Praise the Partner(s)

Below is an essay published in Architecture d’Aujourd’hui No. 395, on the topic of the current petiton for the Pritzker Prize committee to recognize the work of Denise Scott Brown, and the larger issues this raises for the practice of architecture and the giving or prizes.

So let’s salute Denise Scott Brown because she deserves it, and because she may indeed be, as Martin Filler put it in the New York Review of Books in 2010, “The World’s Foremost Female Architect.” But let’s not forget the second part of the quote. What needs to shift in architecture is more than making a place for women — it’s making a place for partners. For acknowledging strengths and weaknesses and pretending neither that one guru does it all, not that we can have it all.