Beyond the Built Environment

The Beyond the Built Environment initiative seeks to engage with communities through architecture, advocating for equitable, reflectively diverse environments.

It was founded by Pascale Sablan, AIA – who is the 315th black female architect to receive licensure in the United States. A core goal of Beyond the Built Environment is to profile and raise aware of 250 diverse designers through the SAY IT LOUD Exhibitions series, held at a number of spaces and galleries internationally including in Georgia, Illinois, New York, in London, UK and in the visitors center of the UN.

We were delighted to be asked to share work by Zoë Berman, with the Reading Retreat designed with architect Benedetta Rogers, being featured. The London leg of the Beyond the Built Environment exhibition was held at the RIBA, London. Zoë was interviewed  about practice and the campaigning work of Part W. 

Beyond the Built Environment London exhibition

Beyond the Built Environment contributors

“I enjoy the collective effort and knowledge sharing that happens on projects, and within the education and teaching I am involved in.” 

Breaking Ground

Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women was an evening talk held at the Barbican Centre, London as part of the Architecture Foundation’s 2019 Architecture on Stage programme.

Dr. Jane Hall, author of Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women (Phaidon, September 2019), led a panel discussion with practice director Zoë

Berman and Alisha Morenike Fisher of Black Females in Architecture.

The conversation addressed questions such as ‘why is gender activism necessary?’, and debated the issues facing women architects today.

Zoë was invited to speak in her capacity as Founder of Part W, an action group of women working across architecture and design, infrastructure and construction who campaign for gender parity across the built environment.

Breaking Ground at The Barbican

“The conversation addressed questions such as ‘why is gender activism necessary?’, and debated the issues facing women architects today.” The Barbican Centre

Women in Architecture

Architecture Today recorded and published a conversation between practice director Zoë Berman, and architect Sarah Wigglesworth, Director of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects. Sarah is a fellow member of Part W, an action group founded by Zoë and others. Together the collective, who all work in the built environment sector, campaign for gender equity within the industry.

 In the conversation, Zoë and Sarah chat about the founding of Part W, what it has achieved since its formation, and the challenges facing women in architecture today.

Read the full article Women in Architecture via Architecture Today here 

Sarah Wigglesworth and Zoë Berman
Photograph by Ivan Jones

First anniversary meeting of Part W, an action group of women campaigning for gender parity across the built environment, founded by Zoë Berman in 2018 and is co-chaired with Alice Brownfield. Our first campaign, conducted through events and social media, drew attention to the very small number of women recognised by international architectural awards and medals.
Photographs by Sarah Akigbogun

“My biggest goal in architecture is to change the value system behind what we think is good and bad … We’re aligned on the idea that it needs to be very inclusive – intersectionality being the big word, where feminism intersects with other issues, like race, class or money. ”

Sarah Wigglesworth

 

Woman’s Hour BBC Radio 4

On the eve of the announcement for the RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture 2019, Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 featured a live discussion about Women and Architecture. Zoë Berman joined in this discussion with Annalie Riches, co-director of Mikhail Riches architects.

Zoë and Annalie discussed with presenter Jane Garvey their respective work in architecture, talking about social housing, designing for families and the importance of equitable place making.

The invitation to talk followed a campaign spearheaded by Part W, a gender equity action group that Zoë established with a core collective of fellow professionals. Part W's first public campaign challenged the fact that the RIBA Royal Gold Medal had, since 1848, been granted to just 1 woman in her own right. The campaign drew attention to and celebrated the work of female designers through history. More information about the campaign can be founded in the following Dezeen article.

The BBC Radio 4 programme can be listed to again here

Women and Architecture - BBC Woman’s Hour

RIBA Silver President's Medal

We are delighted that the ‘Rethinking Recycling: A Crafting Network’  project by Year 3 architecture student Lili Wagner has been nominated for the RIBA Part 1 Silver President’s Medal 2019. 

Lili’s project sought to challenge the dominant tendency for maker spaces to be located at the far edges of cities, separated from the day to day life of an urban centre. The scheme instead sought to bring in to the city industrial production to create a hybrid building that was part smelting yard, part visitors centre. The project suggests large scale production, individual maker units and a route through the heart of the workshops - making visually accessible to the public, the processes of material regeneration. 

The project sought to foster a sustainable circular system for both the reuse of metal, and for the sharing of specialist knowledge to up-skill people. 

An open, flexible structure aims to create porosity through the site, to create a permeable and ambiguous border between scales of materials, people and infrastructure. 

The project was developed within Unit 7 at the Welsh School of Architecture, tutored by Zoë Berman. 

The project was showcased as part of the RIBA President’s Medal touring exhibition and can be seen here

“The public route through, seeks to apply ideas of urban use and scale with sociologist Richard Sennett’s ideas of the Open City as a place for unexpected encounters.” Lili Wagner 

Manifestos

Aligned with the London Festival of Architecture 2019, the Design Museum, London hosted an evening debate titled Manifestos: Architecture for a New Generation , bringing together a group of emerging voices in architecture. Established practitioners were invited to nominate groups and individuals who are considered to be expanding the parameters of what architecture can be. Architect Peter Barber nominated Part W to attend. Zoë Berman and Yẹmí Àlàdérun together spoke on behalf of Part W.

Fellow speakers included Alpa Depani, Stephanie Edwards, Joseph Henry, Chris Hildrey, RESOLVE, Neba Sere, Holy Fool Studio, Pricegore and Space Popular. In a collective discussion the panel set out how they individually and in their collectives are responding to various challenges faced by young people in London.

“ Responding to these conditions, a new generation of architecture voices are proposing alternative visions for London’s urban landscape. These manifestos prioritise collaboration, dialogue, learning and action in response to the real material and social conditions of a city in flux. They are often steered by collectives over individuals focused on public organisation and democratisation.” Design Museum, 2019" 

The event marked London Festival of Architecture and was covered by Monocle

The Design Museum - Manifestos: Architecture for a New Generation

“These manifestos prioritise collaboration, dialogue, learning and action in response to the real material and social conditions of a city in flux. ” The Design Museum

I’m So Bored With ...

Fourth Space invited Zoë to speak at their Negroni talk #9, titled I’m So Bored With the RIBA: Irrelevance Institutionalised?

The talk was based upon the notion that the RIBA, as a touchstone of British architecture, should be listening to valid criticisms from its members and those outside.

Helen Parton, journalist Chaired the discussion, with panel Elsie Owusu OBE, RIBA Council National, Russell Curtis, RCka, Stephanie Edwards, Urban Symbiotics/ RIBA Londo and Zoë Berman Studio Berman/ Part W Collective.

The discussion considered the premise "Everyone loves taking a swipe at the RIBA. Either it's out of date, too bureaucratic, too ineffective, too expensive, too London centric and lacking diversity or all of the above. Yet with 44,000 members, the RIBA falls into the same difficulty as other British institutions such as the BBC and NHS and being so large that it's an impossible task to keep everyone happy... But as a touchstone of British architecture surely it should be listening to valid criticisms from members and those outside?"

The event was hosted at Ombra, London.

Negroni talk #9 at Fourth Space

Elsie Owusu, panellist discussion

Reading Retreat - AJ Small Projects Awards

The Reading Retreat, a quiet area of sanctuary within the playground of Stoneydown Park Primary School, co-designed by Zoë Berman of Studio Berman and Bennedetta Rogers of Studio ROST, was shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects 2019. 

The award showcases schemes built for £250,00 or less; the Reading Retreat cost £20,000 and was selected for its ‘clever use of colour to accent space’ and ‘canny’ use of low-cost materials.

You can read about all of the 20 contending projects for the AJ Small Projects award here and a short film, made with architectural photographer and filmmaker Jim Stephenson can be seen here.

Architecture Today - Reading Retreat

The Reading Retreat, co-designed with Benedetta Rogers of Studio ROST, was featured in Architecture Today. The article discusses the projects use of low-cost, readily available materials, bright colours, and cost-effective construction methods.

Read the full article here

 “The project connects local skills and knowledge, and is unusual in having been led by an almost wholly female team. It's been a pleasure for us to work with the client Kirsty O’Brien, structural engineer FionaCobb and fabricators Christina French, Lua Garcia and maker Toby Poolman. It is unusual to work on a female-lead project such as this, which positively offers an important example to young people in a school that is highly diverse and supports pupils from a range of backgrounds”.

The Birds Nest on BBC's CountryFile

The Birds Nest was constructed by a group of participants as part of the Studio in the Woods annual summer design and make workshop. The intervention - part sculpture, part practicable seating enclosure, was fabricated under the tutorage of Shin Egashira and Zoë Berman. 

The intervention was created out of leftover waste oak, felled from woodland and left unused - to create a form that celebrated timber that is otherwise deemed ‘not valuable’. Working with the unwanted branches brought a ‘nose to tail’ attitude to the work, weaving the scraps - from medium sized trunks to thin twigs - into a structure that made use of this waste wood. 

The structure was built on Ruskin Land in the oak woodland of the Wyre Forest.

The Birds Nest was visited by BBC’s CountryFile and featured on the Worcestershire episode, that explored whether enough is being done to save the great British Oak tree from disease and parasitic pests. 

BBC CountryFile - filming at the Wyre Forest