The criticisms levelled at architects and the practice of architecture today are well founded. Women do, indeed, represent a minority in architectural education and as practitioners in the field. Architects do strive for ‘starchitect’ status, and many architectural projects emphasise economics over social good. Most recently, architects have come under fire for failing to design for mass appeal. These criticisms are not new but have become more intense in recent years.
Considerable blame for this situation rests with the pedagogy of architectural history. In most American NAAB-accredited architecture schools, history is relegated to two surveys and two electives. Architectural history surveys privilege ‘hero’ architects and their buildings over just about everything else. At the same time, only about 10% of American architecture schools offer a course on gender and architecture. Even worse, as electives, these courses reach only 4–20% of a school’s student population. If architects are getting the message that being a ‘starchitect’ is what matters, it is because architectural history curricula teach them precisely that.
Why Teaching about Gendered Space Matters
Teaching architects-to-be about gendered spaces is important. Today, we live in a world where gays and lesbians are gaining long-deserved rights and transgendered individuals are at last being recognised. A good architect should understand the nuances of gendered space, especially its ephemeral and changeable nature. If architecture is the physical expression of our social values, then it is important that its practice represents all members of that group.
Unfortunately, it turns out that teaching architects about gendered space is difficult. The fact is that we’ve been trying – and failing – to teach about gendered spaces for years. The reasons why are myriad and complex. But, they can be overcome.
Current Practices
The Top Ten
In order to improve how we teach gender/architecture, we need to better understand how the topic is currently being taught. One way to assess the situation is to examine how the top architecture programmes teach students about gender and space. In the United States, architecture schools are ranked by DesignIntelligence, a bi-monthly report on issues in architecture published by the Design Futures Council. The 2015 list of the top ten schools consists of the following schools (listed alphabetically):1
If these schools represent the ‘best’ – and they include some pretty prestigious members – then how they teach gendered space should represent best practice in the field. They should also function as a barometer on the state of gender/architecture courses in the US.
To find out whether and how these schools teach gender and architecture, I surveyed the 2015 architecture and associated history (art or architecture) curricula in search of gender/architecture courses. This process depended on what a school published online, so only courses that the school advertised could be identified and included in the survey.
The results were depressingly bleak, given the high quality of these institutions. Of the 21 schools, only two, or about 10%, currently advertise a course on gendered space: USC and UVA. USC’s seminar is taught by noted scholar Diane Ghirardo and provocatively titled ‘Women’s Spaces in History: Hussies, Harems, and Housewives’.2
UVA’s course, the comparatively sedately named ‘Women and Architecture’, is a special topic offered through the architectural history department dependent on personnel and interest.3
USC and UVA represent the alpha and omega of gender/architecture courses. Ghirardo’s class is offered within the architecture department itself (as opposed to an affiliated history department), cross-listed with USC’s Gender Studies programme, and satisfies the university’s diversity requirement. This arrangement makes it attractive to architecture students, who don’t need to look too hard to find it and who will find it useful for satisfying other university requirements. The course is well entrenched in USC’s system. UVA’s course, on the other hand, is offered in an affiliated department, so that architecture students must seek it out. And, it is transient and dependent on interest and professor availability, making it difficult for students to plan for it in their schedules. Judging by these two courses, if these schools are leaders in the field, they are not leading in a very consistent direction.
The Full Picture
Fortunately, other schools outside the top ten have been making inroads on the issue. During my survey, I also recorded when and where gender and architecture courses have been offered in the US over the last four decades.4 This effort documented the current or former existence of gender related courses at the following universities (listed alphabetically):
Columbia, Harvard, Rice, Syracuse, Michigan, and VA Tech – all of which are top ten schools – did not surface in my original survey because they don’t publicise any gender/architecture courses. Four of them do not advertise because they no longer offer them. Harvard last offered a course in 2006, Rice in 2011, Michigan in 2006, and VA Tech in 2003. This data reveals how transient gender/architecture courses can be. In fact, of the vast majority of courses that I identified, 85%, have been offered as upper level special topics courses and not as part of the regular curriculum.
Historical Trends
Examining the timeline of gender/architecture courses offers insight into how we got to where we are. The earliest course I was able to identify dates back to 1983. Between 1983 and 1997, roughly two gender/architecture courses were offered every other year by professors who are now legendary in the field, including Genie Birch, Mary McLeod, and Daphne Spain. McLeod reports being inspired by the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture, which provided an early theoretical framework for the study of gendered space.5 Many of those who attended sessions of the WSPA returned to their home institutions determined to make change.
According to McLeod, Columbia was ‘definitely without question’ a centre for these efforts.6 Its faculty was motivated by second wave feminism, feminist theory, and the multitude of exhibitions, professional organisations, conferences, lecture series, and symposia that resulted from feminist scholarly efforts during the 1970s. McLeod offered a course entitled ‘Gender and Architecture’ twice, once in the 1989–90 academic year and once in 1991. Since 2005, she has offered a gender/architecture course roughly every two to three years in architecture programmes at Columbia, the University of Tel Aviv, and the University of Calgary. Her most recent course, ‘Gender and the Built Environment’, was co-taught with Victoria Rosner in 2013.
After a break between 1997 and 2000, a second generation of feminist scholars joined and reinvigorated the drive for more gender/architecture courses. These scholars include Marta Gutman, Despina Stratigakos, Lori Brown, Diane Ghirardo, Jacqueline Taylor, and myself. Our efforts have resulted in a doubling of the frequency and number of courses being offered overall, with eight courses offered in the year 2013. This is a considerable improvement, but there is far more work to be done.
Assessing the Situation
At present, only a handful of schools – among them Columbia, Parsons/The New School, USC, UVA, Syracuse, CCNY, Buffalo, and Tulane – are offering gender/architecture courses. Like those from the top ten, these schools are also experiencing mixed success. CCNY’s course, ‘Architecture/Gender: Theory and Practice’, is taught by Marta Gutman every third year. At Buffalo, Despina Stratigakos teaches ‘Gender, Architecture and Urban Space’ as a special topics graduate class every other year.7 ‘Women and Architecture’ is brand new at Tulane and taught by Jacqueline Taylor.8
Note that there are professors attached to each of these courses. Gendered spaces courses are dependent on the availability of trained and willing faculty. Ghirardo is a long-term, tenured professor with a commitment to gender studies, which allows USC to offer it regularly as a permanent part of the curriculum.
Contrast USC with Tulane, who hired Taylor from UVA. Tulane can now offer a gender/architecture class but at the expense of UVA, who will need to find another qualified faculty member before it can offer ‘Women and Architecture’ again. My own experiences bear this out: I taught variously titled courses on women in American architecture at UVA in 2002, at Salve Regina University in 2006 and 2008, and at Roger Williams University in 2013. Having no available faculty and no interest from students, Salve Regina discontinued the class after I left.
Unfortunately, these courses reach a limited number of students. Gutman’s class attracts 15–20 undergraduate and graduate students, or about 4% of the total student body. Stratigakos’s class enrols 15–20 students, or about 15% of the student population. And Taylor reported a class of 30 at UVA, or about 6% of their population. In my case, I’ve taught my course to a total of only 37 students over 14 years. These numbers are startlingly low.
To attract more students, most of those who teach gender/architecture courses regularly include gender issues in their art/architectural history survey courses. Speaking of her experiences, Stratigakos notes that:
Her viewpoint may explain why her statistics are relatively high compared to the others. The approach is a good one (Gutman, and Taylor report that they do the same in their surveys). But it is challenging. Even the best professors find it hard to make time for gendered topics in art/architectural history surveys that already have too much material to cover.
Furthermore, this approach doesn’t always trigger further student inquiry. At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Gabrielle Esperdy reports:
Unfortunately, Esperdy’s efforts did not result in enough interest among students to sustain an upper level gender studies seminar – exactly the opposite of the trend Stratigakos reports from U. Buffalo.
Architecture school culture also matters. How a school values history, theory, and electives is key to how students choose to spend their time. In the 21 top architecture programmes, history was a minimal requirement; no school required more than four classes. Six out of ten undergraduate programmes required only two classes, and two out of 11 graduate programmes required only one. Posted sample curricula show that many architecture programmes are content to give students a basic historic survey and nothing more.
The Influence of Accreditation
Architecture schools in the United States are accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), which establishes the requirements schools must meet.11 This process is analogous to RIBA validation in the UK. Unfortunately, the NAAB requirements are utterly silent on the specifics of curriculum design, which may explain the general lack of interest in history even among the best schools. For example, they do not say how many history courses are necessary. Instead, they require schools to tell them how they instil into students:
On the one hand, because the school determines its own response, there is ample opportunity for a stronger inclusion of gender studies within its curriculum. On the other, nothing in the requirements compels a school to do so.
Taking an inclusive approach to gender studies would actually aid in the accreditation process. Courses on gender studies can help a school demonstrate the strength of its learning culture (criterion 1.1.2), its openness to social equity problems (1.1.3), and how it addresses community and social responsibility (1.1.4). Regarding student performance, gender-based courses can teach students about the use of precedents (Student Performance Criterion A6), history and global culture (SPC A7), and cultural diversity and social equity (SPC A8). Architecture schools can also demonstrate that their students have experience with integrated evaluations and the decision making process (SPC C2), and with integrative design (SPC C3). Strengthening these requirements would go a long way towards promoting gender studies within architecture programmes.
Elective Courses
If students must use elective credits to take gender/architecture courses, then the architecture schools’ approach towards electives also matters. Within the top 21 schools, the number of electives required for undergraduates ranged from a high of six (RISD, S. CA Institute of Architecture, and Pratt) to a low of two (Cornell, VA Tech, and Syracuse). At the graduate level, students had at most four electives (at Columbia, U. MI, and UPenn). Even at their lowest, there is enough elective space in every curriculum to take a gendered space class. Many schools did create opportunities to study gender outside of architecture. In 2015, Pratt advertised two courses: ‘Women in Photography’ and ‘Art by Women: 15th Century to the Present’. Parsons/New School offered ‘Queer Art’, ‘Race, Gender and Land Art’, and ‘Women: Renaissance to the Present’. RISD was a standout programme that offered more than five courses on topics such as ‘Images of Women’, ‘Women in Indian Art’, ‘Women Painters’, ‘Queer Art in America’, ‘East Asian Art and Women’, and so forth. While they don’t focus narrowly on architecture, these courses offer students an opportunity to explore gender issues. Interestingly, there was no correlation between the number of electives required by a school and whether they offered a course on gender.
That said, students need to be motivated, by a professor; architecture school culture; or personal interest, to take an elective. If professors like Esperdy or Stratigakos do succeed in inspiring students in their surveys, then it is necessary for students to have a place to go to. In the best case scenario, an architecture student’s architectural history curriculum might look like this: two architectural history courses that focus on great monuments from prehistory to postmodernism, with gender issues sprinkled within, and two electives, perhaps on gender and architecture or, more likely, gender and art.
All these issues add up to a pretty cold reality: getting professor availability/training to align with student interest and available elective space within a school that fosters this line of inquiry is really hard. The fact that, at one point in time, 25 schools managed to overcome these obstacles is to be celebrated.
Making Change
Today’s architects rarely need to recall information required of them by most art and architectural history classes. It is extremely easy these days to look up a date on your smartphone. But architects do need to be able to identify when a building is historic or has historic merit when they look at it. They need an instinct for when something is important, and the skill to know what to do about it. And they need to be able to recognise evidence in the built environment of the presence of gender issues.
Despite our digital age, architectural history pedagogy hasn’t changed much since Walter Gropius arrived at Harvard. Architecture as a field has been stubbornly resistant to including women practitioners, as well as to alternative approaches to the study of gender and architecture. One has to ask whether the framing of architectural history as a sequence of great monuments, with just a dash of ‘something else’, is sufficient. After all, this system has produced our ‘starchitect’ culture, where economics weighs more than social good, and where architecture seems out of touch with the needs of most Americans. Are we perhaps reaping what we sow? If so, then it is time to rethink what architects need from architectural history. As the data and the history of gender/architecture courses presented here suggests, architects-to-be will benefit from an educational system that looks more critically at the concept of great architects in their curricula.