Historian Elizabeth Cox writes about the surprises she uncovered during the process of writing Making Space, about women in New Zealand architecture.
A fact which often strikes people outside the profession of architecture – but hopefully is not a surprise for anyone within it – is that only 27% of registered architects are women, even though the graduates from architecture schools have been roughly equal for more than 15 years. As I am someone who works in the cultural and heritage sector, surrounded by women in every meeting and workplace, this was a surprise to me. In 2022 – only 27%!
Our book, Making Space, goes some way to explain why this number is still so low – but it focuses more on the amazing achievements of women within, and alongside, the profession. The women showcased in the book demonstrate that, despite the odds stacked against them, strength of character, professional skills and perseverance can overcome.
Making Space started with an appendix. Tucked away in an appendix to a book about Wellington architects from 1840 to 1940 was the only Wellington woman to have registered as an architect during that time – Lucy Greenish. She registered just over a century ago, in 1914. The write-up spurred me on to find out more about her life. What I found was a story of war, economic vulnerability, determination, an illegitimate baby, family secrets and records stretched across nations.
From Lucy’s story I uncovered hundreds of stories of women working in architecture around the country. Each time, like Lucy, it was putting together a jigsaw puzzle of sources – images, family histories, electoral rolls, application forms, oral history – that brought me closer to understanding their work and lives.
Even in the first half of the 20th century I found dozens of women working in architecture firms around the country. Margaret Hamilton, working for Cecil Wood, one of Christchurch’s best known architects, was the only employee he didn’t fire as he tried to keep his head above water during the 1930s depression. Thelma Williamson worked as a draftswoman for Louis Hay in his Napier office before and after the 1936 Napier earthquake. Numerous examples of Hay’s architectural plans have Thelma’s initials on them, showing she drew and traced them under his instruction, and others were her own work. One of the buildings Williamson worked on was St Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Napier. Upon the spire’s completion in January 1931, she climbed the 33 metres of scaffolding and put the weathervane on the top. A newspaper account, headed “Adventurous Girl”, noted that she had been chosen for this task as she had “a considerable amount of work to do in connection with the drawing of the plans of the church”. Just weeks later, still not quite completed, the church was completely destroyed in the earthquake. Thelma herself narrowly missed being killed at her desk on the day of the quake. Another New Zealand woman, Alison Sleigh, left New Zealand in the early 1920s and became one of the very first women to train at the famous Architecture Association in London, after they finally agreed to let women attend. Likewise, Te Puea Herangi (Waikato) used architecture to return her people to their rightful place: she commissioned many whare, including Mahinarangi at Tūrangawaewae, and designed housing for her people. Many of these stories have been lost to the standard architectural narrative in New Zealand.
From these early examples of women in the profession, the book takes us right up to the present day, focussing on the many women working in the profession (and associated professions) today. Many women continue to make important inroads into changing both the profession and the environment in which it operates, particularly in the fields of papakāinga and safe and healthy housing; engaging rangatahi and communities with design, urban planning, co-housing and environmental sustainability; and pushing for technological and other changes to the way the profession operates.
Although I am a women’s historian, and know how easy it is for women to be forgotten, it was still surprising to discover afresh how easy it is for women to slip from view in the profession. For example, Megan Rule, an architect who now lives in Auckland but who grew up in Southland, hadn’t realised that a woman architect, Monica Ford, had made a significant contribution to the built fabric of her home town. Ford’s own formative architectural experience in the early 1930s began, just as Megan’s did 50 years later, with draughting in a local Invercargill practice before she went to Auckland to university. In writing her chapter for the book, Megan visited many of the community, church and residential projects that Ford and her husband designed, and interviewed her family and the people who lived in her buildings, to piece the history of Monica’s career back together.
I was lucky that lots of women architects agreed to contribute to Making Space. Architect Divya Purushotham, a designer of very large commercial buildings, took on the task of writing about other women involved in the same complex field as her and was able to examine their work through the lens of her own. Professor Deirdre Brown wrote about wahine Māori who work in the profession and their contribution to the decolonisation of Aotearoa’s built environment. Associate professor Fleur Palmer wrote about women involved in designing papakāinga for whānau and hapū. Architect and academic Min Hall, examined those working in the world of sustainable architecture, having herself worked in that field for many years. Karamia Müller used the first weeks of lockdown in 2021 to hold talanoa with six Pacific women architects. There are also chapters about women in landscape architecture, urban design and other associated professions. Many contributors spent hours interviewing other women and delving into difficult and complex topics.
Jessica Halliday’s chapter focuses specifically on those women working towards the recovery of Canterbury after the 2010 –11 earthquakes. Her writing documents the way in which the rebuild of the city has enabled the rise of women in Christchurch architecture and the wider built environment sector. Her chapter highlights the work of the women of Ngāi Tūāhuriri (the Ngāi Tahu hapū that holds mana whenua over the Christchurch area), in the rebuild and the ways in which their work is now seen in public spaces, buildings and artworks all over the urban landscape and architecture of Christchurch.
Auckland architect Nathasha Markham wrote a chapter about women architects designing their own homes – while she also designed her home and ran her practice. As she wrote, “The concerns of human habitation can be intimate, ordinary and poetic all at the same time. If architecture ultimately is design to serve people, what better opportunity to test ideas about architecture than in the design of one’s own home?”. Architect Sally Ogle also wrote about the process of designing and building her own house with three friends, all recently out of university, having purchased the cheapest section they could find – a project which set two architectural practices on a road to success.
As this project progressed I realised it could become more than just a record of “she was here”, but rather something that would augment the narrative of the country’s architectural history, to encourage a wider understanding of how the profession worked (and still works) in New Zealand. Also, although the book uses the lens of gender, it also became about the importance of all sorts of diversity in architecture, and the benefits that can bring.
Making Space seemed an apt title for a book that chronicles women making physical spaces, buildings and landscapes, while also making space within the profession for themselves and for those who followed them. As other writers became involved, it became clear that the book itself was a space in which women could write about architecture, their own work and that of their peers and predecessors.
In Making Space, women have been pulled out of the appendix and into their own space.
Making Space: A history of New Zealand women architects, edited by Elizabeth Cox, (Massey University Press, $65) can be purchased from Unity Books Wellington or Unity Books Auckland.