Editor’s note: In light of Women’s History Month, this four-part series looks into how Syracuse women have contributed to the fight for equality.

Lori Brown didn’t always want to become an architect. She was creative and loved math and science, and somehow those equated to studying architecture.

Making her way through architecture school, Brown just wanted to prove to herself she could do it.

That stubbornness got Brown to where she is today: an associate professor in Syracuse University’s School of Architecture, co-founder of the women’s architecture group Architexx and, as she puts it, a feminist architect.

She’s defied the statistics and history working against women architects and works to make sure future architects, including her students, can do the same. Though making up about half of all people entering architecture school, women only constitute 18 percent of licensed architects, said Despina Stratigakos, associate professor and interim chair of the architecture department at the University at Buffalo.

Brown never considered giving up on her degree, even though she was the only woman in some of her design studios at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She didn’t give up when, in 2001, she became one of only a handful of female architecture faculty members at SU. And when SU students started expressing concerns about that inequality, Brown didn’t give up — she made a change.

This became a turning point in her career, Brown said, the point where she really began bringing feminism into her research and teaching.

Feminism and architecture may seem like unrelated topics. But when it comes to design, it’s not just about creating beautiful buildings. Architects need to look at gender, age, mobility and other factors the built environment serves, something Brown said she works to teach her students.

“To get them to think beyond their own body and their own lived experiences was very critical,” Brown said. “And to me, that’s a very feminist approach.”

Even though conversations are springing up today, the fight for gender equality in architecture has existed for more than 100 years. But unlike in the past, these issues are no longer just being discussed — they’re being confronted.

“We’re seeing what I hope is another wave of discussion, that we’re going to finally break out of this cycle of kind of noticing the lack of women in the field and talking about it, but then forgetting about it,” Stratigakos said.

Stratigakos credits Brown as an important part of creating this change. After the publication of her book “Feminist Practices” in 2011, Brown held roundtable discussions at Van Alen Books in New York City. Though people of all different ages came, Brown said younger women who had just graduated were shocked with the real world of architecture they’d discovered.

“Why aren’t we saying more? There’s clearly something that can be done to facilitate students being prepared — and to be confident when they make that transition,” Brown remembered thinking.

In 2012, Brown teamed up with fellow architect Nina Freedman to create Architexx, a New York City-based group that aims to link university experience with the real world. A non-hierarchical organization, Brown said anyone can bring discussion topics and projects to the table.

Since its founding, Architexx has embarked on a variety of feminist projects. Brown helped organize a WikiD, where people teamed up to edit more women architects and designers into Wikipedia.

Connor Martin | Staff Photographer

 

Architexx also tackled the politicization of abortion clinics and their design, looking specifically at a clinic in Mississippi dealing with intense pro-life protests.

“It can be a very traumatic experience to have these people looking at you and yelling at you as you’re trying to make your way into the building,” Brown said.

To protect patients, the clinic duct-taped what looked like plastic bags between the gaps in the wrought iron fence around the building. But this stopgap solution was not only ugly, it just wasn’t effective, Brown said. Architexx put out a call for design ideas, and Brown said the goal is to install a new fence that is both more aesthetic for the neighborhood and more private for employees and patients.

Architexx is also tackling inequality in education, creating university hubs at colleges around New York state. One of the big features of these hubs are their brown bag lecture series. These highlight the fact that few female architects are invited to speak at universities, Brown said, and bring those women in to speak and hopefully make a name for themselves.

Katie Walsh, a 2007 SU architecture alumna, said Brown’s architecture classes challenged her to think beyond making pretty objects and look at the social context of design. For one of her first projects, Walsh said Brown challenged her class to create a place of gender equality at Seneca Falls, New York. From there, Walsh’s architectural studies changed course.

“I went on a mission to put gender in everything,” Walsh said. “I became the gendered architecture girl.”

Walsh said she took nearly every class Brown offered, looking for more outlets to analyze gender in architecture. And in 2002, she took that mission a step further, co-founding Women in Design at SU with fellow student Chi Lee.

With Brown onboard as their faculty advisor, Walsh, Lee and Women in Design brought architecture to the community. They taught design at Edward Smith Elementary School, just a few minutes off SU’s campus, spreading awareness about diversity in architecture.

The real world is a different story. Working in Pittsburgh with its old-school architecture firms, Walsh said there’s not much gender or racial diversity. And as she and friends approach 10 years after graduation and as many decide to start families, they seem to have hit the glass ceiling.

To combat that, she’s followed the lead of Architexx. Walsh said she’s working to create spaces where women architects can discuss their careers and how to advance in the boy’s club of architecture.

Today, fifth year architecture students Shauna Strubinger and Hannah Seigel are heavily involved with organizing brown bag lectures, with topics stemming from whatever Women in Design at SU is interested in talking about.

“One of the important things about the lectures is that we have to cater to everyone,” Seigel said. “We’re in our fifth year, so jobs are our primary concern. But we also have to include first- and second-years who wonder why only guys work in the woodshop.”

Right now, Strubinger and Seigel are planning a lecture with Sherburne Abbott, SU’s vice president for sustainability initiatives, to discuss sustainability in design.

Brown said there have been big steps toward gender equality at SU and in architecture schools in general. She’s seen more female professors hired and does her part to further the cause both in and out of classes.

But no matter one’s age or architectural experience, Brown said it’s time to create an equitable discipline that engages everyone and brings women’s voices into the mix.

“Who better to consider the built environment? We occupy it just like they do,” Brown said. “We have different perspectives, we bring different things to the table and so those voices need to be a part of the larger conversation.”

Published on March 7, 2016 at 9:51 pm

Contact Kathryn: kjkrawcz@syr.edu | @kathrynkrawczyk