moving forward

This is the Aqua Building in Chicago by Jeanne Gang. I was briefly involved in an online discussion about the project yesterday in which some critical observations were made about the LEED rating given to the building. The whole can-highrises-be-green? issue isn't something that I want to get into at the moment. The focus on Gang dovetailed with an article  read this morning at HuffPost that pointed out how female architects are still grossly underrepresented in the profession. I think the correction to this imbalance is already underway, and the process takes so long because of the longevity associated with practicing designers--we tend to work until our body gets hauled away from our desk.

I'm skeptical of the notion that the gender bias in the profession reflects innate abilities. Architecture involves listening to people, assessing needs, and applying a creative geometric solution with the appropriate materials. Anybody can do that, although a lot of folks who get into design mess up because they don't do well with the "listening to people" part of the equation. I'm also skeptical of the notion that forms and materials in a building can be assigned a gender. Gang achieved a sensuous beauty in the Aqua tower, but Saarinen did the same thing at Dulles Airport. Hadid and Libeskind  use acute angles and tilted walls. Although oak panelling is associated with a man's study and pink walls are associated with a teenaged girl's bedroom, those are stylistic choices imposed by a cultural period.