A place for women in architecture? Evelīna Ozola ‘s thoughts on the film “City Dreamers” / Article / LSM.lv

Riga International Film Festival (Riga IFF), which takes place from October 15 to 25 this year, will screen 129 films in eleven days, offering screenings both in person and online. The festival program this year includes works that have won recognition at world film festivals, bold viewpoints from the Baltic Sea region and the Nordic countries, talented debuts and long-awaited domestic films.

The social media portal LSM.lv offers readers to get acquainted with films that are not only high-quality works of art, but also stimulate reflection and discussion on topics relevant to society.

About eleven Riga writes for IFF films people whose personal and professional experience provides a special insight into the theme of the film in order to promote the exchange of ideas about what is happening in the world and in Latvia through the prism of culture and cinema.

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I learned that architecture is a men’s profession, just like the heroines of the movie “City Dreamer”, on the first day of architecture studies. Addressing freshmen, Professor Krastiņš pointed out that it is often more difficult for girls to complete their studies because they tend to have children, and architecture in general is a very technical occupation. I studied architecture in the early 2000s, but all four heroines of the film began their careers in the 1950s, when women were pushed back into the kitchen after wartime emancipation. The issue of gender equality in the film, which tells the story of four notable architects who have recently crossed the threshold of 90 years, is constantly present.

Blanche Lemko fan Ginkela had the best results in her course, but she was not eligible for the Harvard University Scholarship, as only men were eligible at the time. She later became the first woman architect to receive the most significant awards and senior positions in various Canadian architectural institutions. At the beginning of his career, he also joined the famous Le Corbusier project “Unité d’habitation”, Blanche left his mark on modernist architecture and saved Montreal’s old town from demolition.

His passion for architectural heritage unites him with Philis Lambert, an architect and patron, the founder of the Canadian Center for Architecture. Thanks to her attentiveness and family capital, Lambera has managed to protect a number of historic buildings in Montreal. Only at the age of 27, Lammer took over the construction of his father’s Seagram high-rise in New York. In the film, she mentions that at the beginning she had to strengthen her authority in the men’s team. Lambier does not tell more about this experience, but it is easy to imagine.

I’m pretty sure that every architect has experienced a situation where a client, builder or engineer prefers to talk to a colleague – a man, asks “will the boss not join?” or hurry to explain things that our female brains are hardly able to comprehend.

Everyday discrimination can be partially avoided by working with a man, but sometimes this is reflected.

American architect, planner, writer and professor Denise Scott Brown worked his career side by side with Robert Venturi. Their book “Learning from Las Vegas” written in the 1970s is on the compulsory literature lists of all schools of architecture in the world, but the implemented projects are bright icons of postmodernism. However, in 1991, the highest architectural award, the Pricker Prize, was presented to Venturi alone, despite his own objections. Scott Brown describes her pain in situations in which her success is attributed to her work and life partner Venturi in a moving essay, Room at the top? on sexism and the stellar system in architecture. For more than a decade, she did not publish it for fear of endangering her career.

Although women’s names can be found in the history of architecture in different centuries, architects have only recently begun to gain more attention. For example, only one woman, Zaha Hadida, and three married architects have received the Royal Gold Medal in Architecture in Britain since the award was established in the mid-19th century. In recent years, a number of organizations have been set up to draw attention to the fact that outstanding female architects also deserve public recognition.

Do not misunderstand that we do not only fight for prizes, on the contrary – formal awards are often a service to the bear in the fight for equal treatment on a daily basis. Women are just as talented and capable of creating good architecture as men.

In addition, the combination of a woman’s personal and professional experience in architecture and urban planning is essential.

Women use the city and buildings differently from men, for example, more often on so-called care trips – going to their parents, to kindergarten, to grocery stores and various household items. Our bodies are smaller and lighter, we spend more time in the toilet, we are more often endangered in traffic and on dark streets. This is evidenced by the data and should be taken into account when designing buildings and planning cities.

There is also much evidence in the history of architecture and urban planning of women’s attention and concern for others. Lambere and Scott Brown are also great photographers and city observers, while landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander is a progressive thinker who advocated green roofs, biodiversity and thoughtfully designed children’s playgrounds long before they became popular.

The first part of the film is difficult to trace – the shots change quickly, there is a move from Montreal to Philadelphia and back, the names of many famous architects are mentioned, and the stories burst into intriguing places. I would gladly exchange the boring footage in the second part of the film for going into the thoughts and long work of the film’s characters. Why do the stories of four architects combine in one film?

It’s hard to imagine anyone shooting a film about four equally famous male architects at once.

But on the bright side, this is how we will soon achieve equal representation in architectural documentary cinema.

Movies “Urban dreamers“Riga will be shown in the IFF program on October 19 at the National Library of Latvia and online.

After the “City Dreamer” session in the Ziedonis Hall of the National Library of Latvia, a conversation led by Viesturs Celmiņš will take place, with the participation of architects Zaiga Gaile, Sintija Vaivade and Evelīna Ozola.

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