Leah Yao ’15, Chester Thai ’14: Denise Scott Brown, wife of famed architect and EA graduate Robert Venturi, recently became the focus of an online petition created by female design students at Harvard. This petition calls for the recognition of Denise Scott Brown’s role in the 1991 Pritzker Architecture Prize, which was awarded solely to her husband Robert Venturi.
The Pritzker Prize, often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel,” is one of architecture’s highest recognitions. Prior to the award, Scott Brown and Venturi had worked together for over twenty-two years, in their practice Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and co-wrote influential books in architecture, including Learning from Las Vegas in 1972.
As a result of Brown’s omission from the prize, Harvard architecture students Caroline James and Arielle Assouline-Lichten launched the petition on Change.org. It states, “Women in architecture deserve the same recognition as their male counterparts…we demand that Denise Scott Brown be retroactively acknowledged for her work deserving of a joint Pritzker Prize.”
Scholium was able to contact Ms. Scott Brown for an interview over the phone. Brown said she was “overjoyed” upon hearing that these two young women at Harvard were organizing a petition. Amazed by the role of social media in these events, Brown described it as “community building.” “I could see the possibilities in what they were doing,” Brown said. “They could be a real force but I never expected it could go to nearly 10,000 signatures. That amazed me.”
Reverend Jim Squire, close friend of the Venturis, said, “I’ve never realized how extensive [gender discrimination] was in the field of architecture.” When Brown and Venturi married, their roles were equivalent, and both were famous and well regarded in the field of architecture. However, although “I thought I had the same liberties as my colleagues,” said Brown, “it began quite soon to be evident I didn’t.”
Squire commented, “Everyone always thinks creativity is something that is always done by a person…but when you think about it, most creativity is something that is done with people, between two people, and that is the way I know that Bob and Denise work.” He added that it was “wonderful to watch them, to watch their thinking,” and in that situation, “one and one equaled much more than two.”
For Brown, the Harvard petition has taught her “the huge passion of women and the number of people who say that it is the right thing to do. It has given me enormous hope for the next generation and that’s a validation from all over the world. The next generation is well set.”
Despite the challenges she has faced, Brown says she still finds architecture immensely rewarding. “When people trust me with the projects that are dearest to their heart,” she explained, “those are my rewards.” In regards to building and designing the Class of 1944 Chapel for Episcopal, she says, “The Episcopal Academy chapel is the center of Episcopal and they trusted us with that. They loved who I was and the fact that I’m Jewish and was helping to build the chapel.”
Squire, who worked on the chapel with the couple stated, “Every once in a while you have an opportunity in your life to be part of something where the people you’re working with really are geniuses, and that’s really how most of us felt about Bob and Denise. You know you’re thinking with somebody at a whole different level.”
In terms of the the Pritzker prize itself, Brown suggested “the Pritzker people come up with new guidelines for the prize.” Squire, likewise, expressed his full support for the petition, saying “People in the school have told me that they [support the petition], so I hope students will get behind that as well.” The petition can be found on Change.org, and currently has a goal of 15,000 signatures.
Brown concluded by saying, “there are many ways that I get real rewards out of architecture. But I still feel that it is really bad for women and for the direction that the field should take for them to think that what I do can be called anything but architecture.”