Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation debuts podcast on pioneering women in design

Manhattan, NY In recognition of undervalued women in architecture and allied fields, the national women’s advocacy group Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation has debuted episode and third season of their audio documentary series on pioneering women in design, “New Angle: Voice”. Recounting the Brooklyn Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition “Women in American Architecture” and companion book conceived in 1977 by architect, critic and educator Susana Torre with backing from the Architectural League of New York, the premiere episode breaks the mold of the prior 10 episodes of individual profiles.

The influential 1970s exhibition, which laid the groundwork for two major initiatives of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) — the website Pioneering Women of American Architecture, and the award-winning audio documentary series — eventually traveled from New York across the United States and to the Netherlands.

“This important exhibition mounted during a high point of feminist activism, along with its ‘drafting room’ display, were designed to make visible the many women architects who had been ignored and diminished by the male establishment, including at design schools, in professional societies, and in the profession’s male-owned firms,” says Tizziana Baldenebro, BWAF’s executive director. “The curator and supporters rejected the widespread focus only on exceptional women’ accepted by that establishment. Instead, Torre and her team presented ‘a complex, nuanced view of the ideologies that have bound women spatially to the house and socially to nearly invisible professional careers.’