Stephanie Edwards

On January 13th a tweet started a list of Female Architects of Colour we would like to grow:

Following that we thought it would be useful to collect names and profiles of female architects of colour in one place.To get our  list going we are publishing the full list of women and organisations   sent to us that first week. We'll be adding profiles over the coming weeks...

Learning about those women and organisations was hugely illuminating for me, a UK based architect, and I would also really to learn from what the US is doing and get a list going here in the UK.  We're planning a launch for the UK list to go along with our film on the subject.

 “…it was unheard of to have an African American female who was registered as an architect. You didn’t trot that person out in front of your clients and say ‘This is the person designing your project.’ She was not allowed to express herself as a designer. But she was capable of doing anything. She was the complete architect.”

Marshall Purnell

As the first licensed female African American architect in New York and California and one of the first in the US, Norma Merrick Sklarek's  documented existence and work inspired the XXAOC project and our desire to know who the first#femalearchitectsofcolour  were here in the UK. 

A pioneer she was one of only two women to graduate from her class, Norma Sklarek received her architecture degree in 1950, from  Columbia University's School of Architecture, going on to work at Skidmore Owings and Merrill, SOM and becoming the  first Black female director at Gruen and Associates in Los Angeles.

In 1966 She  co-founded Siegel, Sklarek, and Diamond, which became the largest woman-owned firm at the time.

Since that tweet, we've had the pleasure of speaking to this amazing pioneer and as part of the research for our film.  You can read the full interview on Parlour.
Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA is an architect, activist, educator and public scholar, who began her formal architectural training at Columbia University, following the turmoil which swept the US in 1968. She was part of a cohort of Black and Hispanic students  who were admitted to Columbia following  race riots and students sit ins.
She would go on to be the only the twelfth African America woman to register as an architect in the US;  the first to be promoted to full professor of architecture, the second to be elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the first to be president of the National Architectural Accrediting Board.   
Over the years she has been the recipient of numerous awards, which include  the Medal of Honour from the AIA Seattle  and the AIA New York , in 2014 and 2017 respectively. 

Another inspirational group brought to out attention from across the pond is NOMA, @NOMArchitects, suggested by @aninsggirb, The National Organisation of Minority Architects  (NOMA),  are doing amazing work to link professionals and students and to help change neighbourhoods and communities. Their stated mission is to 'champion diversity within the design professions by promoting the excellence, community engagement, and professional development of its members'.

NOMA had it's origins in a meeting of 

twelve African-American architects from different parts of the

US during an AIA National Convention in Detroit in 1971.  Recognising   a desperate need for an organization dedicated to the development and advancement of minority architects, the seeds of  NOMA were sewn.

Rosa Cheng @rosasheng is founding chair of Equity by Design  @EquityxDesign suggested by @Farajidc,@JC_Cali and @livmuk

Equity by Design seeks to tackle

'The lack of equity in architectural practice and allied professions ' and grew out of the The Missing 32% incubator event in 2011 an symposium on 2012.

These events lead to the Equity by Design website which  'is envisioned as a forum for conversation, a repository for articles, research, guides for equitable practice and a place for honoring the achievements of architects supporting equitable practice.'

Since it's inception the site has become a valuable resource featuring research into the issues around equity in design. In the 2018 Equity in Architecture Survey detailing the stark differences experienced by various groups in America during their careers was published on the site.

Suggested by @pea_proposals, and the first to go on our UK timeline (lhttps://xxaoc.com/xxaoc-timeline), Minnette De Silva, was a brilliant female architect, once world famous but since forgotten by history.  

She pioneered the use of modern style in her home Sri Lanka, fusing it with traditional architectural styles. She was the first Asian woman to be elected an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1948, the first Asian representative at International Congress of Modern Architecture ( CIAM), attending the 6th conference in Bridgewater, Somerset in 1947, when she was just 29 and still a student.

Defying her father’s lack of approval, she arrived in London 1946 to study at the Architectural Association. Known for her stunning, silk, saris, and for wearing fresh flowers in her hair, she caused quite a stir in the London and architectural world of the time.  Indeed, it was remarked that she was often followed by a train of men carrying her bags and drawing materials.

Her long friendship and correspondence with the Architect Le Corbusier is the subject of the new novel Plastic Emotionsby Shimi Pinto, published by influx press.

"It took going down to the University Archives and seeing images of Beverly amidst a sea of white male faces to appreciate the history..."

(Kathryn Anthony, 2006)

Beverly Lorraine Green, born in 1915,  is believed to be the first,  black woman in American to graduate from the university of Illinois with a degree in Architectural Engineering, and the first African America woman to register as an architect, registering in Illinois in 1942.  She studied at a racially integrated college, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning her bachelor's degree in 1936.  She went on to gain a master’s in planning and housing, and in 1945, a degree in Architecture from Columbia University. 

The the daughter of middle-class parents, Greene’s father was a lawyer, however on returning to Chicago, despite her privileged background she encountered the barriers associated with race.  For black architects one of these barriers was the Chicago press which ignored much of their work, meaning that it was a struggle to gain commissions.  This led Greene to relocate to New York and apply for work on a housing project for Stuyvesant Town in lower Manhattan, before gaining a scholarship to embark on a masters.

After gaining her masters she went on to work on an impressive array of projects, with architects Edward Durrell Stone, and Marcell Breuer. She worked on at least two celebrated theatres with Stone, the Theatre at the Arts Centre for the university of Arkansas in 1951, and in 1952 the Art’s Complex at the liberal arts college, Sarah Lawrence.  In 1955 she assisted Breuer on her most well-known project the UNESCO, United Nations Headquarters in Paris.[i]  

Architectural history often recognises the work of the only lead architect, the auteur, and the trace of others is often lost.  It is likely that Greene struggled to create work in her own right and would have been overlooked without diligent work by researchers, who over the years have sought to record the African American presence in architecture.  Greene died young, at only 41, and we will never know where this promising start may have led. Greene is buried in her home town of Illinois. 

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Loraine_Greene#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilson2004[httpsarchiveorgdetailsafricanamericana0000unse_p3b4page175_175–176]-1

The only woman to attend the  1928 "Negro Contractors' Conference" at the Hampton Institute.

I was blown away to come across the image to the right, during our search for female architects of colour, not just because I had never seen it before and because of how powerful she looks, how determined not be invisible.

I knew  from researching her that Ethel Bailey Furman, who sits front and centre of this image had struggled to build in her own name.

Ethel Bailey Thurman, born in Virginia in 1893 to upper-middle-class African American parents, travelled north for her education, in her case to New York, where she studied architecture privately. Segregation laws in the south meant that this was the option many black people of means took. 

Back in her home of Richmond, Virginia, Thurman found that she would not be accepted as ‘the architect of record’ on her own projects, forcing her to submit her work under the name of male contractors. Though she is believed to have designed some 200 churches and residential buildings in Virginia, her presence is masked by the signatories she had to hide behind. She was obscured, erased, her work unpreserved and, for a long time, unacknowledged. How many other Black women’s work might have been hidden in this way? 

Ethel was fighting a battle on two fronts, one on gender, the other on race; the battle on racial frontlines was one she and the contractors shared; getting commisions in segregated America was difficult…Finding out about her and her work made me wonder...If her work was hidden in this way, how many buildings by black women might be similarly hidden from history?⠀

The above features extracts from my article ‘Architecture’s Hidden Figures, Uncovering Architects of Colour’. I am thrilled to have worked with a wonderful editorial team on this. 

Sarah Akigbogun for XXAOC.
⠀We share the image of Ethel Bailey Furman at the 1928 "Negro Contractors' Conference" at Hampton Institute, Courtesy of the Library of Virginia, in the hope of shedding a little more light on Ethel and women like her.⠀

The full article is published as part of Inflection Volume 8, by Melbourne School of Design,  published in December 2020 by Melbourne books.⠀

⠀ ⠀ As you drive through the campus of Virginia State University, past the manicured laws and red brick faculty buildings, one of these lawns lies Azurest South, home of the Virginia State University National Alumni Association, since 1986. It is one of a few remaining  built traces of Amaza Lee Meredith’s work as an architect. ⠀ ⠀ 

Meredith was born in 1895, and lived during a time when Jim Crow and laws still enforced racial segregation in Southern America, disenfranchising them, restricting access to education and stifling economic progress. ⠀ ⠀

 In this America the work of black architects was largely invisible to the wider world of white clients, and those who commissioned public projects.  Virginia State University, a historically black college, was a place where Meredith was able to carve out a place for herself. Here she created both a physical space in the form of the home she designed and lived in with her partner Ms. Edna Colson, and as a teacher and founder of the Fine Art programme at the university.⠀ ⠀

 Read more about Meredith and more of architecture's Hidden Figures in Sarah's piece  @Inflection V08.⠀ ⠀ 

Image of Amaza Lee Meredith, courtesy Virginia State University.⠀ 

The full article is published as part of Inflection Volume 8, by Melbourne School of Design,  published in December 2020 by Melbourne books.⠀