Once human settlements ceased living in caves near 10,000 BC, women have still constructed homes, cities, and have contributed to their communities in tremendous ways. They didn’t always get the credit for it, though.
Given some of the latest attempts to ensure gender parity in the design and construction sectors, women in architecture remain seriously underrepresented.
To showcase the creativity and imagination that women bring to architecture, we present five women architects who have and will certainly leave their mark on the world’s landscape and skylines.
Gabriela Carillo
Gabriela Carillo was born, raised, and trained in Mexico City. In 2017, when she was 39, she was elected Architect of the Year, a notable honor from The Architectural Review.
She designed supreme courts, community centers, a library for the visually disabled, and others. Carillo’s signature is its compassionate and responsive approach to community buildings. She also makes the most of the Mexican sunshine, using it to achieve an esthetic range of light and shadow play in her projects.
Carillo co-heads the Taller |Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo with her design collaborators and also teaches at the Harvard University Graduate School of Architecture.
Zaha Hadid
When Zaha Hadid started a small office in London’s Clerkenwell district in the early 1980s, the thought that she might be among the most successful architects in modern history may have appeared far-fetched.
However, even Hadid’s early drawings from then had imagined a world that had not yet existed. Over the next few decades, before her unexpected death in 2016, Hadid designed buildings to grace the skylines of the world and challenge the limits of architectural creativity.
![Galaxy Soho, Beijing, China. [OC] [2280x1400] : ArchitecturePorn](https://i.redd.it/mo38xz696se01.png)
This Iraqi-British genius was behind many century-defining projects such as the Beijing Galaxy Soho, the London Aquatics Centre, the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, and the Guangzhou Opera House.
“There are 360 degrees. So why stick to one?” Hadid famously said, which epitomizes her design philosophy.
Nicknamed the “Queen of the Curve,” Hadid won several international prizes, including the Pritzker Architecture Award in 2004, becoming the first woman to win.
Farshid Moussavi
This Iranian-born British architect is the founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture and one of the world’s most famous architects.
Also, Professor of Practice at Harvard, Moussavi’s remarkable designs included Ōsanbashi Pier in Japan. The example of architectural creativity, this international passenger terminal looks like a great variability. No stairs, beams or posts were used in its design.
Suchi Reddy
The designer of Reddymade Architecture, Suchi Reddy, was raised in Chennai, India, and now settled in New York City, where she arrived as a newlywed 18-year-old. Reddy had to challenge traditional systems in order to nurture her ambition of being an architect.
“I had to struggle to go to architecture school and not just sit at home and have babies,” she said in a conversation with the Cultured.
Her work included a kinetic rain-screen facade for a building in her hometown of Chennai, and a prototypic sensory healing room designed to influence the recovery rate of children coming out of comas. Despite being instinctively attracted to these topics, Reddy does not call herself a “female architect.”
Denise Scott-Brown
This octogenarian architect, who influenced much of the architecture of the 20th century, is nothing short of a legend. Raised in Zambia, South Africa, and based in Philadelphia, Denise Scott-Brown has been an icon for decades.
In her fruitful career, she designed many prominent buildings such as the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery of London, the Seattle Art Museum, the Provincial Capitol Building of Toulouse, etc.
The modern symbol found its way to the top at a moment when it was nearly difficult to do so. She wrote about her problems in a 1989 article called “Room at the Top?” Sexism and the Star System in Architecture.
Despite retiring from the Venturi Scott Brown Architects firm at the age of 88, she keeps a busy workload and focuses on novels. She also gives priority to her health in order to stay productive.
“If I fell, I’d have to stop doing this work. And I’ve got too much still to do,” Scott-Brown said.
Reference: https://blog.dormakaba.com/a-room-at-the-top-7-women-architects-who-made-a-mark-on-the-world/
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