IWD 2022: Phenomenal Women in Architecture

Happy International Women’s Day!!!
This month of March, We are featuring phenomenal projects and the amazing women behind them.

In line with this year’s International Women’s Day theme: Breaking the Bias.

In no particular order, we start off with:

• Miminat Shodeinde

British -Nigerian Designer and Artist known for her artistic architectural practice that aims to align every day with the poetic.

Her own thing is designing gorgeous home interiors around the world and the furniture to go with it. From sleek glass and wooden tables to curved chairs made from suede leather and mahogany, Shodeinde’s designs display her eye for form and appearance with aesthetic quality and approach that does not compromise on functionality.

She has many sources of inspiration, citing everything from nature to music but it is evident that the one influence that always comes through is her Nigerian heritage. It appears in the names of her furniture – the Omi table is named after the Yoruba word for “water” – and in the colors used in her Okuta collection of kitchenware: gold, to represent the richness of African culture.

• Zaha Hadid

Known as a genius, she was an Iraqi-British architect, artist, and designer, recognized as a major figure in architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

She earned her early reputation with her lecturing and colourful and radical early designs and projects, which were widely published in architectural journals but remained largely unbuilt. Her ambitious but unbuilt projects included a plan for Peak in Hong Kong (1983), and a plan for an opera house in Cardiff, Wales, (1994). The Cardiff experience was particularly discouraging; her design was chosen as the best by the competition jury, but the Welsh government refused to pay for it, and the commission was given to a different and less ambitious architect. Her reputation in this period rested largely upon her teaching and the imaginative and colourful paintings she made of her proposed buildings. Her international reputation was greatly enhanced in 1988 when she was chosen to show her drawings and paintings as one of seven architects chosen to participate in the exhibition “Deconstructivism in Architecture” curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This, a conference at the Tate in London, and press coverage of her work began to not only get her name out into the architecture world but allowed people to associate a particular style of architecture with Hadid.

•Odile Decq

is a French architect, urban planner and academic. She is the founder of the Paris firm, Studio Odile Decq and the architecture school, Confluence Institute. Decq is known for her unique, self-described goth appearance and style. Her works cause stirs in cities where they are situated. Decq has remained an academic since 1992, teaching in her Alma mater, Ecole d’Architecture de Paris-La Vilette. But Decq, as rebellious as she is, couldn’t resonate with the closed education system she came in contact within the Institution. Soon in the year 2014, with a collaboration with a small group of international architects and educators, she started a new College called as Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture.

She envisioned this new College with an intent to break away from the traditional methods of architectural pedagogy and research. Her emphasis on inclusiveness stems from the fact that she recognised the battles women had to face against sexism. In an interview, Decq has even disclosed that she never really worked for any architects and that is also why she started her practice soon after her studies.

•Alison Brooks RDI

is an architect whose practice, Alison Brooks Architects, is based in London. She has been described as the only architect in the UK to have received all three major RIBA awards: the RIBA Stirling Prize, Manser Medal and Stephen Lawrence Prize.

With growing success, her goal in London was to address big problems such as housing and public spaces. She said: “I wanted to address some of the big, big problems that needed to be addressed, particularly in London. The quality of housing and the quality of public space really suffered in the 1980s under Thatcher, and there has been, in the last ten years in London, a movement to start investing in the public realm and looking at things that haven’t been looked at in a long time: new forms of housing, sustainable housing, urban design and infrastructure – all of the stuff that Britain’s been pretty far behind on. So that was my big ambition.”

Brooks’s architecture has been described by Jonathan Glancey as “a late flowering of the most elegant and sensuous modernism”. Brooks became known for designing intelligent, beautiful houses but then moved into the cultural sector, designing the Performing Arts Centre at Folkestone. She says: “The main point I try to make is that the idiosyncrasies or each project drive different solutions. I really like that people don’t know what they are getting with me.” Brooks emphasis on uniqueness and purpose is at the core of all her projects. 

• Kimberley Dowdell

A principal at HOK, Kimberly Dowdell collaborates with other members of the leadership team in the firm’s Chicago studio to develop and implement strategic business development and marketing initiatives. In addition to cultivating and maintaining relationships with clients and partners, she is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events and a mentor to HOK’s emerging leaders.

Kimberly is the past president (2019-2020) of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and a member of the National Organization of Minority Architects Council (NOMAC), which is the organization’s highest level of recognition.

She was a 2020 AIA Young Architects Award recipient and was recognized for her activism efforts by Architectural Record’s 2020 Women in Architecture Awards program.

Kimberly is a member of the Urban Land Institute. She initiated the concept behind Social Economic Environmental Design, an organization that she cofounded in 2005, and was a “40 Under 40” honoree in both Crain’s Chicago Business and Crain’s Detroit Business. In 2019, Kimberly delivered the 19th Annual Dunlop Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

We look forward to featuring more works from amazing female architects in upcoming issues, Thanks for reading!!