Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession

Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession

Providing hard data for trends that many perceive only vaguely and some deny altogether, Designing for Diversity reveals a profession rife with gender and racial discrimination and examines the aspects of architectural practice that hinder or support the full participation of women and persons of color. Drawing on interviews and surveys of hundreds of architects, Kathryn H. Anthony outlines some of the forms of discrimination that recur most frequently in architecture: being offered added responsibility without a commensurate rise in position, salary, or credit; not being allowed to engage in client contact, field experience, or construction supervision; and being confined to certain kinds of positions, typically interior design for women, government work for African Americans, and computer-aided design for Asian American architects.   Anthony discusses the profession's attitude toward flexible schedules, part-time contracts, and the demands of family and identifies strategies that have helped underrepresented individuals advance in the profession, especially establishing a strong relationship with a mentor. She also observes a strong tendency for underrepresented architects to leave mainstream practice, either establishing their own firms, going into government or corporate work, or abandoning the field altogether. Given the traditional mismatch between diverse consumers and predominantly white male producers of the built environment, plus the shifting population balance toward communities of color, Anthony contends that the architectural profession staves off true diversity at its own peril. Designing for Diversity argues convincingly that improving the climate for nontraditional architects will do much to strengthen architecture as a profession. Practicing architects, managers of firms, and educators will learn how to create conditions more welcoming to a diversity of users as well as designers of the built environment.   "Kathryn Anthony is one of architecture's leading voices of conscience. Authoritative and authentic, disturbing yet hopeful, Designing for Diversity brilliantly exposes and analyzes the profession's perennial struggles with diversity. There is no more important reading for anyone interested in the future of architecture education and practice." -- Lee D. Mitgang, coauthor of Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice "Kathryn Anthony gives an insider's view of some not-readily-visible aspects of the architectural profession. She reports on groups we may not have noticed, work we have not seen, voices we rarely hear, and experiences not all of us have had. . . . . Some harsh appraisals depict conditions we wish did not exist in our profession, but they suggest how architecture can be made more responsive than it now is to a broadening world. If the future of architecture includes diverse people joined in a shared endeavor, their diversity will increase the scope of our work and add further layers of meaning, involvement, artistry--and fun--to our lives." -- Denise Scott Brown, senior partner, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates "Anthony makes a pioneering contribution to the field by effectively arguing beyond the moral high ground that discrimination in the architectural classroom and workplace is abusive, illegal, and intolerable. She convincingly shows how the lack of diversity injures the entire profession and provides strategies for change. Once read, there should be no excuses left for maintaining the status quo." -- Leslie Kanes Weisman, author of Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment Kathryn H. Anthony, a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the author of Design Juries on Trial: The Renaissance of the Design Studio. Her pioneering research has earned national awards from the American Institute of Architects and the Environmental Design Research Association.