RIBA Female Power Part 2

As I was saying...

The 5 panelists at Tuesday night's event -  Alison Brooks (Alison Brooks Architects), Deborah Saunt (DSDHA), Kathryn Firth (Chief of Design, Olympic Park Legacy Company),Liza Fior (muf architecture/ art) and Anna Gagliano (Aedas) - as well as Angela Brady herself, the RIBA President and Christine Murray, AJ Editor, were all fascinating to listen to.  It made me wish I had had more opportunities to hear the thoughts and ideas of women in the building industry before now. 

Each speaker was asked to address 3 questions:
1. What is the secret of her success?
2. What is her biggest achievement?
3. Where will women be in the architecture profession in 20 years time?

Although there was a reluctance to connect any female qualities to how they worked or why they were successful, I started scribbling "this is female power" beside my notes at things that struck a chord with me... here they are:

• inviting collaboration
• learning not to apologise
• sharing the credit for your success
• looking at the evolving social condition
• valuing the banal and the everyday life
• urbanism is not about making objects
• ability to jump between scales from the minute to the masterplan
• adapting
• being open and honest
• keeping your sense of humour

...and after all of that, perhaps the speaker I found most exciting was Anna Gagliano from Aedas.  She was the only one who dared to fully address the question of where women in architecture will be in 20 years time.  Her expertise is communication technology, what's working, what's coming next and how work practises are changing because of it.  The future for women, she said is mobile.  We will work where and when we want.  We will form networks of collaboration, communication and knowledge sharing.  We will form interdisciplinary groups to carry out projects, changing and re-forming to suit us and the work we do.  Does this sound familiar?  Does this sound like something Cambridge Women in Construction is doing? could do? will do?
 
We are already a force, a power, re-enforcing each other...we are the future