The Portland State Department of Architecture will present, “Seven Firsts: Work by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects,” tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. in Shattuck Hall Annex.
Seven Firsts: Work by Sarah Wigglesworth Architecture
The Portland State Department of Architecture will present, “Seven Firsts: Work by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects,” tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. in Shattuck Hall Annex.
Sarah Wigglesworth is famous for her pioneering use of green building materials, but her primary focus is achieving a “greater representation of women in the built environment.”
Architecture is about more than just designing buildings, and architects like Wigglesworth focus on the interaction between people and their surroundings. Wigglesworth’s private firm, for example, designed a water-recycling garden for display at a world-famous flower show in an effort to raise awareness of global water shortages and sustainable development.
Like many professions, architecture has long been a male-dominated field. It’s hard to imagine what the built environment might look like if women had designed it. Some critics have even taken to assigning buildings a particular gender “male” characteristics, and for these scholars, can range from the comically phallic to the harshly functional (think Soviet Brutalism).
In her native England, Wigglesworth helped bring “green building” into the mainstream with projects that reflected a modern, urban sensibility and banished images of hippies.
