Created in 2007, when the United States had just 175 registered Black female architects, the 2022 AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Award winner Riding the Vortex has been instrumental in growing that number to over 500 practitioners. Here, the group’s founders—Katherine Williams, AIA; Kathryn Tyler Prigmore, FAIA; Kathy Denise Dixon, FAIA; and Melissa R. Daniel, Assoc. AIA (the the late architect Barbara G. Laurie also helped shape the organization)—share their perspectives on the profession.
What makes the issue of diversity so important in architecture?
Prigmore: Issues are discrete items that can be described and resolved so that they never need to be addressed again. Diversity is not an issue. However it is defined, it is never something that will go away because every human is different. That the practice and discipline of architecture is perceived and practiced by almost all from a Eurocentric perspective is an issue that can be resolved, although it will take time.
William: If buildings, communities, and cities are all designed from the same starting point philosophically, culturally, and intellectually, we end up with places that look the same. They don’t accommodate a mix of personalities, ways of thought, ways of living, or ways of use. Blandness begets blandness. Most people want vibrancy, surprises, and liveliness. You get that only when diverse voices contribute to solutions.
Dixon: Architecture is about experience, function, and beauty characteristics that everyone has an opportunity to experience. When only a small portion of the population is creating these experiences for everyone, the whole of society is significantly diminished regarding the range of cultural and social experience.
What is your approach to architecture?
Dixon: Successful architecture is about listening to the client’s needs, embracing their vision, and reaching their goals. Our task as architects is to relay the needs, vision, and goals into the appropriate process and environment needed to achieve them.
What project that you’ve worked on best illustrates that approach?
Dixon: It’s been said that an architect’s best project is their next project. That is because we learn so much with every building and then take that knowledge to the next building project and that makes it better.
What is the greatest challenge right now in the field?
Prigmore: Fire drill syndrome or focus on the short game; architects not promoting the importance of architecture to clients; and deprofessionalization of architecture programs.
Daniel: Continuing our complacency in social norms.
William: Architects not demanding their worth in job commissions. Firms can’t pay staff adequately if they continue to undervalue or underbudget what it actually costs to complete a job.
Dixon: Equity is still a huge hurdle for the profession to surmount. Until there are significant increases in the numbers of minority architects and a return to minority-owned firms contributing to the built environment, we will not see the level of expression that we as a society are capable of.
What is the most promising recent development?
Dixon: The significant rise in the number of licensed African American women architects over the past decade is an encouraging development and we are hopeful that the numbers will increase to include Black men, Latino and Hispanic architects, and other underrepresented minorities.
What’s one question you wish we had asked?
Prigmore: Why did you remain an architect when you encountered (and continue to encounter) so many barriers? My parents taught me decades ago what Michelle Obama has been quoted as saying, “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” I remain in architecture and am a Vortex Collaborator so others can have someone’s shoulders to stand on.
What jobs did your parents have?
Prigmore: Headmistress of a private school and officer in the United States Marine Corps
William: data entry for healthcare providers, various before becoming a university professor in my teens.
Daniel: My mom is a home health aide.
Dixon: My father was an architect for the corp of engineers for his entire career. My mother was a full-time homemaker for me and my three siblings.
What would you have been if not an architect?
Prigmore: Astrophysicist.
William: Writer and industrial designer.
Daniel: A reality star.
Dixon: In high school, I was good at computers (the only girl in the high school computer club, I think) and I applied to college as a systems analyst major and an architecture major.
What’s the greatest ambition you have yet to achieve?
Prigmore: Live past age 96.
William: Financial independence.
Daniel: A triathlon.
Dixon: Writing the following up book to my 2017 book “The Business of Architecture: Your Guide to a Financially Successful form”.
What do you hope your legacy will be?
Prigmore: I hope I am remembered as being honest, trustworthy, and caring.
Daniel: My contributions made a positive impact on someone’s life.
Dixon: Through Riding the Vortex, my role as a practitioner and educator, I’m hopeful that I will affect and encourage more young people to become licensed and pursue the profession.
What book(s) are you currently reading?
Prigmore: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (Liveright, 2018)
William: Dilla Time (Macmillan, 2022), Dare to Lead (Random House Publishing Group, 2018), The Black Experience in Design (Allworth Press, 2022), We Should All Be Millionaires (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021)
Dixon: I’m still reading Thomas Sowell’s Charter Schools and Their Enemies (Basic Books, 2020) and intend to read The 1619 Project (One World, 2021) next.
Which five architects, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?
Prigmore: Bruce Goff, Queen Hatshepsut, Ndebele women house painters, Kenzō Tange, and Howard Roark.
Daniel: So many of my amazing colleagues passed away, I want to have dinner with them again. Desiree Cooper, Barbara Laurie, Kenneth Casey, Prescott Reavis, and Paul Devrouax, Jr.
William: Beverly Lorraine Greene, Amaza Lee Meredith
Dixon: Paul R. Williams, Beverly Lorraine Greene, Norma Merrick Sklarek, Francis Kéré, Hon. FAIA
What does winning the Whitney M. Young, Jr. award mean to you?
Prigmore: On one hand, the award opened up opportunities for the Vortex Collaborators to expose the continued challenges African American women architects and emerging professionals face as we move through the profession. On the other hand, we are finally celebrating the amazing, hidden achievements of black women architects on the center stage of the profession. We know that our work, though 15 years in progress, is only at the beginning because memories fade quickly and we still have a very long way to go in order to achieve parity.
William: The award is a recognition of the years of effort that the Vortex Collaborators have diligently and quietly done. While our sessions are very public, the thought, intention, and work has been into each one has been behind the scenes. Additionally, the sessions have been opportunities for architects to share their stories. The feelings of inspiration, encouragement. and support that the audience members get is carried from one session until someone can attend another session. There are a lot of intangibles that help people, who are not the status quo white male, succeed in the architecture profession. Attending a Vortex session can be one of those things that becomes an intangible that helped someone along their career path.
Daniel: It's a validation that the Black woman's experience in the architecture profession is real and our voices are being heard. To quote Whitney M Young himself, “...You [architects and city planners] are not a profession that has distinguished itself by your social and civic contributions to the cause of civil rights. You are most distinguished by your thunderous silence …” We are no longer silenced by our experiences.
Dixon: It is an honor to be among the past honorees for this prestigious award, knowing that their contributions were so significant to the profession. I am humbled that our work has been considered at the same level of excellence.
This article appeared in the May/June 2022 issue of ARCHITECT.
