Agnieszka: What did the collaboration with the Barbie manufacturer consist of?
Despina:The collaboration with Mattel was of course very different, it started even before the student exhibition in Michigan. The idea was to create a real Barbie Architect, which was to enter the market and whose brand is carefully protected. I tackled this project with my friend and collaborator Kelly Hayes McAlonie, an architect who also teaches at the University of Buffalo and is also very involved in the subject of women. We began our work equipped with some assumptions about what female architects should look like. Mattel's goal is to reach little girls, and they've done a lot of research on what children like. We suggested to them [laughs] pictures from Vogue, with sophisticated, elegant outfits in navy blue or brown. We suggested a minimalist, elegant image for Barbie, and they helped us imagine how things look from a little girl's perspective. Because it's not simply about miniaturizing an adult in doll form. Children have their own aesthetics that need to be respected. Out of this dialogue emerged Barbie the Architect in black boots, a black jacket, with very architectural, stylish glasses and a drawing tube - because the latter was considered a stronger icon than a laptop - but in sharp pink. Deciding what is iconic, what is associated with architecture, how to combine Barbie doll and architecture, was a lot of fun.
Prior to its official launch at the American Institute of Architects convention in New Orleans in 2011, the doll was shown at a toy fair in New York. It aroused great interest and swept the media. Incredible discussions broke out about her appearance. When creating the doll, we were inspired by how students at the University of Michigan used her femininity, their critical and distanced approach to industry norms. But as the discussion heated up, it was clear that it wasn't just about the doll. While people were arguing about the dress, another issue was playing out in the background. A hundred years ago, it was also hotly debated whether women should show up at construction sites in a dress - which at the time was used as an argument against allowing them to practice architecture. Since it wasn't socially acceptable for women to wear pants back then, and you can't enter a construction site in a dress, a woman couldn't become an architect. So again, I witnessed old arguments being revisited - it was fascinating and awful at the same time, because we would like to enter the discussion, and we weren't allowed to. I don't think we fully realized what we were getting into by releasing this doll into the world [laughs]. In the end, however, I believe that this discussion must have happened: the doll was the lightning from which the fire went.
Agnieszka: How did the academic world react?
Despina: I have not experienced this kind of dispute in my environment. In social media - yes. Certainly, researchers or lecturers also participated in them. Interestingly, a generational conflict among women also appeared in them. Discussions about makeup, pink color, dresses, whether an architect can wear heels took place not only between men and women, but also between women of different generations. Older women in the industry worried that the doll and this version of femininity were dangerous because they undermined the credibility of women in the profession. Younger women, on the other hand, claimed that older women patronized them. These tensions, like how women perceive themselves in the architecture industry, do not seem to have been explored yet. Thus, competing conceptions of what feminism or empowerment means for women in architecture today emerged from the discussion.
Agnieszka: There is an ongoing discussion in Poland about feminatives. Some female architects claim that using feminine endings stigmatizes them as an inferior version of architect. They prefer the masculine form, which they consider neutral. There is also discussion about appearance - there are voices that on a construction site it is better not to look too feminine, because you are not treated with respect ("too feminine to build"). There are also times when women who dress and act more masculine are judged as "too masculine for a woman."
Despina: Yes, it's a situation without a good solution. I understand perfectly this resistance, this desire to escape from being pigeonholed as a woman architect. I try to show in my work that the identity of an architect/woman is gendered, whether we like it or not. A hundred years ago, the work of female architects was also judged by gender. Their works were accused of being decorative. Listening to the client, especially the female client - the housewife - was also considered a feature of feminine, bad architecture. And when female architects created buildings that were judged to be masculine, they were in turn accused of trying to pretend to be men.
Agnieszka: In other professions where there is not such an obsession with masculinity, such as television journalism, when a program host or journalist is dressed in a feminine way, in pink or flowers, and is heavily made up, it is not commented on and she is not considered an inferior journalist because of it. Maybe in architecture it is still a matter of time?
Despina: Possibly. So many behaviors or images are analyzed by gender and judged as inappropriate in the world of architecture. It is imperative to expose them in order to understand our value system and prejudices. There are so many talented female architecture students whose life dream is to design. With all their talent, persistence and hard work, they are unable to make a living in the industry. We then ask ourselves, what is going on? Traditionally, we accuse women that something must be wrong with them if they can't succeed in architecture. Are they giving up on their careers because of their children? Research has shown that not quite. What we didn't ask, however, was whether there might be something wrong with the industry that prevents them from advancing.
Agnieszka: There are still some well-mannered, well-educated, cultured men - i.e., typical university professors - who would not think of making fun of the elderly, children or any group with an inferior position in society and culture in public, but allow themselves to make sexist jokes against female students, taking advantage of their position of power.
A Berlin builder shows off her courage to reporters; she poses for a photo while repairing the roof of Berlin City Hall in 1910
Source: Frauen als Baumeister, "Illustrierte Frauenzeitung" 1910, vol. 38, no. 2, p. 17.
Despina:Gender prejudices are still doing surprisingly well. They are so deeply ingrained that sometimes you can't see them. Sometimes we don't realize at all how much they interfere with our appreciation of good work or good artists. Before women began to enter architecture a century ago, the field was not defined as male. It is no coincidence that it was at that point that the notion of a certain kind of masculinity of the profession was reinforced and the bar was raised, as a result of which it was so difficult for women to succeed. For a long time, it's stopped at explaining that it's just the way it is, the world of architecture is like that.
Agnieszka: The book "Where are the female architects?" was published in the United States in 2016. Has anything changed in research on women in architecture since then? New attitudes? Publications? Activities?
Despina: The most significant change I have observed is the emergence of voices that were not always heard. Younger architecture practitioners, both women and men, are speaking out about the conditions that hinder their growth in the profession. There is much more criticism and discussion than before - on social media and in academia - about who is present in architecture and who is not. Architecture has built walls around itself, giving the profession an extremely exclusive character - so the discussions are not only about women, but also about issues of race, class. There are signs of improvement, more women are able to start and maintain their own architecture practice, but for me the most important, crucial change is this growing discussion - because if we don't talk about change, change won't happen. I'm delighted when male or female students ask what's not in the program, because it shows the level of critical thinking about education. They have become much more adventurous in expressing their opinions, more critical about lectures, who is invited to give them and who is not, they notice differences, they are not afraid to talk about the framework within which architecture operates, they probably want to practice it in a different way than the traditional way. The concept of the heroic individual architect does not appeal to the younger generation as much.
There is another change, absolutely fantastic, or rather a symptom of change. "The Source," the novel by Ayn Rand, which portrays the architect as a hyper-masculine, hyper-radical, stubborn, heroic figure, was for decades a kind of bible at architecture colleges. Of course, both the novel and the film based on it are deeply problematic today. A few years ago, with students in a class on the relationship between gender and architecture, we regularly engaged in an analysis of the book. And recently I realized that students have no idea of its existence. The ideal of a radical architect who doesn't listen to his clients, who is completely uncooperative, is no longer interesting to them. Today, students are engaging in topics such as social justice, collaborative design. Which is not to say that we should stop pushing forward. Because progress is not given to us. We are witnessing an exciting phenomenon that I call the third wave of feminism in architecture. The question "where are the female architects?", which I provocatively used as the title of the book, has been asked more than once in a hundred and thirty years by critics, journalists, architects, after each article or text a discussion developed, and the topic faded away. After a few years, another article, questions, discussion... In architecture, we have this disturbing history of recurrence of the gender question, and then forgetting the topic. One of the reasons I wrote this book was the need to show this dialogue that has been haunting architecture for decades. So it's very important that we don't assume that change is simply a matter of time and should be quietly waited for, because if we don't press the gas pedal, we'll stagnate again. But I am an optimist, I believe that this will not happen.
Agnieszka: Thank you for the interview.
