The anotHERVIEWture award, which was first launched in 2022, is being organised by the Austrian Federal Chamber of Architects and Chartered Engineering Consultants – initiated by the committee “Ziviltechnikerinnen Österreichs” (female architects and civil engineers of Austria) – for the second time. The award is exclusive to women and was developed to highlight excellent achievements of women working in architecture and civil engineering and increase the visibility of female contributions to building culture. It is an opportunity to bring forth role models for students of architecture and civil engineering and inspire the male-dominated industry towards equality and diversity.

Just like 2022, participants can register their projects under one of the four categories.

• Category I: Female Architect of the Year
• Category II: Emerging Female Architect of the Year
• Category III: National/International Female Engineering Achievement of the Year
• Category IV: International Female Architect of the Year

The first two categories are reserved for Austrian female architects, while categories 3 and 4 are open to all nationalities, the fourth excluding Austrian architects.

Submissions to the four categories are accepted from March 31^st until June 30^th 2024. Until then, it is possible to register under the website’s “WOMEN” community, which is a prerequisite to participation. The anotHERVIEWture WOMEN Community is intended to serve as a digital library for female professionals to exhibit their work.

The all-female jury will assess the submitted projects and evaluate each category for fitting nominees and winners. The award ceremony will then be held in Vienna on October 24, 2024.

This year’s award is under honorary patronage by Doris Schmidauer, Austrian consultant and motivator, and supported by political figures of Austria including members of the European Parliament.

To find out more, please visit https://www.anotherviewture.at/.

Over the past years, the Architects Council of Europe has actively taken measures to combat gender inequality in Architecture with several implementations: It established a Women in Architecture taskforce in 2018, which developed strategies that would help combat gender balance gaps. This taskforce developed a Gender Policy Statement, underlining the importance of diversity in building culture. Now, the ACE has developed this booklet with the support of Creative Europe and stands as a manual guide to achieving a more gender-sensible approach to architecture.

The included set of Actions show progressive ways of thinking, acting and changing for both women and men. These seek to make everyday life more inclusive and diverse and are not exclusive to the field of architecture.

The Benefits show arguments in favour of diversifying ones surroundings.

The chapter of Culture then goes on to present some key voices of astounding women in architecture from three different countries (Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands). Eva M Alcarez Isidro, one of the speakers joined by Carlos J. Gomez Alfonso, were also key figures in realising the YesWePlan! Project.

You can access the manual here.

This year, four prizes were awarded to outstanding architects and their projects.

• The prize for Young Woman Architect 2023: Victoria MIGLIORE
• The original Work Prize 2023: Ludovica DI FALCO
• The Woman Architects Prize 2023: Françoise N’Thépé
• The International Woman Architect 2023 Prize: Dikkie SCIPIO

The initiator of the award, Catherine Guyot, was an important figure in the establishment of the YesWePlan! project, she is a Femmes Architectes jury member. The jury panel was again made entirely of women.

Find out more on this year’s prize on the Femmes Architectes website.

The first interview aims to give general insights on her career as an Architect as she discusses what inspires her, presents recent challenges for Women in Architecture and expands on the role of sustainability in her project implementations.

One of the discussion points revolves around the disproportionate disparity between women and men in leading positions and university classrooms of architecture institutions. This part of the interview touches on the Country Situation Reports in the YesWePlan Compendium 4 in 1, which concludes that, though a higher percentage of graduates of architecture are female, leading positions in companies are still largely carried out by men. Anni Laurila introduces similar findings for Finland, expanding this research to other parts of Europe. The same can be said for her critique of the social and cultural responsibilities Women Architects carry, in particular childcaring and household work, which makes it hard for many Women in Architecture to find a sufficient work-life balance. These working conditions are also presented in the YesWePlan! Recommendations for employers and the professional chambers and organisations. These structural inequalities may be reduced through active awareness-raising to the disparity as well as more flexible working conditions for both men and women, which would allow more levelled working environments for all genders.

The second interview focuses on her award-winning Lielahti master plan, which transforms a part of the City of Tampere, Finland, into a more sustainable and liveable city step-by-step until 2040. She presents the project’s goals and its realisation in detail, particularly emphasising the role of sustainability, inclusivity and accessibility of the project. She acknowledges that architecture and design competitions can greatly demonstrate the diversity of the building sector and stresses that more Women should take part in these competitions on a larger basis.

The EFCA Future Leaders Competition is being held in 2023, it is still possible to apply until the end of March. Find out more here.

Access the full interviews through this webpage, links to the interviews themselves can be found below.

Eurocrades (Council of European Professional & Managerial Staff) and CEPLIS (European Council of Liberal Professions) co-hosted a panel discussion on March 2^nd to evaluate successes in gender equality in the past year and discuss further steps needed. The event was split into two panels by experts in gender equality and the discussions managed to set a focus on reflecting and addressing questions on transition and tangible changes that can be fulfilled.

The two panels consisted of gender equality and social inclusion specialists including Gaetano Stella (CEPLIS), Nayla Glaise (President, Eurocadres), Konstantina Vardaramatou (Secretary General, European Women’s Lobby), Stecy Yghemonos (Executive Director, Eurocarers) Nadia Hadad (European Disability Forum) as well as MEP’s and representatives of the European Economic and Social Committee) demonstrating willingness to understand and lead on creating an inclusive environment that would be looking ahead to the changes needed to bridge the existing gap between the sexes.

Women are under-represented in many professional occupations. They are also underpaid, often passed for promotions and faced with everyday sexism. Architecture and Civil Engineering are both male-dominated fields. While times are slowly changing, some firms have made a deliberate effort to make their offices more representative of society as a whole by promoting gender equality.

Initiatives for change were seen as a result from the YesWePlan! Project, particularly the Best Practice Examples. The project outcomes show that, while some regions have achieved gender equality more than others, there is a lot to be done within the European Union. Examples for these proposed measures can be found in the YesWePlan! Recommendations.

More information on the event can be found on the Eurocrades website.

On this year’s International Women’s Day, we would like to present various campaigns and events that discuss gender equality and help recognise the many excellent female professionals in Architecture and Civil Engineering.

Today, look out for the Hashtags #IngéEgalité (for French speakers) and #EqualityinEngineering in order to get involved with a campaign by Syntec-Ingénierie on Twitter and other social media platforms. This French representative federation has over 400 members and guides engineering companies for various issues and business development. Their campaign helps highlight projects, organisations and events that focus on Women in the engineering community.

On 1^st March, the European Parliament met in Brussels to discuss how the energy crisis is affecting Women in particular with speeches by exemplary experts and further examine measures in order to combat inequality in this situation particularly. In his introductory speech, Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee Chair Robert Biedro? stressed that measures need to be put in place as the European Union is still 60 years away from gender equality. He called for improvements in abortion and freedom laws that are currently missing in many EU countries as well as further regulations to advance labour protection, the education system and social positions of Women. He expanded these demands to other vulnerable groups that are affected by structural inequalities and closed with an eager will to take action in these areas and therefore protect and enhance Women’s rights in the European Union.

The full transcript of his speech is available here, while the inter-parliamentary meeting can be rewatched under this link.

The YesWePlan! project parnters from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), namely Eva M Álvarez and Carlos J. Gómez, have been working on editing books on women in architecture. The first being a book on Brazilian/Italian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi, who designed and planned many buildings in Brazil and also realised her responsibility as an architect by dedicating a lot of her work to affordable housing. The book carries the title ‘Lina Bo Bardi en Bahia’ and is a collection of pictures and designs by author Carla Zollinger in Spanish.

The UPV partners have been realising many more projects on gender equality in architecture in Spain, more information will be given once the books are available for sale and further information on their upcoming events is released. We recommend to stay updated with the YesWePlan! Twitter Account.

For the third time, the European Commission is organising the New European Bauhaus Prizes. These continuously aim at highlighting spectacular projects as well as innovative concepts that promote aesthetics, sustainability and inclusivity. The NEB Prizes are particularly representative of young architects and women architects, as the projects are evaluated by a professional team of assessors.

The Call for this round of the Bauhaus Prizes have now been opened. Applications are taken from the four different categories:

• Reconnecting with nature
• Regaining a sense of belonging
• Prioritising the places that need it the most
• Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life-cycle thinking

Each of the four categories has separate competitions for different groups of applications:

• New European Bauhaus Champions: For completed projects
• New European Bauhaus Rising Stars: For ideas and concepts by young talents under 30
• New European Bauhaus Education Champions: For projects and initiatives focussed on education and learning

The winners of the categories within their competition each receives EUR 30.000 (or EUR 14.000 for Rising Stars) as well as a communication package from the European.

The submission deadline is on 31 January at 19:00 CET, 2023.

For this year’s round, the West Balkan States may apply with all European Member States.

Visit the prizes platform here.

The European Commission has also called for experts to evaluate the submissions. It is important that the panel of judges and assessors is deeply represented by female architects in order to combat any biases.

Applications can be submitted until December 2022, the European Commission is looking for experts on the categories sustainability, aesthetics and quality of experience as well as inclusiveness. Experts can also apply with a background of education.

For further details for assessors please see the Call for expression of interest for external experts and contract template. You can apply here.

YesWePlan! has listed the Femmes Architectes Award as a Best Practice Example, as this prize realises some of the essential recommendations put out with the YesWePlan! 4 in 1 Compendium. It even inspired the launch of the Austrian equivalent, the AnotHER VIEWture Award, which was held in Vienna in October of 2022 for the first time (click here to view our article on the AnotHER VIEWture Award ceremony).

The four categories (prize for young female architect, prize for an original work by a woman architect, overall prize for a woman architect as well as an award for an international female architect) all produce extraordinary winners and give light to their projects.

The winners of the individual categories were chosen by an all-female jury based on different categories. These were discussed and evaluated individually, giving each nomination particular care and attention. One jury member is Catherine Guyot, who is secretary general of the organising chamber ARHVA and president of the jury and played a vital role bringing the award to life and also participated in YesWePlan! as a project partner.

The winners of the Femmes Architectes Award are:

Christine Vega Iclesias as Young Woman Architect of 2022
Julie Degand for her project “Salle polyvalente et culturelle Sodbury” as original work by a woman architect in 2022
Rozana Montiel from Mexico as International Woman Architect of 2022
Chrystelle Avenier as Woman Architect of the Year

For more information, please visit the Femmes Architectes website.