10 Architectural Studies led by Women [V]

Charlotte Perriand (Paris, 24 October 1903 - Paris, 27 October 1999, Paris, France) has been known through her collaborations with Le Corbusier and Fernand Léger. However, at a time when it was rare for a woman to be an architect, designer and artist, Perriand's career spanned three quarters of a century and spanned places as diverse as Brazil, Congo, England, France, Japan, French New Guinea, Switzerland, and Vietnam.

Between 1920 and 1925 she attended the Ecole de l'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, where she studied furniture design. She also attended classes at the Grande Chaumière Academy from 1924 to 1926. Frustrated by the approach based on craftsmanship and the Beaux-Arts style defended by the school, Perriand moved away from anything of a traditional nature.

She became known at the age of 24 with her Bar sous le Toit made of chromed steel and anodized aluminum which was presented at the Salon d'Automne in 1927. Shortly thereafter she began her journey of more than ten years together with Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier. In 1927 she established her first studio of her own.

She collaborated with Le Corbusier on numerous architectural projects, designing the equipment for different dwellings such as the villas La Roche-Jeanneret, Church en Ville-d'Avray, Stein-de Monzie and the Villa Savoye, as well as the interiors of the Swiss Pavilion in the University City and the Shelter City of the Armée du Salut, both in Paris. She also worked with him on the definition of the minimum cellule (1929).

In 1937 Charlotte Perriand left Le Corbusier's studio and turned her attention to more traditional materials and more organic forms. She devoted herself to research in terms of prefabrication of modulated dwellings in which she collaborated with Jean Prouvé. Perriand's collaborations multiply throughout her career, working with architects such as Lucio Costa, Niemeyer, Candilis, Josic & Woods.

Her relationship with Le Corbusier did not end there, as she would collaborate with him again after the war, developing the first prototype of the integrated kitchen for the Marseille Room Unit.

The project where all her previous explorations on prefabrication architecture, standardisation, minimum cell, industrialisation and materials come together was the winter complex of Les Arcs in the French Savoy. Between 1967 and 1982, Perriand designed and built the three ski resorts of Les Arcs, located at an altitude of 1600, 1800 and 2000 metres, where 18,000 people had to be accommodated. The initial idea was to work with the grouping of minimum cells.

Matilde Ucelay Maórtua (b. 1912, Madrid - d. November, 24th 2008, Madrid, Spain) was the first woman to have a degree in architecture in Spain, in 1936, and also the first to pursue a full professional career: more than 120 projects carried out entirely by herself with the sole occasional help of a quantity surveyor, some of them abroad, in more than 40 years of professional practice. Most of her works are single-family houses, such as the one she built for José Ortega Spottorno, but she also designed factories, laboratories, warehouses and shops. In her works stands out the sensibility for the use and the care in the constructive details. An exceptional trajectory recognized by the National Architecture Prize 2004.

Ucelay belongs to that generation of women from the Spanish enlightened bourgeoisie who, educated in liberal, artistic and professional environments, began to enter universities in the first decades of the 20th century. Ucelay brilliantly studied high school at the Instituto Escuela, which she combined with her piano studies, and in 1931 she entered the Madrid School of Architecture. There she meets Félix Candela, whom she will bind for life, and Fernando Chueca Goitia. When she finishes his studies, her classmates offer her a tribute to the one attended by Amós Salvador, Minister of the Interior.

In 1940 she was purged by the General Directorate of Architecture and condemned in the Council of War to perpetual disqualification for public, managerial and trust positions and, for five years, for the private practice of the profession. As a consequence, she never received public commissions and her first projects could not bear her signature.

The women of Ucelay's generation opened paths in Spain in the different areas of art, science and professions, although many of them abandoned or simply failed to exercise their professions in the hostile environment of Franco's regime. This was not the case with Ucelay. On the contrary, at a time when women lacked legal rights, Ucelay, with great intelligence, dedication and character, fully exercised a liberal profession of important responsibilities until her retirement in 1981.

Gaetana Aulenti (1927-2012) was an Italian architect who dedicated herself to recovering the architectural values of the past. For almost ten years she worked in the editorial office of Casabella under the direction of Ernesto Nathan Rogers. His works include numerous renovations and rehabilitations of buildings of historical value.

In 1953 she finished her degree in architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. In the fifties Italian architecture was devoted to research into the historical and cultural recovery of the architectural values of the past and the existing built environment. From her pages in the magazine Casabella she proposed the Neoliberty as an alternative to the rationalism prevailing in the architectural conventions of the moment.

After obtaining her doctorate, she taught at the School of Architecture in Venice from 1960 to 1962 and at the School of Architecture in Milan from 1964 to 1967.

As many of her contemporaries, Aulenti designed several furniture series throughout the 1960s for the La Rinascente store and later designed furniture for Zanotta, where she created two of her best-known pieces, Abril, a stainless steel folding chair with a removable lid, and the Sanmarco table built from glass plates.

In 1981 she was chosen to renovate the 1900 Beaux Arts Gare d'Orsay train station, a spectacular landmark originally designed by Victor Laloux, in the Musée d'Orsay. Her work at the Musée d'Orsay led to the creation of a space for the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the restoration of Palazzo Grassi as an art museum in Venice (1985); the conversion of a former Italian embassy in Berlin into an Academy of Sciences and the restoration of a 1929 exhibition hall in Barcelona as the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (1985). In San Francisco, she converted the city's Central Library into an Asian art museum. In 2008 she carried out the restoration of the Palazzo Branciforte in Palermo.

In 2012, Gae Aulenti received the Gold Medal of the Triennale di Milano for her artistic career in recognition of her position as one of the masters of Italian design.

Diana Balmori (1932-2016) She was born in 1932 in Gijón, Spain and emigrated to Argentina as a child, where she graduated from the University of Tucumán in 1952.  She received a Ph.D. in Urban History from the University of Califorinia at Los Angeles in 1973 and graduated from the Radcliffe College Landscape Program in 1989. After working with her husband César Pelli for many years she founded her own firm, Balmori Associates in 1990.

Her urban design practice designs sustainable infrastructures that serve as an interface between landscape and architecture. In 2006, she created BAL/LABs within Balmori Associates, to further push the boundaries of architecture, art and engineering: Green Roofs, Floating Islands, Temporary Landscapes, Forms of Representation, and Zero Waste City, among others.

Diana had an active voice in national policy and decision-making on topics that relate to landscape design, architecture and urban planning. She served as: member of The United States Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, DC; a Senior Fellow of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC; a member of the Allston Development Group at Harvard University, Boston, MA; on the Board of The Van Alen Institute, New York City; The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for the World Trade Center Site, New York City; and as a Committee Member for the Comprehensive Design Plan for the White House.

Some of her most notable work includes, NTT Shinjuku Headquarters Building. Tokyo, Japan. 1995 Abandoibarra Masterplan. Bilbao, Spain. 2012. Euskadi Square. Bilbao, Spain. 2012. New Government City. Sejong, South Korea. 2007-2014. Beale Street Landing. Memphis, USA. 2015 São Paulo Corporate Towers. São Paulo, Brazil. 2017

She wrote numerous publications on the topic of Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning and public spaces. Some of them are Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony (co-author). Yale University Press, 1993. Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives (co-author). Yale University Press, 1993. Land and Natural Development (LAND) Code: Guidelines for Sustainable Land Development (co-author). Wiley, 2007. Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (co-author). The Monacelli Press, 2011. A Landscape Manifesto. Yale University Press, 2010.

She has received various awards for her work, including Best Project, Special Award “Citta d’Aqua”, Biennale di Venezia, 2004. Fifth European Urban and Regional Planning Award, European Council of Town Planners, 2004. Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, Award of Excellence, 2004. Award of Excellence AIA New York State, 2009. Highest Honor Award for Sustainability Leadership, The Institute of Green Professionals (IGP), 2009.

She died in 2016 in New York City.

Nathalie de Vries (Appingedam, the Netherlands, 1965) is a co-founder and principal architect and urban designer of MVRDV, an interdisciplinary studio that works at the intersection of architecture and urbanism. The award-winning Dutch practice was set up by De Vries alongside Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs in 1993 and has established an international identity with a wide variety of building typologies and scales that are self-generated, innovative, experimental, and theoretical.

Over the past 25 years she has designed and realised projects  such as Villa VPRO (1997), Silodam Housing (2003), and the Spijkenisse Library (2012) as well and the masterplans for Nieuw Leyden (2013) and Westerpark West in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2015). Recent projects include the award winning Baltyk office Tower in Poland (2012), as well as office projects in Łódź, Shanghai, and Colombo, housing projects in Rennes, France, San Francisco, USA and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She also worked on Resilient by Design San Francisco and created leisure masterplans for sites in Shanghai and Thailand.

Her projects also include designs for three national monuments: the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2014), the award-winning Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam (2004) and Buitenplaats Koningsweg in Arnhem (2010). As Chief National Railroad Architect De Vries has built up experience in transport infrastructure which she has translated into a series of projects.

In addition to her work for MVRDV, De Vries engages as Professor of Architectural Design at Delft University of Technology and Chairman of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects. She regularly lectures at renowned universities and engages in international juries. In the past she held various positions, among them Professor of Architecture Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Technical University of Berlin, Germany; Visiting Critic at Harvard GSD, Boston; Chief Railroad Architect for ProRail/NS; The Morgenstern Visiting Critic Chair at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Besides this she is and has been a board member of various Dutch art and design museums and institutions, among them the Groninger Museum and Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art.

Currently she is curating an exhibition at AUT in Innsbruck, Austria, about MVRDV’s typologies which will open mid-2019.