Phyllis Birkby

Phyllis Birkby
Phyllis Birkby with a film camera, date unknown.
Born	Noel Phyllis Birkby (1932-12-06)December 6, 1932 Nutley, New Jersey, United States
Died	April 13, 1994(1994-04-13) (aged 61) Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA
Education	University of North Carolina at Greensboro Cooper Union Yale University
Known for	Architecture

Phyllis Birkby (December 6, 1932 – April 13, 1994) was an American architect, feminist, filmmaker and educator.

Early life and education

Noel Phyllis Birkby was born in Nutley, New Jersey to Harold S. and Alice Green Birkby. As a child she began making drawings of cities and towns, proceeding to build miniature towns in her mother's garden. With an early interest in architecture, she expressed interest in pursuing it by age 16. However, her career counselors told her that it was a study for men, and that women did not become architects. In 1950 she entered the Women's College of the University of North Carolina to study fine art. In college she was described as a rabble rouser and it was during this time when she began to identify as bisexual. Her senior year she was expelled for an incident stemming from beer drinking, however, Birkby believed she was expelled due to publicly expressing her love for a classmate: "I wasn't hiding my love for another woman, didn't think there was anything wrong with it." Struggles with her sexuality would cause her a "numbing misery" and she would return to New Jersey briefly before moving to New York City.^[1]

In New York, she worked as a technical illustrator and hanging out in the bar scene. In 1955 she went to Mexico with the American Friends Service Committee to work on development projects with the Otomi people. Within one year she had returned to New York. In 1958, she met a woman architect who encouraged her to pursue the profession. For five years Birkby took night classes in architecture at Cooper Union and worked for architects Henry L. Horowitz and Seth Hiller. In 1963 she received her certificate in architecture. Working primarily as a secretary, she left New York to attend graduate school at Yale University. At Yale, Birkby was one of six women in a student body of about 200. This gender gap forced Birkby to "rise above the female role" to prove her capability to succeed within her program and show herself as being as "good or better than the men." In 1966 she completed her Masters of Architecture.^[1]

Professional career

"I have not by any means been a linear oriented professional person." — Phyllis Birkby^[1]

After graduating from Yale, Birkby went on to work as a designer for Davis Brody and Associates, from 1966 until 1972. During this time, she helped to design and oversee construction of Waterside Houses, a residential neighborhood on the Hudson River, and the Long Island University Library Learning Center. By 1972 she would have her own private practice, occasionally partnering with other firms. Her worked varied, often focusing on low-income housing and community residences for those with medical needs, as well as the occasional private residence or artist studio. In 1973, Birkby went to Bien Hoa, Vietnam with staff from the firm Dober, Paddock & Upton to plan the reconstruction of the Thu Duc Polytechnic University. In the late 1970s, she worked in California with Gary Scherquist and Roland Tso. Returning to New York in the early 1980s, she then worked with the Gruzen Partnership and Lloyd Goldfarb.^[1]

In the early 1970s she taught architectural design classes at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture and City College of New York. While working in California in the late 1970s she taught architectural and environmental design courses at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, California State Polytechnic and the University of Southern California. Upon returning to New York in the 1980s she taught building construction, fundamentals and architectural design at the New York Institute of Technology. Birkby described her teaching as "environmental activism", bringing together theories and ideas behind environmentalism with architectural, as per a course she took with Serge Chermayeff while at Yale. She utilized techniques such as "buglisting" in her teaching, a way of making lists about annoying aspects of environments, conceptual blockbusting, and fantasy projection. She used these techniques to examine the "social implications of building form" and to encourage her students to focus specifically on those using the spaces they designed.^[1]

Sexuality and feminism

With professional success came Birkby's struggles with living a closeted life as a bisexual. Following graduate school, she sunk into a deep depression. During the late 1960s, she was introduced to feminism, but ignored it, believing it was "mostly about housewives in the suburbs." In May 1970, her lover returned from the Second Congress to United Women and shared her experience with Birkby. At this event, the lesbian feminist group called Lavender Menace, disrupted Congress presenting on discrimination against lesbians within the women's movement. This story caused Birkby to embrace the feminist movement. She began identifying as a lesbian and joined CR Group One, a lesbian group consisting of theorists and writers such as Kate Millett, Sidney Abbott, Barbara Love and Alma Routsong. By 1972 she decided to defy the male dominated world of architecture; she quit her job with David Brody, came out as being gay, and began teaching and started her own private practice. She also started to explore ways to document the women's movement culture by creating films, photographs, oral histories, and an archive of posters, manifestos, clippings and memorabilia.^[1]

Birkby began incorporating feminist theory into her architectural work and teaching. In 1973 she began exploring ways to bring women's perspectives architecture. She began a series of environmental fantasy workshops with women from throughout the country, including Leslie Kanes Weisman. These workshops had women imagining "their ideal living environment by abandoning all constraints and preconceptions." Weisman and Birkby would eventually publish about their research on feminist fantasy architecture in the mid 1970s. After this project, Birkby researched women's vernacular architecture. She visited communities and structures build by women who were not trained as architects or builders, researching the connection between women's fantasies and the actual forms they created.^[1]

In 1972 Birkby was the founding member of the Alliance of Women in Architecture in New York and participated in the beginnings of the Archive of Women in Architecture. In 1974 she co-founded, with Katrin Adam, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Bobbie Sue Hood, Marie I. Kennedy, Joan Forrester Sprague and Leslie Kanes Weisman, the Women's School of Planning and Architecture. The school was a summer school for women involved in environmental design.^[1]

Later life and legacy

As the movement began to slowdown in the late 1970s, Birkby became worn out from her participation. She began to struggle economically in the 1980s economic and political realities, and had to move her energy from feminism to work, wearing herself out in the process. Her teaching positions lessened, the Women's School of Planning and Architecture ended, her research remained unpublished, and her private practice work lessened and became personally unsatisfying. During this time she would also be diagnosed with breast cancer. During the last few months of her life, a group of friends from the early years of the women's movement formed the Sisters of Birkby, coming together to care for Birkby during her final days. On April 13, 1994, she died of cancer in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.^[1]

Following her death in 1994, the Noel Phyllis Birkby Papers were bequeathed to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.^[2]

Further reading

• Birkby, Phyllis. Amazon Expedition: Lesbian Feminist Anthology. Sebastopol: Times Change Press (1978). ISBN 0-87810-526-3.

References