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Note from the Editor - Rebecca Friedberg

First Four Female AA Students - Submitted by Wendy Bertrand

Outstanding! Building Tour of LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired - Inge Horton and Wendy Bertrand

Willows in the Wind: A Parent Support Group for Parents of Struggling Teens - Suzan Swabacker

Uncross Your Fingers Indemnity Relief For Design Professionals! - Sharon Sanner Muir

EAMES at ODC: January 2018 - Kristin Damrow

Passing of Cory Kutsenkow - John Young

The retreat in photos. Do you have more to share? Reflections on the Retreat? Send them in so they can be included in the next and final newsletter of the year!

AA XX 100: AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017
International conference, book and exhibition
October 7–December 9, 2017

Conference: Women & Architecture in Context 1917-2017: November 2–4
Paul Mellon Centre, London, WC1B 3JA

Architectural Association School of Architecture
36 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3ES
UK

www.aaschool.ac.uk
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This autumn sees the launch of AA XX 100: Celebrating 100 Years of Women at the Architectural Association. The project marks the centenary of the first intake of the school’s women students in 1917 and takes the form of an exhibition, accompanying book and culminates in a three-day international conference.

AA XX 100 represents the work of AA women, its graduates and teachers, who are among the most important architects and designers, educators and historians of the 20th-21st century; some are celebrated: Dame Zaha Hadid, Amanda Levete, Farshid Moussavi and Patty Hopkins, and many others unrecognised.

International Conference: AA XX 100: AA Women and Architecture in Context 1917-2017 (November 2-4, 2017)
The international conference AA Women in Context 1917-2017 takes place November 2–4 at the Paul Mellon Centre, London and includes presentations, panel discussions, distinguished keynotes, and an open jury. It will not only celebrate the centenary of women at the AA but also provide a platform to discuss the themes of diversity, collaboration, and what gender means today, in order to promote change across the discipline and move forward to the future.

Speakers include AA School Interim Director Samantha Hardingham and AA Council Past President and co-founder of dRMM Sadie Morgan, Architect Elsie Owusu OBE, as well as a discussion between the collaborative practices Matrix, Muf and Australian collective Parlour.

To purchase your tickets and see the full programme please visit: xx.aaschool.ac.uk/conference

Exhibition: AA XX 100: AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017
Celebrating the history, global reach, ambition and influence of AA-trained women, this free-to-visit exhibition includes paintings, drawings and models by the likes of Dame Zaha Hadid, Amanda Levete, Julia Barfield and Patty Hopkins. Archival material and historic photographs shine light on the life of women at the AA since 1917 as well as the AA XX 100 Oral History Project—which offers an interactive collection of interviews with esteemed AA alumnae. The exhibition is designed by the architect and AA Council Past President, Eva Jiricna and the architect, Georgina Papathanasiou.

Book: AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017
Published by AA Publications and edited by Dr. Lynne Walker and Dr. Elizabeth Darling, the accompanying book considers the period from 1917-2017, offering an historical account of women at the AA and their subsequent work in architecture, design and education in Britain and the wider world. It includes original essays by academics, architects and writers, and a rich panoply of visual archival material.

AA Interim Director Samantha Hardingham said of the project "With AA XX 100 we wanted to highlight the impact the AA’s women students have had on the quality of architecture in Britain and the world over the last one hundred years. I’m immensely proud to be a former AA student, to work amongst so many incredibly talented women and men, and now have the privilege to be the first female director of the AA at this historic moment. Though much has changed since 1917, there is much that this work can do to inspire and inform future generations of women in architectural education, the profession and industry. I hope this project fires the imagination of all to continue to push boundaries both as women and architects.”

AA XX 100 sees the culmination of a collaboration between the AA and leading architectural historians Dr. Elizabeth Darling (Oxford Brookes University) and Dr. Lynne Walker (Institute of Historical Research, University of London), the editors of the book, curators of the exhibition and co-organisers of the conference. Together they have led over four years of research, talks and initiatives by women academics and students.

May 9, 2017

For many years, I had walked by the former location of the LightHouse for the Blind on Van Ness Avenue but never stopped to visit the facility. Thus, I was very interested in seeing the new LightHouse at 1155 Market Street, a building I was familiar with because it housed several City agencies which I had visited.

I arrived a little early and explored the surrounding neighborhood. This node of Mid- Market Street is one of the more pleasant ones with a variety of activities taking place such as the Civic Center Farmers Market on Wednesdays, the fountain of the UN Plaza, the Orpheum Theatre, the Main Public Library, and just west of 1155 Market Street, a huge, unattractive housing development which is not yet completed and will have a row of stores along Market Street. Further west on the south side of Market Street is the historic Hotel Whitcomb, the new Dolby headquarters, and, beyond 9th Street, the Twitter headquarters in the old Art Deco Furniture Mart – all attracting people of different ages and backgrounds.

At 1155 Market Street, the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired occupies the upper three floors and offers a variety of state-of-the-art services to its clients in a rich and bright environment: on-site optometry exam rooms; a retail store selling adaptive technology devices; training rooms for hands-on learning of Braille and other skills; a training kitchen for learning low-vision cooking techniques; a large multi-purpose room for LightHouse and community events; administrative offices; audio and video recording facilities and eleven dorm rooms where up to twenty-nine clients can stay on-site for immersive training and community-building. The large windows allow fascinating views of the Civic Center with the dome of City Hall and downtown.

We learned that people tend to think that they get a Seeing Eye dog when their sight fails; however, training is required for the many adjustments to daily life. These services are provided in the LightHouse. The lower floors are rented by City Departments and supply rental income which, in addition to a generous bequest by Donald Sirkin and other donations, is used to pay for the 2015 acquisition of the LightHouse Building and its upkeep.

What impressed me the most were the results from the tremendous attention to detail. Whether it was the concrete floors in the hallways allowing a blind client to hear if somebody is approaching, the colorful felt covered panels in the meeting rooms reducing the noise, metal rings low near the floors to secure the leashes of guide dogs, hooks high up on the walls for hanging up the white guide canes when not needed during meetings, or art projects for tactile enjoyment everything was carefully planned. Experts in tactile graphic design even developed the building plans so that the project could be discussed in non-visual communication by everybody.

This tour was a visibly outstanding lesson in design. One reason was that Chris Downey, president of the LightHouse Board of Directors, is also an architect and a thoughtful consultant of environments for blind persons and is blind himself. He was present for the tour and explained the many design concerns brought forward during the renovation. He touched on the character of the space to be lively and bright and requiring some code changes to be negotiated with the City for the special needs of the blind users. Time was taken to specially design the stair handrails for a sturdy, welcoming handshake. Even the counter tops were notched to catch the guide canes when standing in front of the counters. It was such a wonderful lesson in how to go about designing, no matter what kind of a facility you might be planning for. As Mr. Downey said “many small caring design decisions accumulated to make this the lively facility we wanted it to be, as people often have misinformed ideas about how blind people feel in a space.”

Katy Perrings Hawkins of Mark Cavagnero Associates, project manager of this 13 million dollar renovation project, was the envy of us all. The tour highlighted the wonderful example of carefully designed architecture, where the collaboration with the client is very helpful in setting the standards for architectural excellence. She did an outstanding job. On leaving, Wendy Bertrand encouraged Katy to write up her experiences working on the project to share with the profession. Not only was the tour architecturally outstanding but it introduced many of us to social stigmas and myths about loss of sight. The lighting design in this project is unique.

We hope that readers of this article will appreciate the importance of scheduling a variety of OWADP events, highlighting different aspects of architecture and the design professions we work so closely with.

By Inge Horton (first part) in collaboration with Wendy Bertrand (second part).