Women in Design: from Cave Woman to Zaha Hadid

Controversial topic? Attention seeking gimmick? Read on to judge…

History of Women in Architecture and Interior Design

Historically, women have abstained from an active role in this realm of design and creation. For something, which should require more ‘womanly’ traits to imagine, it is, perhaps the need to frequent site, and deal with its discomfort, distance and workmen that have caused this abstinence.

Quoting from Wikepedia:

‘The first cognizant record of women in this profession is in France. Katherine Briçonnet (ca. 1494–1526) was influential in designing the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley.’

But, then, the first human design was not a building. Early Man first inhabited caves, and beautified its interiors. And, when the physically stronger man had gone out hunting, our guess is, yes, the First Designer was a Woman! 

Today’s Women in Architecture and Interior Design

Architecture and Interior Design have always been a preferred professional course for women world over. Stemming from the feminine leaning to art, colors and decoration, women (and their families) started preferring Design as a profession because of other reasons, like: “Comfort of more women in this profession”, “Less exposure to factory, machinery”, “Design is suited to the softer nature of a woman” etc.

 Today’s woman learnt nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe there were more women in Design, but hardly any in Engineering and Construction! The ‘less exposure to factory, machinery’ gets more than compensated by exposure to far flung sites with little or no amenities and other hardships that come with the territory. And, finally, ‘suited to the softer nature of a woman’ goes out of the window when you have become the Iron Lady to get work done from contractors, handle clients’ expectations and ensure you get paid.

Seeing the hours that go into a project at it completion stage, one need not even bother to go into another reason for women taking to this profession in Asian countries: ‘easy job that allows you to balance personal life and devote time to your family’!

Gender Bender:  has Nature predisposed that Women in Architecture and Interior Design will do better than man?

Traditionally, women have been found to make better drawings, neater sheets and more attractive designs than men. And men have been found better in areas involving construction, structures and engineering.

While women experimented with colors, men played safe, sticking to the shades of greys and blues they dressed to office in.

So you had more women in the design studio, more men on site. For color schemes, architects would consult their stay-at-home wives, and the clients would consult theirs.

For decades we were happy to accept these as gender predispositions. In fact, ‘colorful men’ were treated as affeminate. While women good at Engineering or site work were considered unfeminine or manly.

What’s the truth? 

Watch this space for more....

DESIGNING THE SUPER-LITH: QUESTIONING THE ARCHITECT’S ROLE IN TODAY’S ENGINEERED MARVEL

Architecture has always been the ‘anonymous’ profession. This is one movie where the lead doesn't even get an honourable mention. Ironically, the word 'architect' gets used pretty generously in our lives. When we hear “Indira Gandhi was the architect of India’s victory in the ’71 war”, we know there was a Sam Maneckshaw and a host of war heroes that fought the war. But when we talk of the best architecture, what does the layman know? The Taj Mahal gets credited to Shah Jahan. Many of us think ‘Eiffel’ is some French classy word attached to a memorial, and definitely not the name of the engineer who designed it! The list is endless. Add to this that the architect for the Taj  Mahal had his hands cut off, the architect for the Taj Hotel committed suicide and the architect for the Sydney Opera House didn't get his complete fee, you have grounds for a new sob-a-thon.

This blog, however, isn't about self-pity, but about the endangered species of architecture. Engineering is once again breathing down our necks. One of my teachers told us “the Civil Engineer is your mother-in-law!” Well, that mother-in-law has a whole family plopped on our sofas, and pushing us out of our comfy zones.

How did this happen? Didn't we deal with this, centuries ago? Even in India, The Architects Act was passed in the '70s, giving architects a foot-hold on the economy.

Technology is what happened.

Yes, the same technology architects ignored in college (except the nerds). The same technology we let the engineers keep control of in the industry. We were happy enough to feel that we had the control since we hired them (the ones who got hired by the client and did not listen to us were mean !@#$^&*s).

If that weren’t bad enough, there was new technology coming in. Things that moved, things that blinked, things that opened or closed because other things were blinking; things that were becoming these mean, unmanageable thingies!

Let’s look at this further in our next blog: Who designs today’s Super-Lith? 

Dear Oh dear; my interior

In my early days in the furniture industry, I spent a lot of effort educating ‘non-architects’ the difference between ‘Architects’, ‘Interior Designers’ and ‘Interior Decorators’. It didn’t help when our technical partner from Canada came in with a new term ‘Interior Architect’.

Why did I need to educate them, anyway? On the face of it, because they were selling furniture to architects. But deep in my heart, because of this huge pecking order in the industry, going back to Indian Education System, where intelligence=marks=degree=Architect. Interior design was a still a 3 year diploma in the early ‘90s. In very crass terms, calling an architect an interior designer, or, even worse, an interior decorator was, yes I'm gong to say this - belittling him.

It looks like the debate wasn’t limited to our own little ‘egosystem’. I recently read a British book titled ‘Drawing Out the Interior’ which preambled with this definition:

Interior Architect: Does more structural changes while designing the interior

Interior Designer: More to with planning, furniture and mill-work (American for carpentry)

Interior Decorator: Colours, finish, upholstery and stuff

(I wish I had read thas book before this life defining incident happened):

This goes to the period when I had my own design practice, and clients had been introducing me as ‘My Architect’, ‘Layout Designer’, ‘Interior Designer’ and even ‘General Interior Contractor’. Of course I corrected them each time, till a client gallantly and with pomp and show introduced me to his guest as,

“this is Sanjeev, my interior.”

I felt like his you-know-what. 

The Ego of the Architect

  “Sanjeev, in which semester are you guys taught the subject ‘Ego’?” was a typical question of Mr. G, my boss and the All India Sales Manager for the no.1 furniture brand. No points for guessing what prompted this. Yes, another humbling meeting at an architect’s office, where Mr. IIT+ IIM Hot Shot was made to wait and was quizzed by kids lesser than him in age, qualification, salary and (his definition of) intelligence.

In implying that architects have big egos, he must have been right. After all, isn’t this blogger spending more time taking a shot at a ‘Non Architect’?

So what is this ‘Ego’ we are talking about? We could look at what Wikipedia says, what the dictionary, Dr. Freud says, or what Mr. Google says.

But should we?

If we don’t need any research to be an undisputed expert on multi-billion industries like sports and films, why not offer an opinion on what we live with 24x7?

Somebody once said….OK let’s get true here. Somebody liked (in real life) what I said about Ego, which is:

“Ego is that helmet by which we guard the weak parts of our psyche.”

In other words, Ego covers up our insecurities.

Going by that, the architect has loads to cover up.

Yup, loads of insecurities……..let’s look at them in our blog ‘Architect! Thy name is Insecurity.’