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Wendy Bertrand eyes Book Club offerings

Book Circle



Please note: The Book Circle is being revived on the new OWA+DP website in a joint program with the AIA East Bay.

Jun 27, 2024 Discussion - Burnout by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA

Register for the discusssion here



Interested in sharing your thoughts on some of the latest publications related to women in the environmental professions?

INTENT: To encourage members and others to read and discuss books linking women's issues with architecture/environmental design and practice, keeping a library of these books to check out, and donating books to environmental design libraries at the end of each year.

CONCEPT: For three years, a small group (5 to 7 members and 1 potential member) got together in January, March, and November to discuss books about the historical, educational, theoretical, and cultural impact of gender on our lives and built spaces.

As of November 2013 we opened the circle to all members and interested men and women outside OWA. See OWA+DP Newsletter (December 2013) Book Circle 8 Discussion for new open format.

Facilitator: Wendy Bertrand
Contact Wendy to join the book circle, ask questions or suggest books to read.

Book Circle Titles available in OWA Library at Hamilton + Aitken Architects at 525 Brannan Street, San Francisco 415 974-5030 are:

  1. Early Women Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area
    by OWA's Inge Horton [Book Circle 1 Discussion]

  2. Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment, by Leslie Kanes Weisman>
    [Book Circle 2 Discussion]

  3. Women and the Making of the Modern House
    by Alice Friedman [Book Circle 3 Discussion]

  4. Architecture: A Woman's Profession
    edited by Tanja Kullack [Book Circle 4 Discussion]

  5. Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890-1915 by Jessica Ellen Sewell [Book Circle 5 Discussion]

  6. Enamored with Place: As Woman + As Architect by OWA's Wendy Bertrand [Book Circle 6 Discussion] [OWA Description]

  7. Various Articles on Gender and Architectural Discourse [Book Circle 7 Discussion]

  8. Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg [Book Circle 8 Discussion ]

  9. Women in Green: Voices of Sustainability by Kira Gould & Lance Hosey [more info here]

  10. Feminism and Architecture video by Susana Torre. Book Circle discussion #10

  11. Gender Intelligence by Barbara Annis & Keith Merron (Harpers & Collins, 2014).Book Circle discussion #11

Read and Discuss the book Gender Intelligence

Book Circle #11 Tuesday November 3, 2015
  
Gender Intelligence by Annis & Keith Merron (HarperCollins Publishers, 2014)

Applying gender intelligence to architecture and the design professions
will be the topic of the #11 OWA Book Circle discussion.

Happy Reading and testing out your gender intelligence.

Tuesday November 3, 2015
at the San Francisco Public Library

In the Sycip Room located next to the Page Desk on the 4th Floor
100 Larkin Street Steps away from the Civic Center BART and Muni stations
(enter at 30 Grove Street and proceed to elevator or stairs)

From 5:35 to 7:25 pm No food will be served but a dinner in a nearby restaurant, for those who would like to eat out afterward, will be planned.

This in not a Library Sponsored Program

RSVP OWA members Wendy Bertrand, and note that this is the last Book Circle in this series of books about women in architecture and/or feminism.

About the building from the San Francisco Public Library Website sfpl.org:
(Note that Architect Cathy Simon was a founding member of the Organization of Women Architects & Design Professionals (1973.



The Main Library, which opened its doors on April 18, 1996, was designed by James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (New York) and Cathy Simon of Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein & Moris (San Francisco).

Paid for by $104.5 million in bond funds and $22 million in private donations, the Main Library represents the largest public/private partnership in the history of San Francisco. Its Sierra White granite facade, obtained from the quarry that provided the stone for other Civic Center buildings, is consistent with its Beaux Arts style. The facade on Grove and Hyde streets has a more contemporary feel, compatible with the commercial activity on Market Street.
At 375,000 square feet, the Main offers twice as much usable space as its predecessor, which was located where the Asian Art Museum now stands. Inside, a dramatic skylight allows natural light into the building's five-story central atrium; bridges connect floors across lightwells, and a grand staircase rises four stories beside a wall installation lit with the names of more than a hundred authors, created by artist Nayland Blake.

Other artwork in the library includes a three-story interior wall filled with 50,000 annotated cards from the old card catalog by artists Ann Chamberlain and Ann Hamilton; a mural in the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center on the Third Floor by Mark Evans and Charley Brown; and two works by artist Alice Aycock on the Fifth Floor a spiral staircase in the glass enclosed reading room and a companion piece suspended from the high ceiling. A unique configuration of open spaces and smaller intimate corner rooms contributes both a sense of grandeur and welcome. These rooms highlight San Francisco's diverse communities and interests.

Among them are the African American Center, the Chinese Center and the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center on the Third Floor; the Steve Silver Beach Blanket Babylon Music Center on the Fourth Floor; the Wallace E. Stegner Environmental Center on the Fifth Floor; and the Marjorie G. & Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center on the Sixth Floor.

The interior design of each center includes inlaid hardwood floors, wool area rugs and upholstered chairs. Custom wall systems and cabinetry of sycamore, curly maple, lacewood and cherry evoke the warm imagery of traditional library interiors, counterbalanced in each room by a stainless steel disc above, which integrates both lighting and air diffusion components.


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