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For International Women’s Day, Architects Projects speaks with Lilla Smith, Architecture and Design Director at Macklowe Properties on how the industry is changing

Architecture has long been a white-male-dominated industry that continues to face difficulties with issues of diversity and inclusion. The good news is that according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards’ (NCARB) annual data report NCARB by the Numbers, gender disparities are on the decline. “For the first time, women accounted for 50% of new AXP candidates—the first year on record that any cohort has seen equal representation of men and women,” says the report, which goes on to further highlight that women are consistently completing their licensure requirements sooner than men.

This suggests that change is stemming from the attitudes of educational institutes, something that was also drawn on when we spoke to Lilla Smith, Architecture and Design Director at Macklowe Properties on how she feels the industry is changing for the better with “recent advancements of women in academia and new avenues available for young women in architecture to engage with established female professionals”.

Having received her Master of Architecture degree from Yale University, and having served on the Board of Trustees for Packer Collegiate Institute and the Design Committee at St. Peter’s Church in New York, Lilla attributes recent advancements to the “appointment of women in leadership roles across the most prestigious graduate schools of architecture” stating that this has “the potential to bring equality to the learning environment and by extension to the profession“. The presence of “committees and events specifically for women in architecture, sponsored by graduate schools, architectural firms, and the AIA, that are designed to facilitate mentorships and networking” which, she says did not exist ten years ago, are now starting discussions that are yielding change.

Lilla has directed some of New York’s most notable residential projects of the decade during her time at Macklowe Properties including 432 Park Avenue and 737 Park Avenue and is now currently working on the largest office to residential conversion in the history of New York – One Wall Street. She ascribes her successes to the inspiration of her female fellows at Yale School of Architecture and offers valuable advice for her youngers to “find a role model or mentor, male or female, that you can relate to when you begin your career and in time, become a mentor to others”.

Though women’s issues in the pursuit of an architectural career have come a long way and as Lilla puts it, we rightly have a degree of “cautious optimism”, it is slow, and whilst change is happening “inequalities in pay and underrepresentation of women in leadership roles at architectural firms persist”. It is therefore, no secret that there is still much to do, not only within architecture but also within wider society.

For that reason, here at Architects Projects we are celebrating a number of women in architecture, like Lilla Smith, who have demonstrated significant successes, over the last 12 months since International Women’s Day in 2019 and in turn, we are forming our own bank of inspiring women in architecture.

Sumayya Vally, Amina Kaskar and Sarah de Villier, Counterspace Studio

Three female architects from South Africa will make history this summer as the youngest yet to receive the honour of creating the annual Serpentine Gallery pavilion.

The women behind the creation are Sumayya Vally, Amina Kaskar and Sarah de Villier, collectively operating as Counterspace Studio. They often work with artists and performers to create events which uncover hidden histories, and that’s something they hope to emulate in their pavilion, bringing in voices from the likes of Hoxton, Hackney, Whitechapel, Edgware Road, Peckham, Ealing and North Kensington.

Yasmeen Lari

Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect and 2020 winner of Jane Drew Prize for raising the profile of women in architecture.

Aged 79, Lari has continued to dedicate her life to architecture since closing her practice in 2000, advising UNESCO and building homes for tens of thousands of people affected by floods and earthquakes in her home country.