On Friday, October 27, RECORD celebrated the 10th year of the Women in Architectural Design Leadership Awards in Manhattan.
This year’s winners were honored in the presence of previous female architect honorees,
including Carol Ross Barney, Annabelle Selldorf, Lise Diller, Jing Liu, and AIA President-elect Kimberly Dowdell.
In addition, Kathleen McGuigan, who developed the awards program during her time as editor-in-chief of the magazine, chaired the anniversary celebration.
While this year’s jury – which included previous winners Stella Betts, Claire Wise, and Julie Eisenberg –
as well as architect Mark Gardner and critic Christopher Hawthorne – for exemplary award categories.
McGuigan noted that this was appropriate, as this year’s group of women honorees,
Although each embodies the essential spirit of community service through design, they “defy categorization.”
Each 2023 winner received the opportunity to speak briefly about their path into the field and the principles that drive their practice forward, before accepting their award.
Prize distribution
Anne Marie Duval Decker, of Jackson, Mississippi, received first prize,
The architect and her husband, Roy Decker, founded the firm 25 years ago based on their shared belief that “all architecture is public work.”
Motivated by Jackson’s plight and beauty, what she called “the coexistence of the terrible and the heroic,”
The couple has dedicated their practice to public-facing projects that address social and economic inequalities at diverse scales – their transitional housing.
The project was demonstrated at the Baddour Center,
a residential community in northwest Mississippi for adults with intellectual disabilities.
In the October issue of RECORD magazine.
Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel, founding principals of Leers Weinzapfel Associates, were also jointly honored at this year’s ceremony.
They attribute the success of their company, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last fall,
to the immense talent of their team — thanking directors Josiah Stevenson, Tom Chung and Ashley Rau.
While Julie Snow of Snow Kreilich Architects, who founded her studio in Minneapolis in 1995, followed with a humorous informal speech.
Reflecting on what design leadership means, Snow said she never considered herself to be at the forefront,
“I’m not really an ‘outdoor’ type of person,” she says, “I just want to bring joy to those who use our buildings.” “.
As considerations of equity and sustainability “rightfully” move to the forefront of architecture, Snow said,
She urged architects not to leave qualities like cheerfulness behind. “As the field of design expands, we can maintain its complexity,” she said.
The final winner of the awards ceremony was author and educator Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton of Parsons School of Design,
She is a notable pioneer for women of color in the profession – and among many other accolades,
she was the nation’s 12th black woman licensed to practice architecture,
The first is promoted to full professor of architecture,
and the second is elected to membership in the AIA College of Fellows.
Dr. Sutton recalled her activist work in New York in the 1970s as part of “a handful of women determined to change the face of architecture.”
Meeting in each other’s apartments to “share wine-soaked stories” about sexism in the workplace and criticizing the gendered notions of the place, she recalled.
The group eventually wrote a statement to address sexism in the workplace
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