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

Noel 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 made drawings of cities and towns, and miniature three-dimensional environments in her mother's garden. Her early fascination in architecture led her to expressed interest in pursuing the profession by age 16. However, career counselors told her that architecture was a field of study for men, and women did not become architects. In 1950, she entered the Women's College of the University of North Carolina to study fine art. At college, she was considered a rabble rouser and began to identify as bisexual. She was expelled in her senior year purportedly for an incident involving the drinking beer; however, Birkby believed it was due to her publicly expression her love for a classmate: "I wasn't hiding my love for another woman, didn't think there was anything wrong with it." Struggle with sexuality would later cause her a "numbing misery," and she would return to New Jersey briefly before moving to New York City.

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 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 School of Architecture. At Yale University, 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 earned her Masters of Architecture.

Professional career

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

After graduating from Yale, Birkby worked as a designer for Davis Brody and Associates, from 1966-1972. During this time, she helped design and oversee construction of Waterside Plaza , a residential neighborhood on the Hudson River in Manhattan and Long Island University Library Learning Center. By 1972, she would have her own private architecture practice, occasionally partnering with another firm. Her worked varied from low-income housing and community residences for those with medical needs to an 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 worked with the Gruzen Partnership and Lloyd Goldfarb.

In the early 1970s, she taught architectural design at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture and City College of New York. While working in California in the late 1970s, she taught architecture and environmental design at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, California State Polytechnic and University of Southern California. Upon returning to New York in the 1980s, she taught building construction, design fundamentals and architectural design at the New York Institute of Technology. Birkby described her teaching in terms of "environmental activism", bringing together environmentalism and architectural in a manner in which she had learned from her Professor Serge Chermayeff at Yale. She utilized teaching techniques such as "bug-listing," a way of denoting the frustrating aspects of environments, conceptual blockbusting, and fantasy projection to examine "social implications of building form" and encourage students to focus on those concepts when designing spaces.

Sexuality and feminism

With professional success came Birkby's struggles to live a closeted life as a bisexual woman. Following graduate school, she suffered from depression. During the late 1960s, she was introduced to feminism, but believed it was "mostly about housewives in the suburbs." In May 1970, her lover returned from the Second Congress to United Women to share her experience with Birkby. At the event, the lesbian feminist group called Lavender Menace disrupted Congress to object to the discrimination of lesbians in the women's movement. The story led 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, quit her job at David Brody Associates, and "came out" as a gay woman. Birkby began teaching and opened her own private architecture practice. She also began exploring ways to document the culture of the women's movement in film, photograph, oral history, and in collected posters, manifestos, clippings and memorabilia.

Birkby incorporated feminist theory into architectural design and teaching. In 1973, she began exploring ways to bring the perspective of women to architecture. She led a series of environmental fantasy workshops with women throughout the country, including Leslie Kanes Weisman. These workshops invited women to imagine "their ideal living environment by abandoning all constraints and preconceptions." Weisman and Birkby would eventually publish their research on feminist fantasy architecture in the mid-1970s. After that project, Birkby researched women's vernacular architecture. She visited communities and structures created by women untrained as architects or builders to research the connections between women's fantasies and actual built forms.

In 1972 Birkby was the founding member of the Alliance of Women in Architecture in New York and contributed to the beginning of the Archive of Women in Architecture. In 1974, Birkby, Katrin Adam, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Bobbie Sue Hood, Marie I. Kennedy, Joan Forrester Sprague and Leslie Kanes Weisman founded the Women's School of Planning and Architecture : a summer program for women in environmental design.

Later life and legacy

As the feminist movement began to wane in the late 1970s, Birkby was worn out. She struggled financially thorughout the 1980s, and shifted her focus from feminism to professional enterprise, which took a toll on her. Teaching positions became more difficult to secure, and the Women's School of Planning and Architecture closed. Birkby was unable to publish her research, and her architecture commissions dwindled and became less personally unsatisfying. During that time, she would also be diagnosed with breast cancer. In the final months of her life, a group of friends from the early years of the women's movement formed the "Sisters of Birkby," to care for their friend during the final stage of her illness. On April 13, 1994, Brirkby died in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

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

Further reading

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