A comparison of women role models in architecture firms featured in Architectural Record and Architectural Review

Abstract

How are women represented, specifically women of colour, in architecture library collections? I focus on two major trade periodicals to find out: Architectural Review (a British publication) and Architectural Record (American). I analyse firms highlighted in these periodicals in 2019, researching the proportion of women in leadership per each featured company. I compare against demographic and occupational statistics in the respective countries to see if these periodicals accurately represent the field, or further reinforce antiquated notions. My findings suggest that who the periodicals highlight is roughly proportionate or more diverse than the field itself, but the field continues to mostly represent white men as successful architects. Library collections reify that notion. In order to decentre the monolithic nature of many library collections, I further suggest approaches to increasing diversity based on my own initiatives.

Introduction

This paper stems from my talk at the 2021 ARLIS UK & Ireland conference, where I presented recent research and further analysed earlier findings¹, focusing on the two journals which most closely represented two countries: Architectural Review, a British publication, and Architectural Record, based in the US, where I'm located. This paper samples how represented women leaders are in articles featuring architectural firms in these two publications. The UK and the US are two countries among the least inclusive of women in architectural leadership and practice in a recent study published in Abitare that compared ten countries across Europe and the US.² Comparing the two publications against demographic and occupational statistics is illuminating to see if these periodicals are accurately representing the field, or further reinforcing antiquated notions of who is a successful architect. The findings document that demographic proportions vary, especially as compared to occupational statistics and wider demography. I follow these findings with a discussion on various strategies and approaches I have implemented to help mitigate the effects of the relative homogeneity of most architecture library collections.

I would like to give you a little background on how I arrived at this research topic. In 2019, when I applied for and was offered my current position, I was planning to do a collection diversity audit as my next research project, and wanted to figure out how to make such a study useful not only to fellow librarians but also to the community I serve. The Illinois School of Architecture, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, had shown interest in documenting the issues of women in the architecture field, hosting a reunion and symposium for their women architecture alumni that same year.³ That became the impetus for me to centre the study on women, particularly women of colour in order to have more intersectional information. I also wanted the study to reflect the programme: since the majority are undergraduates, and students who major in architecture often go on to practice in firms, I elected to focus on firms rather than specific architects. Since the research shows that women's disappearance from the profession happened later in their career, at about the time they started rising up the echelons, I chose to measure firm leadership—not all firm employees, rather those who were principals and partners.⁴

I next figured out the journals to investigate. Again, I reflected on what I had observed about working with architecture researchers, and realized that trade periodicals are distinctively important to architecture, particularly for precedent research. Out of these trade periodicals, I chose Architectural Record, Architectural Review, L'Architecture d'Aujourd’hui, and Detail. Why these? I chose journals that I had personally handled and recommended in reference interactions, especially for questions centering on precedent studies. Further, while each journal has a substantive spotlight on current projects, they also differ considerably in approach. Detail is fairly dry, with its focus on immaculate illustrations. Out of the group, Record felt the most like a popular magazine, and seemed the most cantered on current trends in the practice. Both Review and ‘A'A’ seemed more conceptual and topical in their approaches. I wondered how these approaches would translate into the projects they chose to cover.

My methodology, undertaken in 2020, was facilitated through using the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals database to isolate article output from these specific journals, limiting to the year 2019 (the latest complete calendar year), and only using those articles which had entries in the ‘Company/Entity’ metadata field (Figure 1). Using this output as the raw data to be investigated, I applied for and received funding to hire a few research assistants to gather information about each company listed, tally the number of principles and partners, and perform biographical research on each person they determined at best visual guess to identify as a woman. This is how I arrived at the percentages I discuss in the findings section.

Figure 1. Screenshot of typical Avery index article with the “Company/Entity” field highlighted.

Literature review

Here, I would like to cover trade literature and reports created in the architectural field rather than library science literature (my LRTS article does go into LIS literature if you want to explore various ways library science has worked toward diversity, particularly as applied to collections). However, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge an LIS article previously published in this very journal.⁵ Manuell et al.'s article details their work analysing aspects of their monographic collection across a variety of design disciplines, and integrating a feedback mechanism to ensure they capture their community's interests and recommendations. While I chose to look at periodicals rather than monographs, I too wanted to create pathways for the community I work with to be involved and apprised of takeaways for my research. More on that later.

Within architecture, a great deal of material on the subject has been published on the topic from the UK and the US. The UK has the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Inclusion Initiative, which emphasizes the importance of ‘promoting positive and inclusive role models in the profession and supporting progressive employment practice.’⁶ Meanwhile, leading trade publication Architects’ Journal has run an annual ‘Women in Architecture’ survey to measure women's experiences over time since 2011. Their findings across the years demonstrate that women have been underpaid, faced discrimination and microaggressions, and last but not least, very few respondents worked for firms where there was a preponderance of women in leadership roles.⁷ Mothers faced additional stigma, and their commitment to the profession was regularly questioned. Additionally, RIBA publishing has produced several monographs, such as Brown et al.'s A Gendered Profession and Walker's Drawing on Diversity; further, Oxford University Press published Stead's Women, Practice, Architecture, all of which broaden and deepen findings of gender discrimination within architecture.⁸

The US equivalent of RIBA is the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The AIA San Francisco chapter has hosted several conferences relevant to this topic since the 2010s. Called ‘The Missing 32%,’ their initiative called attention to the disparity between the percentage of women who graduate with an architecture degree—50—and the percentage of licensed architects: 18. Recently, the organizers published a report which surveyed more than 14,000 people working in architecture.⁹ The findings broadly agreed with the Architects’ Journal survey findings mentioned above: widespread lower pay, less diverse leadership, and mothers with much greater child rearing responsibilities than fathers.

In the education sector, the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has produced a number of reports with deep dives into issues pertinent to a variety of identities across gender and race.¹⁰ Each group faces familiar challenges—lack of representation leads to lack of representation—but several specifics are worth pointing out. For example, women's inclusion in the profession is proportionately represented as undergraduate majors, but grow rarer in the more distinguished career honors.¹¹ Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are disproportionately underrepresented in schools that have National Architecture Accreditation Board (NAAB) accreditation, but make up the largest proportion of Black architecture student enrollment.¹² Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of NAAB programs report having zero Native American students—not zero percent, zero students full stop.¹³ Later reports include respondent feedback, which highlight the poor culture fit such as familism and lack of opportunity to directly benefit one's community, lack of colleagues with similar backgrounds, and abundant microaggressions.¹⁴ Across respondents, they assert that their culture is not reflected in typical architecture practice. This respondent feedback is mirrored to a large extent in the ‘Equity by design’ survey as well, which asks its respondents to compare their values with those of the discipline, and finds marked differences particularly among underrepresented groups.¹⁵

Across the literature, findings suggest that greater representation of more diverse role models would benefit architects from marginalized identities. Moreover, practices which are culturally sensitive and positively impact communities would give greater satisfaction and value to these architects. While architectural libraries have little if any control over the workplace, they can provide examples of role models within the discipline and values-oriented projects as highlighted through publications, and communicate these materials proactively to their users. In the Discussion section, I will provide a few examples.

Findings

Libraries can provide positive examples of diverse role models and projects. But do they? I report my findings across all journals in my previously published article cited above. To summarize: the firms featured in Record and ‘A'A’ had higher proportions of women in leadership roles, whereas the firms in Review and Detail were lower. Review had 22 percent women compared to all leadership, and 4 percent women of colour represented in its leadership; Record had 28 percent women and 9 percent women leaders of colour.

Now, let's interpret that in comparison to data generated from the architectural profession. Keep in mind that I have tried as possible to compare data from similar years, however this was not always possible—for example, the 2020 UK census is not yet published at the time of writing, so I use the 2011 census instead. In the Abitare article mentioned above, both countries’ overall proportion of licensed women architects were 25 percent. My investigation's findings were fairly similar: Record was 3 percent higher, and Review was 3 percent lower. Table 1 compares the relative percentage of licensure in the UK and the US, to the firms analyzed from Record and Review. Now this is not a straight comparison, since licensed architects are not necessarily the firms’ leaders and vice versa, but it gives some sense of a more advanced state of the field. So, at first glance women are represented relatively proportionately within the publications as compared to the profession.

Table 1. Comparative percentages of women leaders in Record and Review vs. percent of licensed women architects. Source: Tavela.

Another analysis layer can be added by incorporating reports issued by RIBA, Architects Registration Board (ARB), and AIA respectively on demographic proportions within firms. Per the ARB's most recent report from 2019, in the UK women represent 29 percent of licensed architects; RIBA puts them at 19 percent firm leaders.¹⁶ The ARB provides proportions for white architects at 84 percent and underrepresented groups at 10 percent—and 6 percent that preferred not to disclose. Neither the ARB nor the RIBA statistics provide percentages broken down by both race and gender but a baseline estimation can be achieved by multiplying the two percentages: from this, we arrive at 1.9 percent. So Review's numbers are above average for women leaders in the UK (22 versus 19), as well as a few percentage points higher for women of colour and leaders (4 versus 1.9).

Back to the US: the 2018 AIA firm survey provides a figure of 29 percent for women, and 11 percent underrepresented races in leadership roles.¹⁷ Like RIBA and ARB, the AIA survey did not give intersectional numbers; however, by multiplying 29 by 11 we predict 3 percent of firm principals and partners are women of colour. By that estimation, Record is close to the number of women principals (28 percent versus 29), and three times higher than that of the estimated number of women of colour (9 versus 3). In other words, on the surface Record's numbers are higher than those of Review and more towards what we would want to see: an increased percentage of leadership roles.

That is, until we contextualize the findings within the relative demographics of the country: this indicator actually demonstrates that Review leadership figures are more diverse than those of Record when looked at in terms of its country's demographics. As a reminder, at this point, I will only be looking at the demographics within the women architecture leaders we researched, so not conclusive but interesting nonetheless.

Looking at the UK, 86 percent of British citizens are white and 14 percent are underrepresented groups.¹⁸ The ARB survey alluded to above indicated that licensed architects were 84 percent white, two percent more than the UK average, whereas 10 percent were from underrepresented groups. Let's estimate that the 6 percent who preferred not to disclose their race/ethnicity are counted equally among the two other categories, which provides an estimation of 87 percent white, and 13 not. Looking more closely at the Review, 83 percent of the women were white, while 17 percent women of colour. Review's statistics overall were a little more diverse than that of the overall British population, and stood up to the ARB survey, with less whiteness in licensed architects—at least, for women (table 2). Per these findings, firms with women of colour in leadership roles have more representation in the pages of Review than they do in the profession, and somewhat higher than the general demographics of the country.

Table 2. Women leaders demographics in Review, compared to ARB licensure statistics, and the UK census.

Table 3. Women leaders demographics in Record, compared to 2018 AIA Firm Survey, and the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

By comparison, Record demographics were more diverse than the AIA Firm Survey indicated, but much less diverse as compared to the current US population. Per the 2020 US Census, 62 percent of the population is white alone and all other identities comprise 38 percent.¹⁹ Meanwhile, the 2018 AIA survey indicates that 88 percent of firm leaders are white. In Record, white women leaders make up 74 percent, and women of colour make up 26 percent of women in leadership. Record's numbers are below the country by approximately ten percentage points, but twice as high as the profession as measured by the AIA survey.

Therefore, in a more ‘apples to apples’ comparison, Review has greater representation of women than Record if compared specifically to the country it is housed within, but Record is more diverse than the profession. That may point to broader inequity and access to career paths, particularly in the US.

Discussion

Both publications highlight as or more diverse firms than the average, as compared to RIBA, ARB, and AIA surveys respectively. But the actual field itself still lags behind in promoting women and women of colour to the top roles in architectural firms. While Record's representation of 9 percent women of colour in the firms highlighted is greater than average, that is still only one in ten people for aspiring women of colour architecture students to see and be reassured that there are people who share their identities within the profession. This matters: As Katy Ghahremani discusses in an article highlighting the importance of women mentorship,

The most common question that has come up in mentoring sessions is when mentees look around them in their workplace and see that they are different to others. This may be in their manner in meetings or the way they present an idea or project. They feel they need to copy their often more confident and louder colleagues. However, this difference is key to the creative process and needs to be celebrated rather than pushed out.²⁰

In other words, if most don't look like you, it may be quite difficult to know what success will look like for you.

In her article summing up the situation for women in architecture, Amy Linford puts it plainly: ‘For most, being able to imagine yourself in a future position helps if there is someone there to relate to. They are there, those brilliant women architects, they are just not as present in architectural media and education as they ought to be.’²¹ This lack has actually been acknowledged by Review's editors, in an article published after the research for the current article had been conducted, stating that they ‘acknowledg[e] the cultural homogeneity and whiteness of our small editorial team. We are slowly starting to expand and diversify our individual and collective perspectives through a network of editorial contributors, testing ideas from multiple positions, and expanding and decentring the AR's cultural knowledge production.’²² It will be interesting to see how this progresses over time.

The media's role in shaping the perception of the discipline has a direct effect on library collections, which after all primarily collect published material. Thus, libraries reinforce common notions of what the subject is, and moreover, who belongs as key players within the subject. Put differently, libraries indicate who belongs within the discipline—and any typical architectural library predominantly shows white men belong. A subject search for Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1867–1959 on Worldcat returns 7,129 results; Williams, Paul R. 1894–1980 returns 90. Le Corbusier, 1887–1965 provides 7,461; Gray, Eileen, 1878–1976 gets 266 results. For architects born within thirty years of one another, each with remarkable contributions, the difference in coverage as measured by the library catalogue is stunningly uneven. But the catalogue reflects what is collected, which often although not always is a measure in turn of what is published. There are limitations on what we can do to collect material that is not there.

So, what to do? It is my belief that academic architecture libraries have an incredible opportunity to influence the rising generation of architects through proactively highlighting diverse collections. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a few projects and initiatives I have done. Like Manuell et al., I think the most important thing to do is to engage with one's community on the topic.

One thing I did at a library I worked at where the freshman level architecture class came in nearly every week to complete assignments, was to prominently display a selection of books about women architects and/or firms with women leaders. I would see student after student stop in their tracks, grab a book about SANAA or MVRDV or Denise Scott Brown and be mesmerized, flipping through the pages. I think we've all seen, and perhaps experienced ourselves, the electrified stillness of someone deep in the browsing serendipity, their lightning focus. I was thrilled to be able to stimulate that for our users, and to normalize and celebrate the contributions of women in architecture so early in the students’ careers. Perhaps if they admire and respect the contributions of Mariam Kamara, Leslie Lokko, etc. they won't have as much trouble respecting women's authority, as the 2014 AJ survey showed.²³

Beyond displays, I also saw this as an opportunity to proactively highlight materials in the digital realm, through our #FromMarginToCenter guides. I started these in mid-2020, as a way to help suggest diverse creators and bolster reference interactions. For the Women-Led Architecture Firms guide in the series, I took the research done for this project and assigned graduate assistants to translate it into a resource to help students find more women's work (Figure 2).²⁴ I also took care to highlight the firms with higher percentages of women of colour in leadership.

Figure 2. Screenshot of Women-Led Architecture Firms guide.

In concert with this effort, I've worked toward partnering with faculty who teach core courses in the curriculum to diversify the case studies, precedents, and readings discussed in those classes to help scaffold a broader, more inclusive understanding of who is an architect and what is architecture to our students. We not only look for diverse architects, we also pay attention to how the community is engaged, if the project is values-driven, and is responsive to the local culture and environment. These projects help to mitigate the gap between personal values and the firms values as pointed out by Nicholson and Pitts et al. above. Paired with this focus on pedagogy is public engagement: in 2021, I co-hosted an event on decentering the canon in the architectural library (Figure 3) with PhD student Soumya Dasgupta. We were subsequently invited to author an article on the topic in the architecture student-run journal, Ricker Report.²⁵

Figure 3. Flier for “Decentering the Canon in the Architectural Library” event.

Extending beyond the classroom, I have collaborated with an architecture student group, a local student chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), a US organization founded for and by underrepresented architects. I have sponsored the students’ attendance at the annual NOMA conference, as well as supported the honorarium for their keynote speaker for their annual symposium, and devoted staff time to hosting a zine workshop, and complementary displays. In fact, we did another #FromMarginToCenter guide at their request: Afrocentric architecture.²⁶

Collection development approaches and priorities have offered numerous opportunities to collect more holistically as materials are published. I have found the most success in developing relationships with vendors, and in some cases collaborating with area studies colleagues to ask them to add architecture and art materials into their existing profiles, with funding contributions from my allocated resources. I have also been able to make use of some of the ‘Interdisciplinary Descriptors' in GOBI, one of the main book purveyors for English language materials, as well as focusing on adding these parameters into our approval plan.

Collection development is best paired with intentional collection management—particularly necessary here, with a generous collections budget but a rather small footprint. As I go through the materials and consider what value the physical branch library has, I have a much heavier hand on transferring materials from or about the US or Europe, while keeping the majority of those materials representing other countries.

These are outputs somewhat singular to the opportunities of my position and institution: as the unit head, I direct initiatives and projects; the university has a robust library science program and the library has graduate assistantships, I oversee a few; and I also have had access to internal grant funding and endowment funds to deploy towards the projects I believe will raise the library's profile. But I think the larger gesture can be translated in a more scalable, sustainable fashion to suit your time and the needs of your program and student body.

Conclusion

While there are systemic issues to diversifying the profession, as pointed out extensively in Nicholson's suite of reports for ACSA as well as the ‘Equity by design’ report findings, libraries can play an important part in students’ growth and attitude toward the profession. What if we took a more proactive role in shaping how the field looks to students and other interested beginners, so as to inculcate inclusivity right from the start? Let's find out.