List: Most Overlooked Women in Architecture

Including Louis Kahn's muse and Denise Scott Brown.

Photo credit: Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates via BLOUIN ARTINFO.

Photo credit: Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates via BLOUIN ARTINFO.

ArchDaily recently republished its post written last year in honor of International Women’s Day listing the 10 most overlooked women in architecture history. Among those included on Nicky Rackard’s list is Philadelphia’s own Anne Tyng (the first female to attend the Harvard Graduate School of Design) and Denise Scott Brown (who was a lot more than just Robert Venturi’s wife, though peers often saw her in that light).

Tyng was a notable architectural theorist who is often credited as Louis Kahn’s “muse,” but I think we like Buckminster Fuller’s assessment of her role in the architect’s life much better. From ArchDaily:

Buckminster Fuller preferred to call her “Kahn’s geometrical strategist.” Many of Kahn’s designs show her influence, such as Trenton Bath House and the Yale Art Gallery, while Kahn’s “City Tower’ was mostly the work of Tyng.

Scott Brown (pictured above), meanwhile, got her masters in planning from the University of Philadelphia, where she met husband Robert. The two went on to open Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, which is why many jaws dropped when Venturi was named the sole winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1991.

ArchDaily reports her critiques on architectural design transformed “the way architects and planners saw mid-century modernism and urban design” and her Yale lectures in the late ’60s were included in an influential tome on 20th-century design.

The 10 Most Overlooked Women in Architecture History [ArchDaily]