 The East Boston High School addition and renovation, completed in 2001 in East Boston, MA, was designed by Doris Cole, president of Cole and Goyette, Architects and Planners, Inc., of Cambridge, MA, and the author of Candid Reflections. She was honored by awards from the Boston Preservation Alliance and the Massachusetts Historical Commission for her work on this 1926 structure, which entailed everything from interior and exterior rehabilitation to new engineering systems, seismic upgrades and accessibility improvements, as well as constructing a new gymnasium, school kitchen and faculty dining area. |
book reviewWomen's Work
Candid Reflections: Letters from Women in Architecture 1972 & 2004 By Nicole V. Gagné Kathryn H. Anthony, current professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture, has asked, “If our buildings, spaces, and places continue to be designed by a relatively homogeneous group of people, what message does that send about our culture?” The obvious answer is, a deluded and self-defeating message. In an effort to provide a more enlightened and constructive message, architect and writer Doris Cole has published Candid Reflections: Letters from Women in Architecture 1972 & 2004, in which she surveys the experiences and insights of female architects. In 1972 and again in 2004, Cole sent query letters to scores of women in her profession; their responses are truly fascinating and eye-opening, as regards not just architecture and feminism, but also the maturation of our society. Although inevitable, change doesn’t come easily, and this book offers some disturbing accounts of the fierce resistance to progress. A respondent from 1972 notes, “Professionally, the only real discrimination I have experienced has been in the local AIA structure where I am one of the few of my peer group who has never been asked to hold an office, head a commission, or serve as a chapter officer.” A 2004 respondent sees too much of the same: “The undergraduate architectural program at Rice is 60% women, and at the University of Houston, 55%. But it’s downhill from there. Looking at our AIA Houston Chapter membership figures, the percentage of women under the age of 30 is only 30%. And in the 30-to-40 age bracket this percentage drops down to 20%. Want more bad news? Over age 50 it drops to less than 1%.” Yet she also notes that the “recently elected AIA National President-Elect is female – Kate Schwennsen, FAIA, from Iowa. And hopefully, the trend to hold our national convention on Mother’s Day is a thing of the past.” Cole’s book reveals how deeply ingrained misogyny is and how early the negative conditioning begins: “I took a developmental test in 7th grade [in the mid 1960s] and the results came back high in mathematics and spatial reasoning, [but] the response was, ‘Boys who score high in these areas should become architects, girls should become dress designers.’” Such attitudes take their toll not just socially, but also psychologically, and several architects remark that the biggest hurdle they faced was their own damaged self-image: “The discrimination was in myself. Something has been wrong for years, and much of it has been a lack of faith in my own capabilities,” confesses one. “Over half the battle of women doing anything is their own self-esteem. If one feels qualified and even better than the next man or woman, many problems are wiped out,” remarks another. Only women with a genuine sense of their own ability and intelligence could have withstood the obstacles they encountered over the decades. One architect recalls her job interview at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s New York office in the early 1940s, when she was told, “‘We don’t hire women.’ I was so taken aback that I blurted, ‘Oh, I thought yours was a firm of modern architects.’ It was their turn to be taken aback, and I was granted an interview. All the top brass of the office turned out to see this brash female. They were very interested and pleasant with me, and they told me they were ‘impressed ... but we don’t hire women!’” Sure, those were the bad old days. But this incident from the 1970s is even more distasteful: “At Christmas time, it was tradition for all the ladies to go up and sit on the owner’s lap to get their present, a box of nylons (not pantyhose). [...] Not only would I not go, but I demanded the same cash bonus that the men got. [...] No one had ever challenged them this way,” recalls another respondent. “Three months later, I got the bonus.” Sexual-harassment litigation has significantly inhibited such offenses in today’s offices. What remains troublesome for many women architects, however, is appearing on site. Some respondents admit that they stay in the office rather than face the hooting and catcalls of sexist workmen. Of course that behavior is partly the crew’s resistance to any white-collar authority, as one architect points out: “I’m not sure, however, that men did not encounter the same (or similar) ‘having to prove’ phenomenon.” Still, very few male architects get comments about their legs. The solution, of course, is the classic methodology of any discriminated group, namely doing your job better than anyone from the “in crowd”: “A very petite woman [...] asked, ‘How do you gain respect on a construction site when, unlike many of my male peers, I have never lifted a hammer?’ ‘Easy,’ was my response, ‘You just need to be the smartest and most prepared person in the room.’” Cole’s book is replete with examples of women architects surpassing their male counterparts. One special aptitude is the willingness, as with women drivers, to ask for directions: “Several men before me had been given the task of designing the new neonatal center. None of them had thought to ask the nurses what would make it better, and design after design was shot down. In desperation, they gave it to me. I had the firm send me to the NeoNatal Convention in Georgia and then spent time talking to the nurses and the parents of the patients. As a result I designed an innovative unit that was replicated around the country.” Another edge is life experience. Some respondents bristle at the stereotype of women architects as designers of homes rather than high-rises or commercial spaces, and proudly cite their achievements in the latter fields; others, however, are glad to create domestic spaces. “Who better than the cook to design the kitchen? Who better than the mother and the housekeeper to design the shelter for her children?” asks one respondent. Her conclusions are also of vital importance for improving the entire spectrum of our built environment: “My opinion of American architecture today generally is that it has failed – failed in its responsibilities to our cities and to our environment – and that in its contemporary design it lacks quality and human relevance. Perhaps what the art and the profession could use is the humanizing effect of the feminine touch.” TB |
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