New Angle: Voice

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
  • 4.9 (155)
  • DESIGN
  • BIMONTHLY SERIES
New Angle: Voice Podcast

Beverly Willis is adding her voice to a new podcast featuring discussions about the lives and careers of female pioneers of American Architecture. Going beyond the scholarship of the award-winning website Pioneering Women of American Architecture, our podcast New Angle: Voice details the struggles and triumphs of six leading women who have personified achievement in a primarily male dominated field.

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  1. EPISODE 1

    Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture, Spring 1977

    That was some party. Even though I didn’t make it to the splashy opening, I did attend the transformational exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, our subject in this episode. A rarely used sculpture gallery was filled with ranks and files of cheap drafting tables, their tops tilted to display what seemed to be pages out of the book, one spread to a table. It overwhelmed with information—but seemed void of the chatter of us working women.   Welcome to New Angle Voice, I’m your host, Cynthia Kracauer.  In this episode, we revisit the first significant effort to publicly tell the under-told stories of American women in architecture: “Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective.” On view at the Brooklyn Museum from February-April of 1977, the groundbreaking exhibition and simultaneous book, curated and edited by Susana Torre, clearly defined the state of play for women in the architecture profession. Alienated by the profound hostility expressed by the AIA, women architects found an accepting cohort at the Architectural League of New York. We organized. We canvassed. We raised our consciousnesses. The project team identified subjects so previously obscured as to be unknown, and then with the energy and drive of a furious mob, they broke through and laid the groundwork for scholarship, social change, and recognition of women architects for the next fifty years. Get your consciousness raised: listen to our voices. Here’s “Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture, Spring 1977.”   Special thanks in this episode to Susana Torre, Andrea Merrett, Suzanne Stephens, Cynthia Rock, Deborah Nevins, and Robert AM Stern. This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. Thanks also to production assistants Virginia Eskridge and Aislinn McNamara. New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Funding for this podcast comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Graham Foundation. We are beginning our third season, and hope that if you have followed our progress, that you will want to continue to support our ongoing efforts to tell women’s stories of challenge, struggle and success. Visit our website to make a contribution. www.bwaf.org.

    26 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    Beyond Architecture: The Fantasy Worlds of Phyllis Birkby

    We continue our throw-back to the seventies, and take a deeper dive into the many facets of the women’s movement that impacted the practice of architecture.  Pushed to the side and rarely credited for her architectural work at Davis Brody,  Phyllis Birkby became a significant figure in extending the lesbian women's movement to architecture during the 1970s. Her environmental fantasy workshops played a crucial role in galvanizing the community, providing a creative and empowering space within a male-dominated profession.  Growing out of other consciousness raising techniques, freed up in her classes, Phyllis released the rigor of her conventional training to get down on the floor,  and lead the group in sketching their fantasies however outlandish on giant rolls of butcher paper.  She encouraged the women to imagine architecture above, below, and beyond the norm.  Birkby's work not only contributed to architectural discourse but also fostered a sense of collective identity among lesbian architects, highlighting the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and professional identity in the field. In her later years, she focused on architecture for people marginalized in other ways – by addiction, by age, and by disability, again imagining spaces of community and support. Welcome to Beyond Architecture: The Fantasy Worlds of Phyllis Birkby   Special thanks in this episode to Stephen Vider, MC Overholt, Gabrielle Esperdy, Matthew Wagstaffe, Leslie Kanes Weisman and the Smith College Special Collections.   This podcast is produced by Brandi Howell, with editorial advising from Alexandra Lange.  New Angle Voice is brought to you by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.  Funding for this podcast comes from the New York State Council on the Arts.

    45 min
See All Season 3 (2)

4.9
out of 5
155 Ratings

About

Beverly Willis is adding her voice to a new podcast featuring discussions about the lives and careers of female pioneers of American Architecture. Going beyond the scholarship of the award-winning website Pioneering Women of American Architecture, our podcast New Angle: Voice details the struggles and triumphs of six leading women who have personified achievement in a primarily male dominated field.

Information

  • Creator
    Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
  • Episodes
    12
  • Seasons
    3
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
  • Show Website
    New Angle: Voice

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