Viewing page 1 of 2

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

E2 Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Sunday, August 10, 1986

Firm run by women tries to make a dent in macho profession

LEON WHITESON On Architecture

Despite the increasing number of women entering architecture, few make it to the top in this still very macho profession. The American Institute of Architects, the profession's main trade association, remains very much a buddy-buddy scene dominated by a conservative male clubbiness.
   Few design firms, nationally or locally, are headed by women. Few females figure among the current architectural superstars, apart perhaps from Denise Scott-Brown, Robert Venturi's wife and partner, Alison Sky of New YOrk's SITE, and Diane Balmori, Cesar Pelli's spouse.
   None of these women have reputations totally independent of their male professional partners. In this context, the establishment of a new architectural partnership owned and run by women is a major event. The recently announced association of West L.A. designers Margot Siegel, Norma Sklarek and Katherine Diamond as Siegel Sklarek Diamond Architects brings together the diverse talents, experience and histories of three remarkable people.
  "It's been our daydream to work together," says Siegel, president of the 16-member practice. "We'd been cooperating informally for a year or more before we formalized the relationship. Our sense is that we're different architects with varying backgrounds who complement one another splendidly."
   The partners' varied histories illustrate the challenges and frustrations women encounter in architecture. Siegel, 54, has had her own small office since 1972. Born in Germany and educated at New York's Pratt Institute, she came to Los Angeles in 1959. Her designs, as evidenced in such projects as the airport's generating plant building, are muscular yet lively, a product of her generation's modernist concern with strong formal expression emphasized by primary colors. 
   "I couldn't get to be a partner in the male-dominated office I worked in for 13 years," she says matter-of-factly. "So the only recourse was to plunge on my own, even though it was scary, and even though the scale of work I had a chance to do shrank drastically. In the big office I worked in, I ran major projects on campuses at UCLA, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara, as well as housing at military installations. But at least on my own I became my own master--or is it mistress?"
   Norma Sklarek's professional route was rather different. A native New Yorker and graduate of the Columbia School of Architecture, she was, in the '50s, the first black woman architect to be registered in the United States and, later, the first to become a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Much of her professional life was spent with the large, well-established firms of Gruen Associates and Welton Becket Associates, where she rose to the rank of vice president. She was married to the late architect Rolf Sklarek.
   "I never had problems at Gruen or Becket commanding men or women," she says. "I was project director on many large jobs, including hospitals, housing, hotels and the 26-story mixed-use Fox plaza in San Francisco. But now I really enjoy the relaxed intimacy that comes from working with other women in a less formally structured and fiercely competitive set-up."
   Katherine Diamond, at 32 the youngest partner, comes to the trio from yet another angle. Born and raised in Chicago, she studied architecture at Israel's Haifa Technion (Institute of Technology)

[[image]]
Margot Siegel, left, Katherine Diamond, center, and Norma Sklarek own Siegel Sklarek Diamond Architects, one of the few architectural firms run by women.

 and gained her first professional experience as an officer in the Israeli Air Force.
"I chose Israel in the early 1970s because U.S. campuses were too preoccupied with Vietnam activism and less concerned with issues of design," Diamond says. "it may seem paradoxical to run from Chicago to Haifa in search of stability, but Israel then, after the Six Day War, was very secure,"
In Los Angeles, Diamond became an associate with Benton park Candreva. She designed the award-winning Otto Nemetz office building in Hollywood, a striking composition of black glazed brick banded with red stripes. 
"Our strengths are complementary," Siegel says. "The way it works out, Kate does much of the designing, Norma handles project management and I administer the office. But these divisions aren't rigid. We like to discuss things. Most of all, we love having a good time together."
With a current portfolio of projects totaling $25 million, Siegel Sklarek Diamond is busy with a medical/commercial complex in Tarzana, the expansion of the Lawndale Civic Center, a 100-unit housing project for the elderly and disabled in Riverside, a student services center at UC Irvine, a home for boys in Woodland Hills, a child-care center at UCLA, a remodeling of the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center and a renovation of the Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Boulevard into a three-nightclub entertainment complex.
"Our design philosophy is to search out a client's underlying needs, ones they may not even consciously perceive," Diamond says. "Within the satisfaction of personal wants and commercial realities, we try to achieve creative design solutions that enhance the occupants' humanity and enjoyment."
The partnership's designs reflect a sense of cheerful strength free of any so-called "feminine" sentimentality or inappropriate softness. No fresh observer would tag their bright interiors and vigorous facades as the work of women, apart perhaps from a special sensitivity to color and detail, a feeling for people as users of architecture.
All but two members of the staff are women. "We have a couple of token males," Sklarek says. "We have no policy of employing mainly females, but it seems the word is out." Gesturing around the bright, pleasant office on Little Santa Monica Boulevard with its view of the Mormon Tabernacle, Sklarek suggests that women appreciate the ease of an organization untroubled by rampant male urges of status and ego.
"I think young women architects now have no sense of self-apology," Diamond says. "They have a really positive attitude, whether dealing with clients or contractors. They expect to be respected as professionals, no more, no less."
"But I repeat," Siegel says, "we like to enjoy ourselves here. We love to have a good time making good architecture."

  All but two members of the staff are women. "We have a couple of token males," Sklarek says. "We have no policy of employing mainly females, but it seems the word is out." Gesturing around the bright pleasant office on Little Santa Monica Boulevard with its view of the Mormon Tabernacle, Sklarek suggests that women appreciate the ease of an organization untroubled by rampant male urges of status and ego.
   "I think young women architects now have no sense of self-apology," Diamond says. "They have a really positive attitude, whether dealing with clients or contractors. They expect to be respected as professionals, no more, no less."
  "But I repeat," Siegel says, "we like to enjoy ourselves here. We love to have a good time marking good architecture,"

Transcription Notes:
completed first two paragraph [UPDATE] Just needs to be reviewed.