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DESIGN LIKE A GIRLBradley W. Johnson Contributors

In researching my remarks for last year’s black-tie Fall Steven K. Dickens, AIA, LEED AP (“Hidden
Design Fête, our annual fundraising dinner, I asked our in Plain Sight” and “Advanced Retreat”) is
university scholarship students about the moment that an associate with Eric Colbert & Associates.
they knew they wanted to become an architect. I got some
great answers, including one from Aime Vailes-Macarie, Denise Liebowitz (“Rec Meets High-Tech”),
who graduates this year from Pratt, that I read verbatim formerly with the National Capital Planning
to the Fête audience. Commission, is a regular contributor
to ARCHITECTUREDC.
The question of “When did you know?” came up
again recently when I was at an opening reception for an G. Martin Moeller, Jr., Assoc. AIA
exhibition at the National Building Museum of architectural (“Window on the World,” “Symbol of Faith,”
prints owned by David M. Schwarz. (David, it turns out, discovered architecture and “Potomac Place”) is an independent
when he was very young.) Following that reception, I sent out a call to our curator and writer, as well as senior curator
entire membership to let me know when they first fell for architecture, and I’ve at the National Building Museum. He is the
now received a number of responses. These origin stories have been a lot of fun editor of ARCHITECTUREDC.
to read, but they have also revealed something important: Quite often, there was
a mentor involved—someone who showed a younger person what architecture Ronald O’Rourke (“Threshold of Change”
was all about, and that it could be a great career opportunity. and “Wait and See”) is a regular contributor
to ARCHITECTUREDC. His father, Jack
Welcome! O'Rourke, was an architect in San Francisco
for more than four decades.
I mention this because, as I’ve noted before, if I had been exposed to
architecture at a younger age, I might have become an architect. I didn’t Asya Snejnevski (“Public Art”) is
understand that architecture was something I might consider as a career until communications coordinator for AIA|DC.
I was a senior in college.

The recent and instructive “Like A Girl” TV commercial from Always,
which asks people to “throw like a girl” or “run like a girl,” got me thinking
about this again. One of the many powerful moments in this commercial—
which, as of this writing, has been viewed more than 55 million times on
YouTube—is when a young girl is asked, “What does it mean to run like a girl?”
and she replies, “To run as fast as you can.” She doesn’t know that the phrase
“like a girl” can be pejorative—to her, it just means doing her best.

In that same spirit, it’s time to encourage more girls to get into architecture
and design, so that they can help change the world for the better by (in the
reclaimed sense of the phrase) “designing like a girl.”

In support of that goal, the Washington Architectural Foundation this year
is doing a lot of programming specifically focused on girls. We’re working
with the Girl Scouts, the Boys and Girls Club, and some upcoming engineering
events to encourage girls to consider architecture as a possible career. We’re
opening a door that might eventually lead to greater gender equality in a
profession that needs it.

If you look at the projects we’ve included in this issue and count how many
female architects and designers are quoted, you’ll get a rough indication of how
comparatively few women are practicing in the field today. There are a lot of
reasons for this situation, of course, and the effort we’re undertaking this year
addresses only one of them. But if we can expose girls to this opportunity and
make them feel welcome in the profession, who knows what the next generation
of architects could do? How much more amazing could great architecture be?

Mary Fitch, AICP, Hon. AIA
Publisher
mfitch@aiadc.com

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