The World’s Foremost Female Architect

Image from a great Icon slideshow of the Las Vegas studio.

Not to belabor the point I have made here (Jeanne Gang) and here (Zaha Hadid) and here (Aline Saarinen), but Martin Filler takes up the discussion of female architects and puts Denise Scott-Brown in her rightful place. I may not like the work, but I agree on her importance. More talk about women in the profession can only be of benefit to women in the profession.

nybooks:

Martin Filler

Preposterously premature acclaim has posited the London-based Iraqi Zaha Hadid (who turns sixty next Halloween but has yet to produce a body of built work commensurate with her hyperbolic reputation) as the world’s foremost female architect. Instead, that designation rightfully belongs to Denise Scott Brown, a truly towering figure in the modern history of the building art.

UnBeige picks SANAA’s Kazuyo Sejima as the wildcard for this Sunday’s Pritzker Prize. I would not call her a wildcard, since the film’s work has been widely covered and praised and she and partner Ryue Nishizawa operate in the same quiet way as last year’s winner Peter Zumthor. My question is, will it be a joint win? I have never understood SANAA’s process, and some of the partners’ work is separate, but giving it to another partnership would be a step toward recognizing the realities of the profession.

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By Alexandra Lange

Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and author, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for Criticism, awarded for her work as a contributing writer for Bloomberg CityLab. She is currently the architecture critic for Curbed and has written extensively for Design Observer, Architect, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Lange holds a PhD in 20th-century architecture history from New York University. Her writing often explores the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and design, with a focus on how the built environment shapes everyday life. She is also a recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, an honor she shares with Design Observer’s Editor-in-Chief, Ellen McGirt.