Building Community: The Women of Sasaki Designing More Sustainable and Inclusive Futures

Nearly half of all architecture students are women, but they make up about 20 percent of licensed architects and 17 percent of partners or principals in architecture firms. What accounts for the disparity?

Tamar: What does it take to advance in this profession? Not just long working hours, but access to resources: networks for clients and investors. Until women have this access, it will be challenging for women to win commissions and earn positions as principals and stockholders. Fortunately, an increasing number of client networks include women in leadership positions. And firms can foster inclusion by mentoring rising women architects and helping them cultivate business development skills, speaking opportunities, and professional networks.

Mary Anne: I think the disparity comes from a variety of complex factors. First, I think that it is wonderful that nearly half of architecture students are women, but architecture schools are still confronting cultures of discrimination and bias. Some of the biases are the absence women in design programs. Many curricula are not exposing students to historic roles women have played as designers, planners, clients, or critics and lack proper representation of women faculty and administrators. We are seeing great progress in this last decade with many great women leading architecture schools: Dean J. Meejin Yoon at Cornell, Dean Sarah Whiting at Harvard, Dean Deborah Berke at Yale, Dean Mónica Ponce de León at Princeton, and Dean Amale Andraos at Columbia, among others. There has been tremendous advocacy for women by faculty like Lori Brown at Syracuse University and students across the country, who are focusing their research and activism for gender equity.

In professional practice, I think the disparity of women in leadership or missing in practice is because of several challenges that have been researched and documented from interviews, survey data, and policy research. Despina Stratigakos states in her book Where are the Women Architects? that the pervasive inequality of professional opportunities and treatment as well as male-dominated culture lie at the heart of most women’s exodus from architecture. I believe that pay gaps, stalled promotions, work-life balance, lack of sponsorship and lack of role models contribute to women leaving. These moments of attrition accumulate over time. Zhanina Boyadzhieva and Juliet Chun’s Girl UNinterrupted work is a wonderful research initiative that engages professionals from across the country to understand some of these challenges, highlight anecdotal narratives that underscore these experiences, and recommends some ideas for how to improve the culture of architecture for women.

Liz: There are many factors affecting who remains in architecture and making it to the level of principal. I see a lot of people that study architecture as a first step to working in other parts of the profession. Many of my industry peers, regardless of gender, have moved to development, working as a product representative, or even into the legal field.

Moving into a principal position is complicated because it requires building a network of people that will be your clients or connect you to clients. You also have to be interested in aspects of running a business and finances, which isn’t what brings people into architecture in the first place. My friends who haven’t stayed in the field or didn’t look to move to leadership positions were largely uninterested in that type of work.

Changes due to COVID-19 have been swift. How do you think the pandemic will shape design?

Tamar: COVID-19 has been a difficult challenge for our economy, but it has also taught us a great deal about the value of excellent design. It has granted us renewed appreciation of the importance of public open spaces that are beautiful, inclusive, and flexible for a range of activities in all seasons. We have reconsidered how we use our streets, parking areas, and sidewalks—adapting them for a range of new uses. We have also learned to stretch our thermal comfort envelope, and how to dress to be comfortable outdoors in a far wider range of temperatures than we once thought possible. Who knew that my dance group would enjoy dancing in a parking lot in 30-degree weather?

Mary Anne: I think the pandemic highlights two major areas of focus for designers: First, focusing on people and seeing the populations that were disproportionately affected by the pandemic should be a concern that architects and designers focus on in the future. How is your work contributing to communities where there is greatest need? Second, I believe that the design of the built environment will center on improving building systems (HVAC), focusing on building typologies that promote health and wellness, designing more open spaces, and planning for mobility systems that promote a variety of modes of movement. With a new paradigm of online interaction, the built environment will also need to accommodate new infrastructure that can provide wireless access and technology to more people.

Liz: I think the pandemic will change our priorities. As someone who designs a lot of workplaces, we are rethinking not just how we work, but why we will go back to the workplace at all. I think the pandemic will cause us to rethink our assumptions in many areas of design because our priorities as people will have changed. We can reimagine so many more aspects of work than we would have been in the iterative process that workplace design used to be. We are designing richer environments and embracing spaces that are designed for flexibility of use and a workforce that changes by the day.

As you look to the future, are there any ideas you think should be front and center in the minds of architects and designers?

Tamar: Architects generate value and help create wealth. However, true value for the long-term derives from sustainability, from creating value for future generations. As our population grows and global resources shrink, we must design for environmental and social justice, using finite energy and water resources sparingly and equitably. By reducing our carbon emissions from the built environment, future generations can survive and thrive long after we, ourselves, are ‘recycled’.

Mary Anne: I believe that some of the most important ideas for architects and designers will be centered on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and figuring out ways to contribute to more equitable processes and practices. I think firms will reflect on their own organization’s practice and how this relates to different scales of community, from their office to the industry, to the clients and communities that are impacted by their work.

As an industry, we must reflect on the social justice conflicts that have been thrust into our collective consciousness and consider the role of the designer in promoting equity through how we work and the work we choose. The urgency of designing a more sustainable and resilient built environment will require us, as designers and planners, to really tackle climate change and how cities, buildings, landscapes, mobility, and infrastructure can be planned and reimagined to solve multiple problems at once.

Liz: We should be thinking about the impact that the built environment has on our bodies—how we can create spaces that will allow us to be our best wherever we are. This means designing spaces that contribute to physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing as well as beauty. Many of these principles are outlined in the WELL certification process, which I fully believe will become more important as we reconsider the space around us post-pandemic and place a greater emphasis on wellness.