2021 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion: Kathryn Anthony

Kathryn Anthony’s illustrious teaching career—she’s the ACSA Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—was informed by her groundbreaking research on gender and race in architecture. Her work called out toxic studio cultures and advocated for a more diverse and inclusive profession—issues she also explored in the classroom as a mentor to countless students.

What is your greatest achievement?
Professionally: Seeing my books published; testifying before the U.S. Congress about the need for gender equity in design; serving as media spokesperson about the importance of designing for diversity; teaching and learning from generations of students; receiving awards from AIA, ACSA, the Environmental Design Research Association, the 2020 Chicago Women in Architecture’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and now the Topaz Medallion—the icing on the cake!

What is the most memorable moment of your teaching career?
The moment that I learned of my promotion to full professor. We were on a road trip in Michigan, just crossing the spectacular Mackinac Bridge. It felt like being on top of the world.

The moment I was riding in a taxi in Washington, D.C., on my way to testify before a Congressional committee to advocate for gender equity in public restrooms. As I told my taxi driver, “I’ve never even testified before a court of law. And now here I am about to testify before Congress. I’m so excited, but I’m so, so scared!” And I always remember what he said to me, “Don’t worry! And don’t be scared! You’re here because you’re speaking up for all those who can’t be here with you today. Just think about them. You are here for a reason. I can assure you. You’ll do just fine.”

The moment the first copy of my book, Defined by Design: The Surprising Power of Hidden Gender, Age, and Body Bias in in Everyday Products and Places, arrived at my doorstep. It had been in the making for about a decade. It felt terrific to finally hold it in my hands. I brought it into our seminar that afternoon to share this joyful moment with my students, captured in a special class photo. It was February 14, 2017, the best Valentine’s present I could ever receive.

What is your teaching style?
In recent years I’ve taught mainly seminars. My style is to bombard students with an extensive list of readings and media, along with lots of carefully constructed, hands-on assignments that empower them to apply whatever they’ve learned. I always encourage students to present their projects in graphic, written, and oral forms, all of which speak clearly to different audiences. Mastering all three types of communication will take them far in life.

In years past, when I’ve team-taught design studios, we’ve always worked with a real client who helped us develop the program and evaluate the projects throughout the term—a win-win situation for all.

What, if anything, has changed about your style over the years?
Talk less, listen more!

As a result of the pandemic that suddenly tossed us all into remote instruction, I’ve come to enjoy online teaching and learning. Students come from far and wide, everyone arrives on time, everyone has a front row seat, and no one can hide out. They can now become much more active participants in design studio reviews. The Zoom chat room can be used for students, faculty, and guest reviewers to critique work in real time. It’s a great equalizer.

I’ve made it my life’s work to stand up for those who had been invisible for too long: architecture students facing intimidating, devastating design juries that drove some right out of the field; women architects and architects of color treated unfairly on the job, far outnumbered and often leap-frogged over by their white male colleagues; everyday people who inhabit, work in or visit spaces and places where they are disadvantaged by design.

What role does your research and scholarship play in your teaching?
My research, scholarship and teaching have always been closely connected. I’ve made it my life’s work to stand up for those who had been invisible for too long, advocating on behalf of people who have been left out and left behind: architecture students facing intimidating, devastating design juries that drove some right out of the field; women architects and architects of color treated unfairly on the job, far outnumbered and often leap-frogged over by their white male colleagues; everyday people who inhabit, work in or visit spaces and places where they are disadvantaged by design.

My research has influenced my teaching and vice-versa—a symbiotic relationship. My early experiences serving as a critic on design juries sparked my empirical research for Design Juries on Trial: The Renaissance of the Design Studio (1991). Our class visits to Chicago offices to meet with members of Chicago Women in Architecture and the National Organization of Minority Architects inspired my research for Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession (2001).

The memoir I co-authored with my late husband, Barry D. Riccio, Running for Our Lives: An Odyssey with Cancer (2004), motivated me to teach a series of health care design studios sponsored by Cannon Design.

My class assignment asking students to interview people who were different from themselves in either gender, age, or body size about how they were either advantaged or disadvantaged by design set the stage for Defined by Design. Working with my then-doctoral advisee, Altaf Engineer, now a colleague at the University of Arizona, led to our co-authored book Shedding New Light on Art Museum Additions: Front Stage and Back Stage Experiences (2018).

What has your scholarship revealed about the issues of diversity and equity in architecture?
My books call for the transformation of architectural education and practice by offering an array of refreshing reforms. In fact, they sparked movements for change.

Design Juries on Trial fueled the creation of the American Institute of Architecture Students’ Studio Culture Task Force, culminating in its report on The Redesign of Studio Culture (2002), and the inclusion of studio culture as a key criterion of the National Architectural Accrediting Board accreditation process for all architecture schools.

It sparked discussions among architecture faculty in the U.S. and abroad about the need to protect students’ mental and physical health and safety before, during, and after design reviews. It recently served as an impetus for “Re-thinking the Crit,” an innovative design review system implemented in four major schools of architecture, art, and design across Ireland.

Designing for Diversity propelled an increased national awareness of the need for greater diversity in the profession, serving as a springboard for AIA National Diversity Committee, an AIA Diversity Plenary, an AIA national convention theme of diversity, and today’s Equity by Design movement.

What is the most unfortunate reality about architectural education today?
First, architecture takes many years to master, and it is an expensive undertaking. Many aspiring architects are dissuaded by family members who encourage them to pursue other professions where the preparation is far shorter and the financial rewards far greater. But I can’t tell you how many people I still meet who are the first to admit, “I always wanted to become an architect!”

Second, students need to become much more aware of the contributions of women, persons of color, and the LGBTQ community to the architectural profession—as consumers, critics, and creators of the built environment. I address this in my book, Designing for Diversity. I’ve often argued that graduating students decked out in their caps and gowns should not be allowed to walk across that commencement stage if they can’t name at least several women architects and architects of color—past and present—and their most famous works.

Third, more often than not, the emphasis in academic design studios is on designing new buildings from scratch, whereas in reality architects are often called upon to renovate or add to older buildings. We talk a lot about sustainability these days, and rightfully so, but all too often we dismiss the vast amount of waste that comes from destruction as well as construction. I believe that architectural education would benefit by offering more programs in historic preservation and assigning more studio projects that require creative adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Students desperately need this experience while in school.

Fourth, too many students graduate without ever having interacted with a real client in their academic design studios. They’ve been designing in dreamland. It’s like studying to become a doctor—minus any patients.

What is the most promising aspect?
Teaching is a noble profession that changes lives. Architecture is a noble profession that creates spaces that change lives. Architects have the power to change the world, one design at a time. Architects can work magic. It is an immensely rewarding profession for those who succeed, far greater than many other lines of work. We need to do a much better job communicating the joys that this profession can bring to designers, clients, and the people who inhabit, work in, and visit the spaces we create.

My first book, ‘Design Juries on Trial,’ took years to find a publisher. I could decorate a wall with rejection letters and came close to giving up. But after I presented my research at an ACSA conference in Chicago, an editor from Van Nostrand Reinhold magically appeared from the audience and introduced himself.

What has been the greatest challenge you faced during your career?
My two areas of expertise, for which I’m best known, are environment and behavior (how spaces and places affect people), and diversity in design (how spaces and places affect different kinds of people in different ways), and why it’s so important to design for them as best you can. Neither came easily, nor was an easy fit. Grant monies were near impossible to come by. My research proposals never fit neatly into a checklist. In retrospect, perhaps they were just ahead of their time. But I didn’t let the lack of funding stop me from doing important work.

My first book, Design Juries on Trial, took years to find a publisher. I could decorate a wall with rejection letters and came close to giving up. But after I presented my research at an ACSA conference in Chicago, an editor from Van Nostrand Reinhold magically appeared from the audience and introduced himself. To me, he had a halo around his head. The rest is history.

I would be remiss to pretend that all has been rosy as a woman in our male-dominated architectural profession. On numerous occasions early in my career, and even before I arrived at Illinois, I faced what was clearly gender discrimination on the job. A few episodes stand out. At one office, when a female co-worker and I met with our boss to complain that our office was freezing, he called up his building manager and screamed into the phone, “Hey! You need to turn up the heat! I want my broads to take off more clothes!”

Elsewhere, a colleague actively sought to recruit applicants for my tenure-track faculty position, which I held at the time. Another set of colleagues passed over my candidacy for promotion while shepherding through a less-qualified male candidate. Yet another tried to pull my course out from under me mid-semester. Some of these crises led me to tremendous sadness, anger, and frustration, not to mention tears. I came close to abandoning my academic career altogether.

I knew that I was being treated unfairly. And I knew enough to ask for help. Supportive, more experienced colleagues, both male and female, came to my aid. I documented everything in writing, institutional safety nets came to my rescue, and justice prevailed. Most importantly, I never became bitter. As an African American pastor from East St. Louis, Ill., the late father of one of my former students, once advised him, “Don’t be bitter. Be better.”

What jobs did your parents have?
Both my parents were the youngest of five children. My mother, Anne Anthony, was the daughter of Greek immigrants who started a new life in Bangor, Me. After a brief career working as a school secretary and later in a bank, Mom stayed home to raise her two daughters and take care of the family.

My father, Harry Antoniades Anthony, was raised in extreme poverty on the island of Skyros, Greece. When he was only 6 years old, his father, a high school teacher, died suddenly. An unusually bright student, dad received a life-changing scholarship in the late 1940s, escaping war-torn Greece for graduate studies in architecture and urbanism at the Sorbonne, where he received his Ph.D. While in Paris he worked for Le Corbusier, and for the American Embassy on the Marshall Plan. He went on to work in the urban design office at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York. He received another doctorate from Columbia University’s School of Architecture, where he was hired as a faculty member and soon became chair of the division of urban planning. He was instrumental in bringing Le Corbusier to Columbia for a historic symposium on “The Four Great Makers of Modern Architecture.” Dad served as a professor at Columbia for 19 years as well as a partner in Brown and Anthony City Planners, preparing planning, zoning, land development, and urban design studies for several municipalities throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Decades later, Dad was recruited as chair of the department of urban planning at Cal Poly Pomona, where he taught for another 16 years. In his retirement, he served as consulting architect on his signature achievement, the award-winning design of Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif., where, after the scaffolding was first removed, a shining cross miraculously appeared on its golden dome, and is visible whenever the sun is shining.

What would you have been if not an architecture professor?
When I was little, I first wanted to become an astronaut, then a symphony conductor, and later a journalist, doctor, and clinical psychologist.

What do you hope your legacy will be?
I hope to be remembered as a catalyst who challenged and changed design education and practice. As an educator who made it her life’s work to advocate—from the classroom to the mainstream media to the U.S. Congress—for those whose voices are not often heard. As an author who empowered the public with knowledge about the dire health and safety consequences of poor design, and conversely, the tremendous value of good design that responds to the evolving needs of an increasingly diverse population. As a woman who overcame significant obstacles in a male-dominated profession. As a mentor to her students. As a congenial colleague. As a dedicated family member. As a loyal friend. And a bright spirit.

What does winning the Topaz Medallion mean to you?
I am elated, honored, and humbled to receive the Topaz Medallion, especially on the heels of the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from Chicago Women in Architecture. It’s an amazing feeling to suddenly be catapulted to the pinnacle of my career and to share these prestigious awards with so many luminaries whose work I have long admired.

As I commemorate yet another professional milestone, exactly 40 years since I received my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and began teaching full-time, I could not possibly ask for a better gift.I’m deeply indebted to the jury for my selection, to all my colleagues who wrote letters on my behalf, and to all my former students from across the globe who offered their video tributes. I share this award with all my University of Illinois colleagues, students, alumni, and staff with whom I have been privileged to work for decades, and with all my family and friends who helped me reach where I am today.