and a couple women) in architecture—began circulating on the internet. Modeled on a “Shitty Media Men” list that had debuted six months earlier, the

spreadsheet was intended, according to its creator, to provide those who had been subjected to harassment or discriminatory behavior in the firm or the classroom with a place to vent. It lived online for a few months before being taken down. Despite a disclaimer on the site that the content was unverified, the uncorroborated accusations and gossipy invective caused reputational damage to those who were called out and, not surprisingly, led to threatened lawsuits. But it was clear that Meier was just the tip of the iceberg.

Almost exactly four decades ago, my first job out of architecture school was in Richard Meier’s office. At the time there were twenty-five or thirty employees in the firm, of which less than a handful were women. The atmosphere was, to put it euphemistically, unconvivial. The whiteness of the office, which we shared with a set of pristine architectural models, was matched by the general chilliness. Long hours were the rule, salaries were very low, and employee turnover was high. Partial compensation came from interesting work on the drawing boards, and it was possible for a young designer to learn a lot. I stayed close to my cubicle, mostly writing descriptions of buildings for a monograph Meier was preparing on his work. I was never the object of any untoward advances. However, another young woman in the office was involved in a relationship with the boss that was an open secret, and it was hard not to be distracted by it. Eight months later, when I was offered an appealing job editing architectural publications, I was happy to jump ship. This was the end of my ambition to become a practicing architect. The other woman, who remained in the office for a few more years, has a successful career today in a different field.

Who knows how many aspiring women architects have had their career plans derailed or detoured by negative professional experiences? To judge by current statistics, female attrition in architecture offices remains very high even as women’s enrollment in architecture schools now just about equals men’s. It’s high time for women in architecture to tell their stories, whether as a form of catharsis or as a cautionary tale for upcoming colleagues. Of course, there are also positive and inspirational stories to be told, and some of them, by contemporary and historical women who have managed to beat the odds, are eloquently recounted in this book. Practical initiatives are also underway and, while painfully slow, incremental progress is being made. In September 2018, in response to lobbying efforts, the American Institute of Architects updated its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, explicitly addressing matters of sexual harassment, equity in the profession, and sustainability. The professional ecosystem now also includes so-called sanctuary firms, offering alternative kinds of work environments. The silver lining of the experience of the last few years, with all its dramatic developments and appalling revelations, is a newly emboldened and conscious feminist movement, and more sophisticated pushback against the status quo. The demand for change appears to be sweeping up women in architecture as well. We too.

Joan Ockman March 2019