Update: Thanks to everyone who suggested architects. We will be profiling VICTORINE DU PONT HOMSEY. Check back here for more information—and the Wikipedia entry—come late summer.
Try to name a female architect who practiced before 1950. Desprina Stratigakos of Design Observer bets you can’t do it. The reason why, she says, is not because female architects didn’t exist then, but because nobody wrote about them or documented their practices—including themselves.
Looking to change that, Stratigakos calls on readers in her essay to “unforget” female architects by picking up a book or surfing the Internet and putting down into words the stories of these women, lest they be forgotten. Wikipedia or the Dynamic National Archive (DNA) by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation are great places to start.
Here at ARCHITECT we accept the challenge and now are calling our readers (yes, that means you) to help us pick one notable female architect to write up on Wikipedia. Send us your votes via the comments section below, or on Facebook or Twitter, and we’ll do the rest.
“The phenomenal attention that the Denise Scott Brown petition has garnered testifies not only to the power of the Internet and the support for her cause, but also to a widespread dissatisfaction with the ongoing invisibility of women's accomplishments,” Stratigakos writes.
Scott Brown, while an important figure among women architects, especially in the fight to be recognized in the field, is certainly not the only female architect who deserves some credit and fresh ink.
