WORK OF WOMEN ARCHITECTS

Paper given to Interior Designex (Exhibition and Conference) 1997, by Lecki Ord Women architects I have been asked to refer briefly to the findings of a study I produced for a Royal Doulton Scholarship in 1982, the research and interview work being carried out by Naomi Rosh White and a group of students from Caulfield Institute of Technology. Reference to "Where are they Now" - a study of the career paths of male and female architects who graduated between 1957 to 1962. In that study only 50% of the female graduates were working in basic architectural service compared to 75% of males. Approx 10% of females were teaching architecture, 20% in allied fields such as research, pre-design, planning interior design, and 20% in other (unspecified) unrelated activities. The picture which emerges from the data is of women committed to remaining in the workforce, but doing so in far more diverse areas than those of their male counterparts. The women entered these areas in a part-time rather than full-time capacity, and as a result, within a lower income range than men. This situation exists despite the fact that 31% of the women, compared with 18% of the men had obtained architecture related qualifications in addition to their basic architectural degree or diploma. These findings are very similar to those of a study of a cohort of architectural graduates conducted in Britain over the same period. This research has shown that in many respects being a female is a disadvantage in architecture. There is discrimination, and both men and women agree that women need to work harder, be more committed and even perform better than men in order to achieve comparable success to men in their careers. It was shown that the women in the survey did not simply abdicate the traditional female role of mother/nurturer in favour of their careers. Rather, they attempted to integrate and balance both roles, with varying degrees of success, but invariably with a great deal of difficulty. Whether the women chose to modify her degree of involvement in her career in favour of family involvement, or vice-versa, it was the women in the study who made the compromises rather than the men. The main conclusion of this study is that there is a disproportionate cost to women who want a career (compared with the costs to men). The cost is three-fold: the loss of personal time, the loss of freedom to choose how to spend her time, and the partial loss of one of or both roles (childcare and career) as there isn't enough time to do both. My area of specialisation While leafing through a recent architectural magazine when I was talking on the phone the other day, a trade advertisement caught my eye. It seemed very apt in view of the difficulty I was having settling on a context for this talk. It was a Laminex advertisement for some new laminate finishes, I didn't bother to inspect them in detail as I don't actually specify finishes, but I was struck by the concept of work reflecting personality. "Every man's work is a portrait of himself" Samuel Butler, via Laminex advertisement Although I am a registered architect, member of the RAIA etc, I am very aware that to many people, especially architects, the work I do is not considered "Architecture", although I see it as essential to sustainability in the built environment. Most architectural effort goes into the design and implementation of individual buildings, and this is what is taught generally in architectural schools and recorded generally in architectural magazines and conferences. Our firm's work is mainly concerned with : ¥ portfolios of buildings such an educational campuses, housing trusts; ¥ programs of building development of similar buildings, such as child care centres, court and police buildings; or ¥ large individual public buildings such as the Museum and Public Record Office. This is explained in the following diagram: Built Environment Matrix. These situations all require an understanding of how people use space, the inter-relationships between activities and how people and goods move within the spaces. It is the conceptual end of building projects, where a mental model is constructed of what elements are required and how they should be organised. In some cases we also analyse what activities and spaces are required to fulfil the organisation's objectives. Communicating this mental model has become an increasingly interesting task as the amount of information about requirements grows in complexity. It is the area of recording,, organising and communicating this building information that has particularly engaged my interest over the past 10 years, and will be elaborated on further into this paper. Examples of work Child Care Program In 1985 I was asked by the Public Works Department for advice in the setting up of a program to build 42 new child care centres around the state within 12 months &emdash; to provide places for approximately 1500 children. The Victorian State Planning Committee for Children's Services which was responsible for the program was committed to community participation in the design and management of child care centres and after a lot of discussion rejected the idea of a "standard plan" approach, or the use of a construction company for "design and build" package for the whole project. Instead it agreed on our proposal whereby a standard functional performance brief would be written and local government engaged its own consultants to design a building for its specific site conditions and local community needs. After writing the standard functional brief and management procedures manual, I was engaged to conduct design workshops for the architects and councils involved, and then assessed each design with the architects until they satisfied all of our criteria and were approved to go into the documentation stage. It seems incredible now, but 12 years ago there were very few examples of buildings designed for long day care, and the requirements of these are more complicated than design for kindergartens which were prevalent at the time. I also assisted in assessing the suitability of potential sites and checking contract documentation, even providing guideline specification clauses to comply with the esoteric Health Department regulations of the time. Twenty five architectural firms were involved in the project giving a diversity of approaches, styles and environments. The 1984-5 program was so successful that a larger program was approved in 1986-88. In preparation for this program we evaluated the centres constructed through the first program and amended the brief and management procedures to overcome the short comings we found in those buildings. I was seconded into the Department of Health and Community Services as a part time project manager and was inspecting my 60th child care centre plan when I was elected Lord Mayor of Melbourne in 1987 and gratefully left the Department to fulfil other duties. Similar programs have been carried out since then, and the functional brief amended to conform to current regulations and concepts. I am pleased that it still contains at least 90% of the original concept and material, and has since been adopted almost totally by the Commonwealth government for some of their programs, although I hope that by now the original hand drawn diagrams and typed tables have been technologically updated. ...leading to other things It was this demonstrated experience in facility planning which led to two other major projects in which the office has been involved &emdash; a similar project building police stations costing $ 35 million, and then the development of a design guide for all court buildings in Victoria. We have seen very similar looking documents developed since then for other states in Australia. When in 1988 I returned to work at our office after 12 months full time at the Town Hall, I became increasingly interested in the organisation of information as part of the briefing process. During the preparation of a brief for the relocation of the Museum of Victoria to Southbank, I used a very early version of Excel to keep track of the spaces which were needed and constantly monitor the area implications of the ever growing space demands. Simple as that sounds now, it was a great productivity boon, and every one appreciated the ability to track changes and compare with our targets. Our company is always pushing technology to its limits, and the police briefing system was developed on a product called HyperCard, which allowed us to change information easily, and did away with "whiteout" and the process of sticking new paper diagrams over the old ones. Department of Treasury and Finance Functional Briefing System In 1992 we were asked to develop a generic briefing system for state government leased office accommodation, using the State Taxation Office as the prototype client. This project extended through major reorganisations of the client, a change of government and several re-structurings and down-sizings, giving us many opportunities to refine our system and its ability to adapt to changing instructions. From the database system we used on this project, I developed a system to manage the collection of information about an organisation and its accommodation needs which draws upon standard space guidelines and spatial characteristics, but allows modification of these guidelines to fit the requirements of specific staff roles and functions. Demonstration of system on computer Since 1992, the system is available on both Macintosh and Windows operating systems and has been formally revised and reissued several times to adjust to changing government requirements. It is currently being updated to Version 5.0 We have used this system to brief the accommodation for the Environment Protection Authority, the Department of Education, the Equal Opportunity Commission and a regional office of the Department of Human Services. It has been used by other architects on all Department of Treasury and Finance Projects during this time. Other Briefs Similar approaches, but adapted to the particular buildings have been used for ¥ Geelong Court and Police Station ¥ the Joint Arts Repository (a joint storage facility for the Museum of Victoria, Public Record Office, Victorian Arts Centre Trust and National Gallery of Victoria) ¥ the Museum Off Site Store ¥ Melbourne Magistrates' Court ¥ Western Australian Co-located Supreme and District Courts ¥ City of Melbourne Administration Building ¥ Pacific Central Development . We are working to integrate this approach with costing rates, including construction costs, and recurrent costs such as energy and staff salaries. Demonstration of trial future system on computer Strategic Facilities Plan for RMIT In a completely different vein I developed a Strategic Facilities Plan for RMIT in 1993. This project analysed the amount of and type of space occupied by RMIT on 4 campuses and over 100 buildings, most of which are "found space" ie not purpose built educational buildings. While this analysis is something of a moving target because in such a large organisation staff are moving locations regularly, the process of doing this uncovered discrepancies in their own records, and left them with at least a snapshot what the situation was at that time. City 115,568 sqm Bundoora 26,628 sqm Coburg 13,177 sqm TOTAL 155,373 sqm We also interviewed senior staff, generally Deans of Faculties, and elicited what they saw as issues in accommodation, location and the suitability of existing space for the current and future needs. We then looked at various methods of projecting the required amount of space to teach the courses, developed a method appropriate to RMIT's particular needs, and calculated their projected space needs for each year to the year 2000. This space was then allocated to existing buildings, and new buildings proposed to house future teaching and support spaces. This type of work uses systems, maths, information theory but the whole rationale for doing it is based in the belief that sustainability of the environment can only come about when attention is paid to the whole life cycle of buildings, including the planning and operational phases which are not usually considered to be part of architecture. It adds the fourth dimension (time) to the built environment. While I have started the process, I am nowhere near finishing the analysis of what this work means about my personality and Samuel Butler's assertion that the two are connected - perhaps in another 10 years....