?BIG BOYS&GIRL? An Instagram post shared by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels over the weekend is generating an impassioned conversation in the comment section about gender in architecture. The photo, embedded below, depicts the 12 partners at Bjarke Ingels Group posing in the courtyard of Via 57 West, the firm?s tetrahedron-shaped, skyline-altering residential complex in New York City. Notably, all the partners are men, except for CEO Sheela Maini Søgaard, who has been with the firm since 2008 and describes BIG?s culture, in a 2015 interview, as ?a true meritocracy.? Besides the head-to-toe black garb stereotype of architects, the image also seems to reinforce another known problem in the industry: the underrepresentation of women.
BIG BOYS&GIRL A post shared by Bjarke ingels (@bjarkeingels) on Mar 24, 2017 at 7:05pm PDT

According to the American Institute of Architects, some 45 percent of architecture school graduates are women, but only 17 percent of principals and partners in AIA firms are women. The past, present, and future of this attrition of women in the profession is also the subject of a 2016 book, frankly titled Where Are the Woman Architects" More recently, a Curbed investigation on diversity in architecture shines a light on how the gender gap plays out in the field.
?If you're a woman, you have to prove that you know what you know. The tendency to dismiss you or call you a decorator is very, very strong,? Suchi Reddi, founding pr...