Women Architects - Male and Female Professional Partnerships

Male and Female Professional Partnerships

A number of the more important women architects in the first half of the 20th century partnered with men, often forming husband-and-wife practices. Such partnerships began in the early years of women's involvement when some of the most successful male architects worked with women. Since the 1960s, which saw increased enrollment by women into schools of Architecture, male and female students have often met and later married; long hours working together and a shared passion have been described as "the perfect prescription for romance". A good overview of this topic is also discussed in Ann Forsyth's "In Praise of Zaha"

Male-female partnerships in architecture sometimes lead to misattribution of the work to the male partner, often because the male is better known. This can be seen as the result of an underlying discrimination or biased attitude. What has been described as the "tradition of misattribution" has remained a "secret" until recent years.

Some particularly notable male-female partnerships in architecture include:

• Aino Aalto (1894-1949) and Alvar Aalto - after qualifying as an architect in Finland in 1920, she married Alvar Aalto in 1923 and participated in the design of his earlier buildings, often contributing to the interiors as in the Villa Mairea (1937) in Noormarkku.
• Reima and Raili Pietilä, another Finnish couple, worked closely together developing their early Modernistic style. Raili Pietilä (born 1926) found two the perfect number for a design team, explaining: "We often took our work with us: for a walk, in the kitchen, and in the evenings. And when doing competitions we used to take trips, like long train journeys, because we found that changing your environment affects your thinking."
• In Denmark, Inger and Johannes Exner who married in 1952 formed a close, highly successful partnership, building or restoring churches, frequently exerting a functional as well as an aesthetic approach in their work.
• French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999) established a partnership with an icon of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, contributing to the development of functional living spaces, especially by designing interiors and furniture for his buildings. She later recalled how Le Corbusier insisted on strict adherence to his demanding principles: "The smallest pencil stroke had to have a point, to fulfil a need, or respond to a gesture or posture, and to be achieved at mass-production prices." After collaborating with Le Corbusier for about ten years, Perriand left his studio in 1937 to concentrate on furniture design, often working with Jean Prouvé. The Portuguese architect Maria José Marques da Silva (1914–1996) partnered with her husband David Moreira, completing a number of key buildings in the city of Porto.

• In Germany, Elisabeth Böhm (born 1921) frequently worked with her husband, Gottfried Böhm, designing interiors for apartment buildings and other housing developments.
• Margot Schürrmann (1924–1999) formed a lifelong partnership with her husband Joachim Schürmann. Their influence on German architecture was recognized by the Bund Deutscher Architeken who awarded them their Grand Prize 1998.
• Maria Schwarz (born 1921) is remembered for her partnership with Rudolf Schwarz who assisted in reconstructing the city of Cologne, especially its churches, after the Second World War. After her husband's death in 1961, Maria continued to run the family firm, completing many of her husband's projects in the Cologne area.
• Bernice Alexandra "Ray" Eames, furniture and interior designer, architect, artist, wife and partner of architect Charles Eames. Charles and Ray Eames designed the Eames House and other significant mid-20th century modern buildings. As well, the Eames' produced the influential Eames Lounge Chair and other modernist furniture.
• Elizabeth Close (1912–2011) had difficulty in finding employment after graduation until she followed fellow student William Close to Minneapolis. As husband and wife, they set up their own firm in 1938. In addition to designs of her own including many streamlined private homes, it was Elizabeth who ran the firm in her husband's absence during the Second World War and while he was busy constructing the University of Minnesota campus. The architectural historian Jane King Hession remarked: "By her example she inspired many women in architecture, myself included, but she didn't want to be known as a woman architect — just as an architect who happened to be a woman."

• Marion Griffin (1871–1961) from Chicago, was the first employee hired by Frank Lloyd Wright. Although Wright did not give her much recognition for her Prairie School designs, it now appears she not only contributed substantially to his studio's residential work but also did much to promote his ideas. In 1911, Marion married Walter Burley Griffin, with whom she had worked in Wright's studio. Together they set up a highly successful partnership working first in the Chicago area on a variety of projects, then in Australia on the urban planning of Canberra, and finally in India until Griffin's death in 1937. In her memoir, Mahony describes how she was indissolubly fused with her husband, emphasizing how together they championed various causes such as a library for the Indian city of Lucknow or Castlecrag, a community near Sydney that they designed.
• Denise Scott Brown (born 1931) and Robert Venturi met at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. Shortly after their marriage in 1967, Scott Brown joined his Philadelphia firm Venturi and Rauch, where she became principal in charge of planning in 1969. She has since played a major role at the firm (renamed Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in 1989) leading civic planning projects and studies, and collaborating with Venturi on the firm's larger projects. She is however resentful of the fact that she is seldom credited for her work. For example, it was her husband who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1991 although she explains: "We both design every inch of a building together." In 1997 she speculated: "The question of being a woman will be in the air for ever in my case. If I had not married Bob, would I have gone further or not? Who can tell? But the same question holds for him. If he had not married me, would he have gone further?" Denise Scott Brown also disclosed her feelings about this situation in a chapter of "Gender Space Architecture".
• In the UK, architect Amanda Levete (born 1955) became a director of Future Systems with her husband Jan Kaplický. In 1999 they won the Royal Institute of British Architects' (RIBA) Stirling Prize for their Media Centre at Lords Cricket Ground. Because Kaplický neither knew or cared about cricket, Levete chose to attend the meetings with the client. Levete is credited with the ability of making Future Systems' organic forms marketable.