The San Francisco Ballet Building (1984), a major project by Beverly Willis considered as the first building in the United States designed expressly for use by a major ballet company (left); Willis pictured at a construction site in 1982 (right). Photos via Beverly Willis Architectural Photograph Collection, Library of Congress

Beverly Willis founded her own practice in San Francisco in 1958 and went on to create the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation in 2002 out of frustration at seeing women largely absent from architectural history textbooks. She made it her mission to recognize the work of her female predecessors and contemporaries.

Ms. Willis recognized the work of little-known 20th-century female architects, as well as more established ones who worked into the 21st century as well, like Zaha Hadid, Annabelle Selldorf and Elizabeth Diller, of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

These are just a few of the architects, designers and construction chiefs highlighted in her short film “Unknown New York: The City That Women Built.”

Ms. Willis died on October 1, 2023 due to complications with Parkinson’s Disease. She leaves behind a profound legacy of advocating for women in the field of architecture and will be missed.

Read what other outlets had to say about Beverly Willis.

NY Times

The Architect’s Newspaper

Architect

Architectural Record

MWA Fall 2023 Mixer, September 21, 2023 @ Rimadesio New York

Last week we had the pleasure of stepping away from our computers and gathering for an evening of sharing stories, hugs, wine, and advice at our Fall Mixer!

Anik, Nancy and I are grateful to have been joined in person by so many of our community from NYC and from afar since transitioning to a virtual format in March 2020 due to the pandemic. Our community has grown so much in five years to expand throughout the country and beyond. This Fall Mixer was an evening to gather mentors and mentees that have grown with us over these five years and toast to the ‘old girl’s network’ you are all helping us to build.

Special thanks to the mentors that joined us:

Barbara Spandorf

Elizabeth Graziolo

Nadia Jarrett

Nalina Moses

Karin Payson

Kathy Chia

Nina Kinoti-Metz

In Cho

Nina Gotlieb

Special thanks to Shannon Donohue who flew from Atlanta, GA to be with us!

Our deepest gratitude to the team at Rimadesio New York for hosting us in their gorgeous showroom as well as to Jinhee Shin and Sumin Chwang for helping us host and photograph the event!

Check out the photos!

Desiree V Cooper Memorial Scholarship
Helping to increase the number of licensed African-American, women, and people of color architects.

Reminder: Scholarship apps due April 30

The Desiree V. Cooper (DVC) Memorial Scholarship Foundation celebrates the life and legacy of Desiree V. Cooper by championing the things she was passionate about in her professional career and personal endeavors: providing continual service to her communities and encouraging minorities and women in the advancement of their careers in architecture.

The Foundation is pleased to accept applications for the 2023 DVC Scholarships: The Black Women in Architecture Award, The Harrisburg Memorial Award, The DC Memorial Award, and the NOMA Award.

All awards will be for the full cost of the ARE exams.

Applications are due Apr 30.

In an interview with Jason Hartman, Esther Sperber of Studio ST Architects shares five things you need to create a highly successful career in architecture and so much more.

To highlight from the article, here are Esther’s Five Things:

1. Love architecture — You need to love buildings and get excited about the beauty of stone or the smell of wet poured concrete.

2. Love people — In my opinion, you cannot create good architecture if you do not enjoy people. Buildings are designed to be inhabited and I love imagining how people would use the spaces we create. It used to be common to photograph buildings without any people in them. In recent years we have started photographing our work, especially public buildings, with people in them. I feel that this gives a better sense of what we are trying to accomplish.

3. Love your staff — Like other service professions, we are only as good as our team. Architecture cannot be created alone, and I am fortunate to have a great team at my office. We share ideas, suggestions and bring our own strength to the team.

4. Love running a business — When I started my firm, I did not know much about running a business, tracking costs and projecting profits. Over the past two decades I have learned from friends, colleagues, YouTube and coaches. I enjoy the task of running my business and making sure we are financially stable alongside the creativity of the design process. My work week is incredibly varied. I spend a few hours sketching a new design on trace paper, putting together a fee proposal and spreadsheet schedule for our team, learning about a new product, putting on my work boots to visit the concrete foundation work on a multifamily building, selecting stone for a countertop and giving a lecture to students about the architecture of synagogues. What could be more exciting?

5. Love a new challenge — When you are an architect there is always more to learn than one person can handle. We need to be able to learn from others, ask the right questions and have good intuition about mechanical systems, structure, sustainability and city codes. But there will always be something new that we have not encountered, and a good architect needs to not be intimidated by this, but rather find these new challenges exciting.

Right on, Esther! These are a great five.

Don’t miss out on the other gems Esther shares in the complete interview published here.

This week NY Times published two impactful articles that caught our attention. We’re sharing them here with you.

Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Wagner Reed, Who Resurrected Legacies of Women in Science shares the story of Elizabeth Wagner Reed, a post-WWII scientist who published “American Women in Science Before the Civil War” to raise the profile of twenty-two important women scientists from the 19th Century. The author of the article notes that women today continue to face hurdles entering and remaining in STEM careers.

Read more here.

The other article is titled What Young Workers Miss Without the ‘Power of Proximity’ and speaks on the “hidden penalties” of remote work.

Read more here.