Architecture has, for a long time, been thought to be a profession dominated by men. But there are also the female architects who are working to change this and who are now working towards making young female architects terrified to dream less and to not be afraid to carve out their own paths in architecture.
Continue reading to learn more on what happened to the female architects who busted the glass ceilings to carve out successful careers, and to create some of the world’s most admired architectural landmarks and cityscapes.
1. Jeanne Gang
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Jeanne Gang is the founder and leader of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design firm. Her style of architecture aims higher than constructing houses and cities; instead, her style is all about constructing relationships between human and the constructed environment. She sees her architecture as a process of change.
A good example of this is her police station concept, which is usually designed to change interaction between citizens and police through grouping police stations with civil recreation halls. Some of the built projects include the Aqua Tower in Chicago.
2. Zaha Hadid
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The late Zaha Hadid is fondly remembered as a female architect, who was never reluctant to break the most phenomenal leash when it came to the sphere of architectural creativity. Of projects that she has designed, some are; The London Aquatics Centre, The Heydar Aliyev Centre, The Guangzhou Opera House. That did not stop her from being titled the Queen of the Curve and she was awarded many important awards such as the Pritzker Architecture Award in 2004 and she is the first woman in arcahitect history to be awarded so.
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Following her receiving knighthood in 2012 in honor, Zaha Hadid became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, thus, Dame Hadid. This honor is considered the highest of the orders in the British Empire. In 2016 she received the Royal Institute of British Architects, as well as received the Royal Gold Medal, making her the first woman who was ever to be receive such a prestigious architectural award.
She is recognized for such beautiful architectures and great achievements. This constat point to the idea that Zaha Hadid was always in the process of learning how to approach the idea of how space could function. Some of the famous quotes which I really liked her quotes for instance she once said “There are 360 degrees. So why stick to one?” This was basically how she brought the principles of design into perspective.
3. Denise Scott Brown
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At present, many people regard Denise Scott Brown as one of the leading female architects. She was a partner at Venturi Scott Brown Architects and is a member of the Architects. She defined most of the twentieth-century architectural industry. This she says that she is the grandmother of architecture.
Some of her very popular designs include buildings like the extension of the National Gallery at London known as Sainsbury wing, the building of the provincial capital in Toulouse and Seattle Art museum. She shattered a glass ceiling during a period where it was hard to even attempt to do so and published her grievances in an essay she wrote in 1989, titled ‘A Room at the Top? The Gendered Lens of Architecture: Both Sexism and the Star System.”
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Her husband, Robert Venturi, was a Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate in 1991, and this was an issue mooted within the architectural fraternity at the time because everyone believed that Denise Scott was worthy of the prize.
This later escalated and saw the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Women in Design Group start a petition to the Pritzker Prize urging the organizers to attribute the rightful crediting to Scott Brown in architecture. Even though the committee did not reverse its decision made earlier, Denise Scott and her husband both received the 2016 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.
4. Kazuyo Sejima
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Kazuyo Sejima is the co-founder of SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates). Due to its white architectural style of the studio, it was able to attract such projects such as New Museum of New York City, the Rolex Learning Center in Switzerland, Nagano’s O-Museum and Kanzawa’s 21st Century Museum of Art. The two have seen fit to take interest in the space in between and out.
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When growing up, Kazuyo Sejima had no intention to build a career as a professional architect, she planned her future as a grandmother with an uneventful life. Today she is one of the most successful female architects in demand, and she has Interior and has designed some of the largest world projects.
She is the first female in architecting to have assumed the directorship in the Architecture Biennale in Venice Italy. With SANAA she would like to adapt a fluid, a transparent, and a natural look. She borrow her sources of material from the building’s environment.
5. Odile Decq
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Odile Decq is the founder of Studio Odile Decq, that is recognized, highly acclaimed and awarded at international level. The following are her beliefs about architecture: She sees it as an exciting journey and a business that should always enable people to, be mobile, live well and also get a humanistic angle to all aspects. Her other famous projects include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Italy as well as FRAC Bretagne in France at Rennes.
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Despite the awards she has dozens of prestigious ones including the Jane Drew Prize awarded within the Women in Architecture Awards in 2016 as well as the French state decoration Commandeur de l’Ordre du Merite. Odile also has started an international school of architecture in Lyon that is trying to intermingle architecture education with other sciences like physics, sociology and art.
6. Emma Miloyo
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Emma Miloyo is the first female president of the Architectural Association of Kenya and the first Kenyan female architect to graduate at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology with first class division in architecture. She is currently a partner for Design Source – An architectural firm in Nairobi, Kenya. Further, she is also the co-founder of schools, Kiota School and Sycamore Heights School.
In 2011 she has appeared in the top 40 under 40 and she is an Eisenhower fellow. She is proof that women can indeed break the glass ceiling, and this is her lifelong ambition: to empower young women and help them understand they can do whatever they want and don’t have to meet the standards of others.
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She has advocacy as the President of the Architectural Association though her advocacy has been especially as a member of the thought leadership in the profession. Miloyo and her team have also developed a document called Kenya We Want which seeks to define the challenges that require to be addressed to transform our cities and human settlements that are sustainable, inclusive, safe and resilient. The document focuses on six key areas: ,respectively– provision of adequate, secure, and hygienic shelter for everyone, availability of accessible, clean public places, proper public and non-motor vehicle transport, favorable business climates in the counties and regulation of buildings under construction.
7. Dr. Neri Oxman
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Dr. Neri Oxman is the creator of a discipline known as material ecology,” which marries and combines computational design, synthetic biology, and digital fabrication to generate designs of compostable structures; glass objects with optical and structural properties change; and garments created from one piece of silk fabric. Other recognitions that she has earned include; 2019 Contemporary Vision Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has her own research group that deals in organic design known as Mediated Matter.
The following discussions will demonstrate that Neri Oxman has introduced new conceptions in materiality, things, architectures, and constructions. She has also synthesized a new model for cross-disciplinary and inter-species cooperation. Some of her work are a series of digital artifacts derived from molecular structures of tree branches, insect chitin and human bones.
8. Maya Lin
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In 1980 before graduating from Yale University Maya Link presented her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in a competition and was awarded. It was recognized as one of her best-Integrated up to now, this is considered one of her most notable projects. Other projects that she has developed include the Peace Chapel at Juniata College in Pennsylvania; the Sculpture Center in Long Island City; Manhattanville Sanctuary ; and the Environmental Learning Laboratory. Her life and work have been documented in an Academy Award-winning documentary film from 1995 titled Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision.
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She received the National Medal of Arts in year 2009 from then President Barack Obama and in 2016 she was honored with Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has produced a piece that IS a book, a Web site, and performances in several scientific venues named “What is Missing?” which is a survey of how and why species and their environments disappear, and an exploration of the problem of species extinction due to habitat loss.
9. Amanda Levete
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Amanda Levete is the founder of AL_A which is London based architecture and design practice that has received numerous awards. More of her work includes the contemporary wing V&A ‘s Exhibition Road Quarter in London and the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology in Lisbon,.
She got RIBA Stirling Prize. To Amanda, designing a building is a biological definition of a human because the building is an identity, a social question, and a political question. That’s why she likes that architecture is to a great extent creative, technical, and highly conceptual.
10. Annabelle Selldorf
Annabelle Selldorf founded her firm Selldorf Architects in New York and is running the show at Selldorf Architects. These reasons have earned her the spot of art world’s most beloved architect because of her functionality and modernism.
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She follows that art must hence have functional settings and so she has even rewired the white cube for the 21st century. Some of her recommended projects are the Neue Galerie, and the Swiss Institute. That is why she is an ardent fan of using what may be called symbolic design.
Selldorf is a favorite of cultural institutions that range from galleries and museums to the Clark Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. A: The author has designed houses, house recycling plants for construction sites and a rural school in Zimbabwe.
11. Elizabeth Diller
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Elizabeth Diller is the sole female founding partner at the New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Of all the firm’s most celebrated projects, the most well-known is probably the sustainable design of the High Line, which is a 1.5 mile long abandoned elevated rail line that runs along the west side of Manhattan. It brought them to the international level of recognition.
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Other notable projects include the Museum of Modern Art expansion in New York and the London Center of Music. The style is unquestionable marked in the tradition of Modernism that originated in Europe in the 1920s.
12. Victoria Heilman
Victoria Heilman is a Tanzanian architect, an academician and an entrepreneur who pioneered VK Green Architects Ltd. She also formed an NGO TaWAHT – Tanzanian Women Architects for Humanity. She has a doctorate degree in sustainable building and architectural practice specialising in Tanzania.
Her research is more focused on lobbying for legislation changes in Tanzania construction sector. She also been actively campaigning for incorporation of both green and passive design in new building code currently under development in tanzania.
Currently, Tanzania lacks the national building code. Her firm attempts to incorporate those concepts into every design concept and her primary agenda is to demonstrate that simple technologies and bioclimatic design could lead to energy conservation.
Oddly enough, that is a very interesting way into architecture because she did not know what architecture was at the time. While studying her Masters in the United States she volunteered for Habitat Humanity and after coming to Tanzania she undertook other similar social projects in Zanzibar and Tanga.
13. Devothe Mukeshimana
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Devothee Mukishana is a new generation female architect who graduated in one of the first batches of East African architects from the new faculty building at the University of Rwanda School of Architecture and Environmental Design.
When in school, her main focus was on; environmentally friendly materials, the efficient use of energy, and cheap construction. She has acted as a student assistant in the IMBUGA City Walk, which is a concept of master plan where one of Kigali’s most important streets would be made fully pedestrian-friendly. She also worked with Journeyman International, and with her colleague Patrice Uwizeyimana suggested a new design for a vocational training center for HIV victims at a site in Muyumbo near Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
14. Assumpta Nnaggenda-Musana
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Assumpta Nnaggenda-Musana is the first Ugandan woman to get a Ph.D. in architecture. Her Ph.D. programme of study is urban housing formation in Kampala. She operates her own design studio, and is also a lecturer at the Makerere University Department of Architecture and Physical Planning. Her research interest area is low income housing and settlements in Kampala. Mainstream practice over the years has always involved the physical replacement of informal structures, but from her perspective, what would make more sense is to construct housing suitable for African cities.
She advocates mixed use development while undertaking projects in urban planning. She paints a picture of her city which is Kampala as a garden city with many opportunities of species richness, and with a prospect of people dwelling closer to their places of work.
15. Maliam Mdoko
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Maliam Mdoko is an architect and Project Manager at Press Trust – a Charitable Organization which seeks to enhance economic and social pillar of Malawi through Projects within the community. The architecture for Maliam enables her to devise solutions that can in fact provide a positive imprint. By her practice she has engaged directly with various people from the authorities to the common population. She is the first woman to chair the Malawi Institute of Architects and envisages to increase the profile and importance of architects in the country when in office.
During her time at Kanjere and Associates a local Architecture firm in Malawi Maliam has been involved with the ArchDesign and Implementations for some of the following facilities: Malawi Government, World bank, the European Union etc.
16. Gabriella Carillo
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Gabriella Carillo is an architect practicing in Mexico, and is also a co-principal of Taller | Mauricio Rocha + Gabriella Carillo Firm that has stated several principles which include an “affinity to the vernacular, craft, sustainability, and community.”
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The Architectural Review awarded her the Architect of the Year in 2017. In project Taller, Gabriella and her partner focus on volume, light, proportion as well as material and pay specific attention to user needs and climatic conditions. The community buildings have shown that Gabriella was sensitive when it comes to humane design. She has done cultural centres and library for the blind and the alight.
17. Farshid Moussavi
Farshid Moussavi is the founder and lead of Farshid Moussavi Architecture in London, a professor at Harvard University Graduate School and a writer of three popular architecture books. She is described as an innovator and her projects would do the talking for her. She made architectural structures such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. She is a multiple award winner and has worked for such emblems as the RIBA International Awards and the Kanazawa Prize for Architecture in Japan.
She also sits in International architecture advisory boards such as the Whitechapel Gallery, serving as a Board of Trustees Member. The structure she really wants to note is the Yokohama International Cruise Terminal. This is because the Liberian cession far exceeded what the native people assigned it to become. She also seeks to empower young women and women in architecture and how to cope when practicing in a male dominated area.
18. Suchi Reddy
Suchi Reddy Like many great architects of all time, is another famous architect. This set of features has made her famous for the integration and consideration of an architectural and design approach in her work. Some of the work includes developing a lifelike prototypical sensory healing room she sought to influence the recovery rate of children coming out of comas.
Suchi Reddy is the principal of Reddymade Architecture and Design based in New York; the firm is well appreciated for the firm’s ‘formal exploration, colorful creativity and the love for materials.
The firm runs solely on its guiding principle, “form follows feeling”. Everybody knows that good design when applied appropriately can increase a person’s welfare, creativity and actually present more work.
19. Toshiko Mori
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Toshiko Mori is an independent architect and the founder of Toshiko Mori Architect located in New York. They include: Academy Award 2005 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Institute Honor Award 2017 from the American Institute of Architects.
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Her work challenges the traditional architectural concepts and borrows outside the architectural arts, such as art and fashion, but maintains the notion of buildings as plus in the lives of users thereof. Some of her projects are museums in Brooklyn and the new arts and cultural facility in the rural area of Senegal.
20. Olajumoke Adenowo
Olajumoke Adenowo is charismatically an architect as well as a philanthropist. She is the founder, and the principal partner of AD Consulting Company. She has also had her own corporation in oil and gas called Advantage Energy besides having her non-for-profit organisation called Awesome Treasures that has the mission of training hundred leaders globally. She is the laureate and the guest scientist being the head of the theoretical chair of the architectural history and the arms of Art and Design in the University Department of Architecture.
She has worked for some of the biggest brands in the world including Coca Cola and L’Oreal. She has also received many honorable awards including: ‘New African Business Woman of the Year,’ the ‘IDEA Award for the Best Institutional Architect.’ They even got her listed among the most inspiring women architects today by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2018.
21. Roberta Washington
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Roberta Washington is among the first few African American women to open her own architectural firm. She is the principle of Roberta Washington Architects most of their work is in health and education and a good number of projects in affordable housing. Some of her projects include the; African Burial Ground Interpretive Center which is part of the National Park Presidents Monument.
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She also was able to start Harlem’s first green building that features 60 percent recyclable or renewable material. Young black female who wanted to be an architect but she did not have anyone to look up to in her childhood. This later led her to take up leadership at National Organization of Minority Architects where she has taken a stand to try and change that and empower young future architects.
22. Lu Wenyu
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Lu Wenyu who started Amateur Architecture Studio is an architect in the city of Hangzhou.
Lu Wenyu being of a young age, he came of age during the time China was experiencing rapid modernization, economic and urban transformation. This gave her the enthusiasm of the natural and culture aspect of the architectural design which influence her vision significantly.
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Her studio focuses on arts and craft that are grounded on the conventional techniques they employ substances like wood and mud. The buildings she has performed are the Ningbo History Museum, the-new-campus-for-Chinese-artists-academy, the Huan Gongwang Museum. Her work and kind disposition to the concept of architecture led her to receive accolades including the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize. She shared the award with her counterpart.
23. Frida Escobedo
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Frida Escobedo is talented and renowned Mexican architect whose creation was 2018 Serpentine Pavilion located in Kensington Gardens in London. She is its youngest architect and the first woman who has been granted such distinguished commission since 2000 year alone. She is a founder of Frida Escobedo TDA (Taller de Arquitectura).
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Some other works that have been based on her are, V&A Museum commission and MoMA PS1. Her prescription to tackle the issue of materiality in architecture is to work with simplicity to arrive at the luxury of sophistication.
24. Shahira Fahmy
Shahira Fahmy is one of the most popular architects in Egypt now; she is the author of the modern buildings at the new AUC campus and the renovation of the Al Mounira Palace. She is a founder and principal of the Shahira Fahmy Architects practicing architecture in Cairo, Egypt.
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25. Selasi Setufe
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Selasi Setufe is one of the four founders of BFA, Black Females in Architecture which is network and enterprise established to raise awareness and representations of black and black mixed-race heritage females in the architectural profession and construction sector.
She focuses on design and architectonics, as well as place-making for social responsibility in relation to culture and environment. She owns Crystal Design Studios. She is at this moment a trustee and was the vice-president for students and the associates at the Royal Institute of British Architects.
26. Sheila O’Donnell
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Sheila O’Donnell is one of the modern architects that have impacted their hometown. She however had an opportunity to study architecture at University College Dublin. Through her firm,.O’Donnell + Toumey her impact on Dublin’s architecture is seen through the windows: her uses of warm brick veneer in most of the buildings she has designed give the contemporary designs an antique azwel. This year The Women In Architecture award game’s highest award to Irish architect Sheila O’Donnell.
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Her firm has for instance been awarded the RIAI Downes Medal seven times and the RIAI Gold Medal. She has been also a representative of Ireland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture two times and anticipating her nomination for few European awards.
27. Carme Pigem
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Carme Pigem is a Spanish architect and a member of the RCR Arquitectes firm that does not act alone but in a team to create both public and private products. The architectural firm of RCR Arquitectes was honored with the jury citation of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2017; the first time three people have received the award at the same time.
From year 1995 to year 2004, she was a board member on the final examinations and between year 1992 to 1999 she was a teacher of architectural projects in ETSA Vallés. During 1997-2003 she was an ETSAB professor of architectural projects and was also serving on the board of examiners. ETHZ Department of School of Architecture, Zurich Institute of Technology has benefited from her as a visiting professor since 2005.
28. Amale Andraos
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Amale Andraos is an architect and designer working in NYC. She is an ex-vice principal for Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a consultant for the Columbia School. For the first time, a woman occupied that post.
She along with husband, Dan Wood, developed the New York City based architecture WORKac. In 2021, she was awarded Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, based on the contribution to the architectural practice in the international level.
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Her firm is located in New York and undertakes work in New York and the rest of America as well as other countries. Her own practice has been nominated and internationally awarded for Public Farm 1 for MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, The Edible Schoolyards for PS216 Brooklyn and PS7 Harlem New York.
Also in New York is a residential conversion of a historic New York cast-iron building known as the Stealth Building as well as the Miami Museum Garage and the Rhode Island School of Design Student Center in Providence.
29. Ana Gatóo
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Ana Gatóo is a partner at Light Earth Designs LLP, a young British architecture practice that attracted significant attention last year with the construction of Rwanda Cricket Stadium in Kigali, Rwanda The building was selected as the 2018 A+Awards Popular Winner in the Stadiums & grandstand category.
The modest, modern structure was designed by local builders who sourced local materials. The structural and monumental core of the fountains is constituted by three elementary parabolic shells that protect viewers from the sun while the forms of vaults expressively echo the trajectory of the bouncing ball. It has been estimated that cement tiles were made out of locally sourced soil possibly making the use of these tiles one of the most environmentally sound things imaginable.
30. Sharon Davis
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Sharon Davis is the founder and principal of Sharon Davis Design with series of awards as a practicing architect who affirm that designs should change lives. She feels that the extent to which these designs achieve this is the extent to which they advance the human right to social justice, economic opportunity, and environmental health. Her architectural goals include the creation of buildings, which should affect the future of communities.
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Her social design philosophy was put into practice through her project which is the Women’s Opportunity Center in Rwands. As a result, its purpose was to create an effective and unique educational and community center in Kayonza for training and educating local women by farming.
The main idea was to organize around the form of a vernacular Rwandan village: a linked, intimate chain of individual building sized to human dimensions to accommodate an envisioned population of 300 women and protect them within a shared living environment. They should also be given a chance to generate income through the project which involves putting up a demonstration farm where women can produce and market their commodities.
31. Patricia Patkau
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Patricia Patkau practices at Patkau Architects – the firm she formed after working for over three decades in the business. The firm’s look has a modern feel while embracing love for the views of the Pacific Northwest.
Consider Tula the project of a cantilevered house located in the territory of British Columbia, and it blends into the environment so perfectly that it is almost impossible to discern. Just as it sounds, living here would be as much living with nature, even though you have never hiked.
Frequently Asked Questions About Female Architects
1. Who is the most famous female architect?
Dame Zaha Hadid is without a doubt the most famous and the most successful female architect who ever practised architecture. For her contributions, creativity and outspoken character, she was the first woman to ever receive this honor in 2004.
2. What percentage of architects are female?
Zippia says, as of now, there are about 152,775 architecture professionals within the United States. Currently women form only 23.3 % of all architects while men form the remaining 76.7 % of the total architects. The age of employed architect is 45 years old on average.
3. Who was the first successful female architect?
Marion Mahony Griffin was among the few women that embarked on the architectural practice. She perhaps could be the first woman to be licensed as an architect in America and most of her initial years working for Frank Lloyd Wright. She grew up and turning into one of the first and most successful female architects in the history.
4. Where do the majority of female architects come from?
Women in architecture have emerged from all over the world, as evidenced by this list. The first arose in England and the Americas and several others in European countries including Italy. I know one of our architects and he was born in Iraq! As we can observe these women came from all the corners of the world to create a path for the further women.
