Phyllis Birkby

Phyllis Birkby
Birkby in a stained glass room of her design at 'the farm', a lesbian poet's retreat center.
Born	Noel Phyllis Birkby (1932-12-16)December 16, 1932 Nutley, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	April 13, 1994(1994-04-13) (aged 61) Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S.
Education	University of North Carolina at Greensboro Cooper Union Yale University

Noel Phyllis Birkby (December 6, 1932 – April 13, 1994) was an American

I have not by any means been a linear oriented professional person.

— Phyllis Birkby[1]

Birkby enrolled in graduate school at

On September 16, 1968, Birkby earned an architecture license in New York state.[6] From 1966 to 1972, she was worked for the firm of Davis Brody and Associates, (later renamed Davis Brody Bond), during which time she contributed architecture services to many notable projects, including a new residential high-rise neighborhood on the Hudson River in Manhattan called Waterside Plaza, a Library complex at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus; New York City urban renewal projects in the South Bronx; Amethyst House, a women's residence commissioned by Bayley Seton Hospital, in Staten Island; and a recreational facility at Hampshire College.^[7][8]

Between 1968 and 1973, Birkby taught architectural design as a member of the faculty of the

Returning to New York in the early 1980s, Birkby worked for Gruzen and Partners (later renamed Gruzen Sampton), from 1973 to 1981, and the architect Lloyd Goldfarb.[1] Throughout the 1980s, Birkby taught building construction, design fundamentals, and architectural design at New York Institute of Technology.^[14]

Together with

Beginning in 1971, Birkby became active in professional organizations for women in architecture and urban planning.[19] Birkby also began documenting the women's movement in film, photography, oral history, and collected posters, manifestos, clippings, and memorabilia.^[20] After resigning from Davis Brody Associates, and coming out as a gay woman, Birkby opened her own private architecture practice and taught architecture design. In 1973, Birkby began to explore feminist theory in the context of contemporary architecture and teaching practices, and for example, she led a series of "environmental fantasy" workshops throughout the country, and Europe, to encourage women to imagine "their ideal living environment by abandoning all constraints and preconceptions."

These workshops were created with the intention to contrast the term Birkby coined, "patritecture" or the architecture of the patriarchy. Systems of domination are in place in the architecture of all buildings.^[21] Birkby wrote often about how even the architecture of structures are about power and domination over marginalized groups, especially women. In a 1981 article for Ms. Magazine, Birky wrote, "I am troubled that no matter how much rhetoric is expounded about equal rights and the full humanity of women, if the physical world we build does not reflect this, we speak in empty phrases."^[22] Her comparison goes as far as to say that the accommodation for women in physical spaces is just as important as physical violence against women. It is because of this that she started holding workshops, to have women explore spaces created by women for women.^[22] Birkby researched vernacular architectural created by women, some of which she later published.

In 1974, The New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable published the American Institute of Architects (AIA)'s "appalling" statistics on national membership: 24,000 men and 300 women. By then, Birkby had become active in the feminist movement, defining herself as a lesbian, and joined "CR One," a Consciousness raising group composed of dynamic and radical theorists and writers, such as Kate Millett, Sidney Abbott, Barbara Love and Alma Routsong. As a member of "CR One," Birkby contributed to visible, activist projects, such as the homesteading a building at 330 East 5th Street, in the East Village section of Manhattan, to establish a temporary residence for women.^[23] That same year, Birkby joined forces with other trailblazing women architects, such as Judith Edelman, to create the Alliance of Women in Architecture in New York. A firebrand advocate, Edelman challenged the 1974 AIA national convention with the objectionable fact that women had only represented 1.2 percent of American registered architects.^[24]

An Architecture Symposium held at

Founded in 1974, the Women's School of Planning and Architecture (WSPA) was established as a private, non-profit corporation, to provide an alternative, active learning experiences for women in the environmental and design fields, including architecture, planning, urban design, housing, neighborhood development, and construction, and co-founders Katrin Adam, Noel Phyllis Birkby, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Bobbie Sue Hood, Marie Kennedy, Joan Forrester Sprague, and Leslie Kanes Weisman endeavored to organize women to focus on "shared common goals and interest not being met within the existing professional contexts." A decade ahead of the country's Active learning initiatives, WSPA was established as a nontraditional, non-hierarchical, participatory, experiential education program, in which participants were "equally responsible and equally capable of making a contribution."^[27] WSPA was open to any woman interested in the built environment, regardless of academic background or training. Birkby described WSPA in the essay entitled "Herspace" (1981), published in the Heresies issue "Making Room: Women and Architecture."^[28] The title of Birkby's essay expands upon the term "Herstory" used during the 1970s women's movement to emphasize the need to reclaim and document women's place in "His-story" - the documentation of the past by men about the accomplishments of men.^{[29] [30]}

WSPA encouraged personal, professional, and social growth and change. Two-week summer sessions took place at

Following Birkby's death in 1994, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, hosted a two-day exhibition entitled "'Amazonian Activity': a Celebration of the Life of Noel Phyllis Birkby" (1997) on the occasion of the opening of the Noel Phyllis Birkby Papers, bequeathed to the Sophia Smith Collection.^[32] Sherrill Redmon, collections director, organized the event. A symposium entitled "Radical Feminism and Lesbian Culture in the 1970s and Today" included women's movement activists: Sidney Abbott, coauthor of "Sappho Was a Right-On Woman"; Bertha Harris, author of "Lover"; Kate Millett, author of "Sexual Politics"; and Alma Routsong, author of Patience and Sarah, published under pen name Isabel Miller.

Throughout the 1970s to 1990s, Birkby produced photographs, audio and video recordings, and over 150 silent films on the

While living in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, Birkby had relationships with various artists and writers, including Yvonne Jacquette, Bertha Harris, Alberta Ming-Chi Wang, Louise Fishman, and Frederica Leser.^[3]

Further reading

• Nancy Allen. (1980) The Women's School of Planning and Architecture. Bellingham, Washington: Huxley College of Environmental Studies.
• Phyllis Birkby (Ed.) (1987) Amazon Expedition: Lesbian Feminist Anthology. Washington, New Jersey: Times Change Press.
  ISBN 0-87810-526-3
  .
• Noel Phyllis Birkby and Leslie Kanes Weisman. "Women's Fantasy Environment: Notes on a Project in Process." Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, Number 2 (May, 1977), pages 116 - 117.
• Leslie Kanes Weisman. (1985) "The Women's School of Planning and Architecture," in Brunch, C. and Pollack, S. (Eds.), Learning Our Way: Essays in Feminist Education. Crossing Press: Trumansburg, New York.

External links

• Phyllis Birkby Papers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections

References