Architecture intersects nearly every facet of life. Many times, an architect’s drawing board is where the places we live, eat, meet and worship first take shape. When we want to build commemorative projects like the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, we call an architect. When universities seek the right balance between form and function in new academic halls, an architect is called. Though the architectural needs of society are highly diverse, the pool of available architects is anything but.
2004 statistics from the American Institute of Architects — the profession’s leading membership association — indicate that just 7 percent of its licensed or registered members are underrepresented minorities. Only 12 percent are women. As Blacks and Hispanics each make up about 13 percent of the overall population and women comprise roughly half of the population, this gaping disparity has prompted widespread calls for change.
Though fields such as law and medicine have become increasingly inclusive, architecture remains “a profession dominated by White males, whereas many other professions have overcome that. Architecture seems to be slow in overcoming that,” says University of Maryland architecture professor Gary A. Bowden. “Part of that, I think, goes back to the fact that architecture traditionally has been such as patronage kind of relationship between a rich architect and his rich clientele.” That historical relationship, he says, creates and maintains a closed circle of architects from privileged social classes, and “minorities tend to be left out.”
But that may be starting to change. The AIA has named Washington, D.C.-area Marshall E. Purnell, of Devrouax and Purnell, as its first Black president. Prior to his election, Purnell had been already named an AIA Fellow, the association’s highest honor. Another Black architect, Boston Architectural College President Theodore Landsmark, is the current president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture — the second Black to serve in that role. Hampton University Department of Architecture Dean Bradford Grant was the first. Landsmark says he is uniquely positioned to respond to the architecture profession’s diversity imperative.
“As a person who grew up in the projects in Harlem, who always wondered who the people were that got to decide what kind of space I lived in, I knew that many young people ask the same questions and that some, if given the opportunity, would themselves want to enter this profession,” Landsmark says.
Despite strong representation of some underrepresented minorities in leadership roles within the profession, 83 percent of licensed U.S. architects are White males. In particular, the fact that Black females make up less than 0.2 percent of all licensed architects has many in the industry scrambling for answers.
