Women (between) Architecture

SPACE

Kim Sookjung co-principal, Ground Scale

Kim Jeongim principal, Seoro Architects

Rieh Sun-Young professor, University of Seoul

Lim Mijung co-principal, stpmj

Cho Jaewon principal, 0_1 Studio

Han Kiyoung vice president, Gansam Architects & Partners

The Awakening of the Female Architect

SPACE This conversation took place between female architects in academia and practice to explore the ways that gender issues have come into contact with architectural issues. For a long time, there was an atmosphere that made people reluctant to use the title of woman architect or to publicly discuss gender issues in the architecture world. Nowadays, I feel a change in the atmosphere. Consensus has gathered around the opinion that society will not change unless women reveal their femininity and raise their voices to correct differences and discrimination.

Kim Jeongim (KJI) The answer to the question, ‘Why have debates concerning women and gender in the architecture world taken so long to go public?’ may be that we were not sufficiently self-conscious or afraid of disadvantages. When the “MeToo movement” emerged, there was no obvious response from the architectural world.

At that time, I wondered, ‘are there is no specific cases or are there other reasons?’ It may be that there is less discrimination against women in the architectural world, or conversely, that the problem doesn’t surface as those who expose the issues are likely to be excluded from the practice.

Rieh Sun-Young (RSY) Women architects may have acclimatised themselves to an extremely masculine culture. They may have not identified themselves as a woman or if have, they may have expected that ‘This too shall pass’.

KJI In my late 30s, I happened to look back over the way I worked while preparing an exhibition with some architects. I seemed to have been conscious of myself as a woman, always working with the male director and understanding myself as a relative concept. I had the idea that I could survive only by working like men and by keeping up with them. When I was a student, less than 10% of architecture students were women. I felt I would be excluded from the wider culture if I didn’t interact closely with male students in the studio, which made me erase the more feminine aspects of my identity. At the same time, I began to wonder, ‘Can I observe my femininity and express it through a work or in other fields?’ During the preparation for the exhibition, I found that the role that language plays is extremely crucial. I started to doubt whether architecture could only be expressed in a language understood only by men. I wondered whether there were any architectural terms that could explain what I think and wanted to express. In the architectural world, even female critics are rare. I think critics play a significant role as they not only develop languages to explain one’s architecture but also have authority.

Born in the 1980s, I belong to a generation that grew up in an atmosphere that stated ‘Women can do too. You can realise your own aims, so don’t worry and study’. When I was in school, a few fellow strdents asked me, ‘Can woman do architecture?’ When I was at Harvard Graduate School of Design, half of the students had black hair and half were female. I expected many of these women would find work after ten years when I was doing my practice. Looking back, many of those women weren’t working but I felt that so much had changed at that time. Naturally, I lived unaware of my femininity. I didn’t think I should reach the same levels as my male colleagues, and architecture was a discipline that asked oneself to overcome one’s own limitations. I worked in