THE 2021 IAWA KRISTINE FALLON PRIZE WINNER
The International Archive of Women in Architecture Center is pleased to announce that the 2021 IAWA Kristine Fallon Prize, with an award of $5000, has been awarded to Aaron Cayer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico, for his chapter (House) Keeping Secrets. With (House) Keeping Secrets, Cayer demonstrates how, in the latter part of the twentieth century, in the U.S., “women within corporate architecture firms were central to the social reproduction of architecture firms” and further that “these women were simultaneously designing the legacy of the country.”
(House) Keeping Secrets is part of the monograph under review, Conglomerators: How Architecture Firms Make, Manage, and Militarize the World. Tracing the paths of several women architects, the chapter provides an overview of women’s roles in corporate practice in the second half of the twentieth century. Within this context, the chapter focuses on the practice and place of one woman: Carol Ann Bakemen, librarian and archivist for architectural firm DMJM (now AECOM). Cayer presents an insightful, critical history of one woman’s role in producing the legacy of large, corporate architectural practices while situating a significant question – “Archival loss presents a fundamental challenge: how might one recover suppressed voices, glossed-over workers, or marginalized individuals who are central to the history of corporate architecture practice?”