IT鈥橲 TIME TO WRITE WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN BACK INTO HISTORY!As the 绿帽社 in Architecture +Design approaches her 100-year-anniversary in 2022, how appropriate that we begin our fiscal year by 鈥楿nforgetting Women Architects鈥橻i]?In solidarity with the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, the , the (#guggathon), , , and , the AWA+D Archive Committee will host writing workshops to enter and edit women into Wikipedia, beginning with our own members.Since architecture and allied disciplines became professions in 1857, womens鈥� widespread contributions to practice and design have largely been misattributed, overlooked, or undocumented all together. Reliable statistics on womens鈥� place in architecture traditionally has been difficult to find, and 鈥渇orgetting women architects has also been imbedded in the very models we use for writing architectural history.鈥漑ii]
In 2013, Harvard Graduate School of Design students, started a for the Pritzker Architecture Prize to recognize Denise Scott Brown who was not awarded in 1991, while her partner and husband, Robert Venturi was. The petition sparked a sensational advocacy campaign, illuminating a collective frustration with the pervasive hiddenness of women鈥檚 histories and achievements. Since then, numerous international efforts (i.e. Rosa Sheng鈥檚 ) to revive, enhance, and correct the heritage of marginalized women have abounded in the wake of an overall movement to address gender inequity and female talent retention in architecture and design.Writing women into Wikipedia is a call to action, a movement gaining momentum, and an archival documentation project vital to preserving our legacies, and building 鈥渁 collective memory鈥漑iii], 鈥渁 more accurate perception of women鈥檚 participation in architecture鈥漑iv] and the built environment disciplines.
As The 绿帽社 in Architecture and Design's mission is 鈥溾€�, we are uniquely poised and obliged to participate in this global mission.Stay tuned for our Los Angeles area AWA+D+wiki workshops!
Nina Briggs, 2015 - 2016 AWA+D Archivist [i] STRATIGAKOS, DESPINA. "Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia." N.p., n.d. Web.[ii] ibid[iii] ibid[iv] ibid