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author 100 Women: Architects in Practice (RIBA Publishing, 2023) describes their book as a “coffee table Trojan horse”. Billed as a “flagship reference and inspirational series”, it features extraordinary women from 79 countries who should be household names.
“This is a microcosm of current innovative architectural practice around the world, which includes many female architects who are omitted from authoritative lists of key figures in architecture, design studios and historical seminars, the construction industry press and its architectural magazines. Awards Institutions,” write authors Harriet Harris, Naomi Howes, Monica Parrinder and Tom Ravenscroft.
The book profiles renowned architects including Pritzker Prize winners Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, Jane Drew Prize winner Yasmine Lally, and Australian gold medalist Kerstin Thompson, and the under-recognized “woman from a country and place most of us can’t name” was also a male architect. “
As a global survey of women architects, this book deserves praise for recognizing and attempting to address unconscious biases against Anglo/Eurocentric perspectives. But at the same time, it missed the mark.
The authors divided the world into five continental regions, each with approximately 20 architects, and therefore selected 100 female architects. At first glance, this approach makes sense – architecture is a contextual craft – and it puts architects from low- and middle-income countries on an equal footing with architects from regions that dominate global discourse.
However, this approach ignores population distribution, and Asia is treated the same as Europe despite a six-fold difference in population size. For example, there is only one architect from Indonesia – the world’s fourth most populous country with hundreds of local language groups. Meanwhile, Oceania is considered a sub-region due to its relatively small population, with only five architects (representing Australia, New Zealand and Fiji). So while the book clearly emphasizes – “Troy,” if you like – decolonization rather than diversity, and its focus is on the so-called “global South,” the result feels somewhat Eurocentric.
“Pluralism often assumes that adding a few mistresses to the canon of most master architects is enough—a sanitizing rinse of their biased infrastructure,” the authors write. “Decolonization, on the other hand, ation challenges classical design by changing the metrics and mechanisms of selection beyond major committees and monographs to include ‘other’ types of spatial practices and ways of working.”
It can be said, 100 women Even more refreshing is the survey of women architects, which indirectly connects the practice of selected female architects around the world with “an overarching agenda of transformation and empowerment.” It highlights an approach to practice that is different from the mainstream and is based on care, advocacy, empathy and a return to indigenous mindset, emphasizing the contrast with the colonial (extractive) mindset prevalent in modern architectural practice.
“This provides architects with an alternative role and responsibility – as caretakers of a broken planet […] Reimagining how architecture relates to people and land, using a reality-based, truly democratic approach that supports systemic change at its most radical.
“With many women stepping into high-profile roles, they are demonstrating the value of architecture to those who have hitherto been excluded, whose trust has been broken, and whose pursuit of profit has prioritized developers over architects.”
In the wake of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale and its focus on decolonization and decarbonization, this reimagining of architects and architectural responsibility is consistent with discussions of reversing destructive architecture. The real value of this book is the 100 personal ways in which women architects are making meaningful changes to the built and social environment.
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