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Video: Outstanding female architects of our time who have created real masterpieces
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Contrary to popular belief that the profession of an architect is still a purely masculine one, women have been making successful careers in this area for a long time. For many, only the name of the great Zaha Hadid is associated with the phrase "woman architect", but our other contemporaries also enliven the streets of cities around the world with futuristic structures. Before you are the stories and creations of several of them.
Amanda Leavitt
Leavitt is arguably the most awarded and important living female architect. She was born in 1955 in Wales, and opened her own architecture office in 2008 after twenty years of collaboration with other British architects. She won worldwide fame thanks to the project of the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, for which she was nominated for the prestigious award named after the modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This was followed by a project for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, renovation projects for several historically significant department stores throughout Europe, the World Trade Center Mosque in Abu Dhabi …
Amanda is interested in modern technology, but even more in social change. She strives not only to create fantastic buildings of glass and concrete, but also to offer original solutions for public spaces. For example, she owns a project of multi-level football fields in metropolitan areas - in big cities, despite the seeming prevalence of fitness centers, not all people have access to outdoor activities.
Amanda also worked in Russia, creating a project for the reconstruction of the Voskhod cinema, which is to become a super-modern entertainment center. Amanda Leavit's work inspired the European architectural community and governing bodies to discuss urban planning reforms related to sustainability, functionality and accessibility of the urban environment.
Kazuyo Sejima
Japan boasts a considerable number of outstanding architects, and Kazuyo Sejima, who began her creative career thirty years ago, is one of them. She was the first woman to open her own architecture firm.
Following the traditions of Japanese philosophy and the school of architecture, Sejima pays much attention not only to structures, but also to space, lightness, and harmonious integration of the building into the environment. SANAA's projects, co-authored with her former employee Ryue Nishizawa, are minimalist and technologically advanced. Color - white only. Sejima says he strives to design buildings so transparent and weightless that a little more - and they will disappear into thin air. In 2011, SANAA created a glass dome project with its own eco-environment for Skolkovo.
Kazuyo Sejima is a lecturer on architecture at the Japan Women's University, from which she graduated herself, and at Keio University, she is an honorary doctor of Oxford and the winner of a huge number of major awards in the field of architecture, including the "architectural Nobel" - the Pritzker Prize.
Francine Hauben
Francine Hauben is called "the second most important woman in the Netherlands … after the Queen."She was in love with architecture since childhood and often recalls in interviews how she first saw architectural models at the University of Delft - then she realized her vocation. Immediately after defending her diploma, she married a classmate and opened an architectural bureau with him. Francine was torn between home and work for several years, until suddenly her partner left her with three children and a bunch of unfinished projects. Francine survived two years of depression, and only the realization that she had a gift that should serve people kept her on the edge. Now her architectural bureau Mecanoo is the most successful in the Netherlands and one of the most famous in the world. Her motto is "three K": composition, contrast, complexity.
Francine is interested in the harmonious resolution of conflicts - between wildlife and the manufacturability of a building, between light and shade, between space and limitations … Mecanoo is engaged in many projects, their field of activity extends from private buildings to landscapes, but everywhere the creative style of Francine is invariably recognizable. Hauben's creative baggage includes the cone-shaped Library of the Technical University in Utrecht, which seems to grow out of a green hill, the project of a revolving building for the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, the tallest skyscraper in the Netherlands, competing with the Norman Voster Tower located in the same area of Rotterdam. On the rooftop of her tower, the princess of modern architecture celebrated her fiftieth birthday - and her success.
Odile Decck
Architect Odile Dekk is the most extravagant representative of the profession, style icon and star of modern art. Her works are classified as postmodernism and demon-constructivism, but the rebel Frenchwoman is not worried about this, because her creations, first of all, reflect her thoughts, feelings and sensations. She came up with her own style - "hyper tension". She opened an architectural bureau with her lover and like-minded person - Benoit Cornett. After the first eccentric project - the administrative complex in Rennes - they received fame … and not a single order. However, the lovers were able to find their way without betraying ideals.
Eighteen years ago, Benoit's life ended tragically. Since then, Odile has been designing alone, giving work at least twelve hours a day. At the same time, she loves to travel and communicate with young people - this spurs her creative imagination. She only rests on airplanes. The compatriots practically did not understand Deck's creative handwriting, but they accepted it with a bang in Great Britain, which is more open to original architectural solutions. At home, Deck teaches to prepare a generation of bolder and more passionate young professionals.
Odile is not only an architect, but also an industrial designer. She creates sets of furniture, dishes and lamps for her projects and as independent collections - the same plastic, strange and alien.
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