I was delighted to hear that two of my role models, architect Elizabeth (Liz) Diller and architectural photographer Hélène Binet, have won prestigious 2019 Women in Architecture awards.

Women in Architecture Campaign

The awards are part of a project that is near to my heart: The Women in Architecture campaign, a joint project of two important architecture magazines, The Architectural Review and The Architect’s Journal, intended to raise the profile of women in the industry and make the profession a better place for women.

Liz Diller: Visionary Architect

Liz Diller, who was awarded the 2019 Jane Drew Prize, is an American architect and one of the founders of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, an innovative New York-based design firm whose work highlights the intersection between architecture, art, performance and urban design.

Diller is a particular inspiration to me because she began her career at around the same time I began mine, and because, as a woman, an immigrant and the daughter of Polish Jews, she overcame the biases that plagued (and still plague) the industry and rose to incredible prominence.

Her firm’s work is some of the most important in the world, mixing art, architecture and green design in innovative ways that explore how physical space intersects with culture and reflects social relationships.

Some of her best work includes:

• New York City’s High Line, a public park that repurposed unused elevated train tracks, combining art and gardens to provide an oasis for city-dwellers in search of beauty and nature in the middle of an often-gritty, bustling city.
• The redevelopment of New York’s famed Lincoln Center, a massive project that revitalized the aging performing arts complex, updating and expanding some of its major performance and educational spaces, and creating a new pedestrian promenade and pavilion. I especially love the Infoscape, which brings information, images and videos about performances and activities at the center directly into the street. It emphasizes how integral the performing arts are to daily life in New York and increases their accessibility to the average citizen.
• The 2011 “How Wine Became Modern” installation for SFMOMA, which used multiple media, including architectural models, artworks and media, and a “smell wall” to explore the culture of wine and its evolution.

In 1999, Diller received the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship in architecture and environmental design for creating “an alternative form of architectural practice that unites design, performance and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory and criticism.”

Diller was named one of Time magazine’s 100 “Most Influential People” of 2018. She also teaches and mentors students at the Princeton University School of Architecture.

Hélène Binet: Championing Great Architecture Through Photography

I love the work of Swiss-French architectural photographer Hélène Binet because it deeply investigates the work of architects with an eye that’s both loving and critical. Her photographs capture the living aspect of architecture – how it interacts with the people that use it and informs our relationships – in a way that few others have matched.

Her unique perspective may come from her prior experience as a performance photographer at Geneva’s renowned Grand Théâtre, which she did before turning her focus to architecture.

Binet is old-school, working exclusively with film, which I think gives her work an immediacy that can be missing in digital photography.

The work highlighted on her website captures the duality of the best architecture – its intimacy coupled with grandeur – and draws the eye to details that demonstrate a gifted architect’s ability to combine small elements into a whole that functions as both art and working structure.

Her work has been shown around the world, and you can view it at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where it is part of the permanent collection.

As the winner of numerous photography prizes, such as the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award and the Redaksjonell Fotografi, Binet draws attention to the work of architects around the world, for which the Women in Architecture Awards have conferred on her the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize.

Women in architecture like Diller and Binet inspire me, and I’m thankful that they are receiving recognition in an industry that too often ignores the contributions of women.