UP WOMEN SPACE TAKING
Architecture has come a long way in making room for women. Despite the male-dominated population in the industry, there’s still always room at the top, and these women have built their way from the ground up to get there. We interviewed five remarkable architects who, although lacking Y chromosomes, are abundant in passion for designing spaces.
From both far and wide and close to home, Elizabeth Diller (Diller Scofidio + Renfro), Rebecca Plaza (Plaza + Partners), Rossana Hu (Neri&Hu Design and Research Office), Anna Sy (CS Design Consultancy, Inc., Philippines), and Hon. Yolanda Reyes (Commissioner in the Professional Regulations Commission and first woman Dean of the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts) grace our pages to provide an intimate look at their inner workings—the foundations of their career, the spaces they create, the place of women in architecture, and the legacies they wish to leave behind. WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO BE AN ARCHITECT? Diller: I was probably eight years old when my parents got me into painting classes. I learned how to paint figural paintings and still lifes, but that wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be. Still, my parents encouraged my artistic desires even though I didn’t know where they wanted to go. My mom always told me to get a great education and to be independent of men. She was trying to get me to channel my artistic energies into a profession. In fact, it was her idea for me to go into architecture, and if not architecture, then dentistry. Since my parents wanted me to be an architect, I resisted for a really long time. Eventually, I went to school at the Cooper Union to study art. I was interested in film and multimedia installations. On a whim, I saw a class called “Architectonics” in the course catalogue and I was curious about what it meant. I slowly became interested in the discourse around architecture, and got more broadly interested in the discipline but not in the profession. Previously, I was interested in photography and time-based media, but I started to think in three dimensions. In the art school, there wasn’t a lot of discussion about what you did, what it meant, why you did it, or how you positioned yourself relative to history or theory. In the architecture school, we spoke about the discipline constantly—its history and intersection with other fields. I was seduced by those conversations. So I decided to get an architecture degree, but not with the intent of joining the profession. My only intent was to make a career in plastic arts and work with sculpture and media in a spatial way. I became keenly interested in working in space and time.
Plaza: I grew up in an environment of building. My dad is a developer, so I would often join him in construction sites and there I witnessed the transformation of far-flung grasslands into liveable communities, and overtime, these became the centres of bustling, growing cities. As early as 5 years old, I would help lay pavers on the ground, play in sand that would be mixed into concrete or choose furniture, paint and fixtures for the model units. As I grew older, I wanted more than anything to be an architect, yet I wondered how to situate my dream within the reality of service to our developing nation. I yearned for a life immersed in meaningful architecture – one that not only gave form to my creative ideas but also influenced the lives of others and contributed to nation-building. Believing that good design solutions could address grave issues of inequality, climate change, and public health, I embarked on an education journey to seek answers that lay outside the Philippines. I left for the United Kingdom and pursued a degree in Architecture.
Hu: [Lyndon was] born to be an architect. For me [the decision to become an architect] came much later. I really struggled during my teenage years with not knowing what I wanted to do, but very early on I knew I
