The complexion of America’s architects has been a subject of introspection and discussion since at least 1968, when Whitney Young, Jr., president of the National Urban League, chastised attendees at the AIA’s national convention for the scarcity of African-American and women practitioners.
If you go by newspapers and monthly consumer magazines, you might think there is only one female architect designing significant buildings today—Zaha Hadid. To be sure, the London-based, Iraqi-born architect deserves acclaim for her inventive assortment of zoomy structures completed in the last few years. But what about the rest? Aren’t there other talented women architects out there, who, like Hadid, run their own design practices?