Women in Practice
energy is invested in the relationship with the client throughout the briefing, design and development process. Since Balaam set up Pie with her business partner Michael Corr, they have both become more sensitive to clients’ attitudes to young female architects. Often clients are sceptical about the abilities of young women to manage complex situations. ‘I don’t think it’s different because I am a young woman, but at times it can seem unfair. One of the benefits is that I have to work harder to build relationships with clients and they are then strong relationships,’ says Balaam. Like many of her peers, having seen working mothers struggle to play anything beyond
Anna Gibb is currently working towards her Part 3. Gibb studied in Aberdeen in Alan Dunlop’s hand-drawing master’s unit and has picked up a number of drawing prizes since she graduated. She is currently working for Glasgow’s MAST Architects, getting valuable site and project management experience during the day while continuing her drawing projects at night. ‘I just love drawing. I envision something in my head and I have to draw it. I’m learning a lot during the day – but I am following the designs of others. I want the freedom to be creative and drawing provides that. I have thought about setting up a practice with friends, but I think it will be in 10 years’
a perfunctory role in traditional offices, she understands that this kind of freedom may be important to her in the future. The key factor in which these twenty-somethings are different is not their gender, identity or cultural upbringing, but the fact that they will be confronted with difficult choices in the next few years. They will have to decide if they want to have a family and maintain their position in a profession in which wages barely cover childcare costs. As a result, it’s likely that they will adopt a more flexible interpretation of what it means ‘to practice’. The big question is whether the gatekeepers of professional standards are sufficiently flexible for them to flourish.
above Olympic North Park hub and playground by Ushida Findlay
time when I have more experience.’ In a decade, Anna will be 38 and the point at which she hopes to launch her own practice will coincide with the period when she might be expected to be bringing up a young family. ‘I’m happy not thinking about that. I am sure that I am going to be an architect, but I don’t have the same control over what happens in my personal life.’ It’s easier to plan for the future if you run your own practice. After studying and working in Australia and London, Elena Tsolakis became a founding partner with her father in Kyriakos Tsolakis Architects. She thinks women architects are slightly better represented in
Cyprus than they are in the UK, which may be because Cyprus has a larger proportion of small private practices that are set up on the basis of a modest commission from a relative and then sustained because they allow women the flexibility to bring up children and practice. ‘I have chosen to be self-employed because it gives me more control over what I do and when I do it. One day when I decide to have children, I will have more time and more flexibility.’ Penny Lewis is a lecturer at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and edited the Scottish architecture magazine Urban Realm (formerly Prospect), 2003-2008
Elena Tsolakis (30) Kyriakos Tsolakis, Nicosia and London
looking back: margaret Richards, the drainage queen of pimlico
It’s widely held that attitudes towards women in the profession have improved dramatically over the past 50 years. Architect Margaret Richards, now in her eighties, provides a passionate refutation of the idea that being a woman in architecture was ever difficult. Is it possible that the less closely regulated profession of the past allowed women greater freedom and flexibility within the system? Richards began her career in 1945 at the age of 16, when she began studying architecture at Kingston upon Thames. She recalls that her first year contained six men and six women but that the years above were dominated by women with only four men (including Joe Chamberlin of Chamberlin Powell and Bon) unfit for national service. ‘Everyone was committed to making the world a better place, providing people with the buildings that they needed. There was no big-headedness about creating a building; you were solving a problem.’ Richards was employed by her Kingston tutor Philip Powell of Powell and Moya, where she was dubbed the Drainage Queen of Pimlico, and by Robert Matthews’ Edinburgh office. ‘There was no problem going on site or getting the job if you could draw quickly and tidily, and you could inspect and see that
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things were built properly.’ She says, ‘I never found being a woman a hindrance’ and recalls one of the only times she was patronised as a woman architect as when she met Margaret Thatcher. She admits that she was lucky that her personal situation allowed her to continue her career after having children. After RMJM, Richards ran her own practice until she had her fourth child. She later taught and joined her husband in practice for the last 12 years of her working life. ‘I was married to an architect and have always been able to work. Had I not married an architect (former RMJM partner, the late John Richards), I might have given up, but we read and talked about architecture all of the time.’
Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Library Photographs Collection
Women’s Refuge Nicosia, Cyprus
Anna Gibb (28) MAST Architects, Glasgow
The Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family (SPAVO)’s new centre in Nicosia is the first purpose-built women’s shelter in Cyprus. This new €1.1 million shelter will house accommodation, space for counselling and the charity’s offices. The four-storey building will have two separate entrances for the shelter and offices. The character of the shared spaces and bedrooms will respond to the needs of the women and their children. Built on a corner site, the shelter organises rooms around a central courtyard so as to connect the guests with the consoling rhythm of the seasons.
Heaven and Hell Anna enjoys working in an office environment but finds drawing allows her complete freedom. After graduating and working in Australia, she returned to Scotland and now works for MAST Architects on social housing projects while continuing to draw. Heaven and Hell is inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and is a personal reflection on the seven best and worst things about the profession. Hell is: money (recession), housebuilders, regulations, time (lack thereof ), so-called ‘icons’, clients (some of ) and architectural waffle. Heaven is: the office environment, clients (can be great), money, grid-iron city plans, medieval towers, a heart (the love of it) and the Pantheon (awe-inspiring).
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