The Studio 50: Don’t Get Your Knickers In A Knot

• New Facebook Fans
  • Trevor Ashby
  • Joanna P.
  • Mariana Chavez

Cal Poly News

• Cal Poly Magazine
  • http://www.calpolynews.calpoly.edu/magazine/Winter-10/index.html
• Cal Poly Appoints Architect as Director of Alumni Relations, Tracee DeHahn!
  • http://www.calpolynews.calpoly.edu/news_releases/2010/October/dehahn.html

General News

• The Indicator: 101 Things I Didn’t Learn in Architecture School
  • http://www.archdaily.com/93786/the-indicator-101-things-i-didn%E2%80%99t-learn-in-architecture-school/
• Acclaimed architect Norman Foster to build Apple’s new campus
  • http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/06/acclaimed_architect_norman_foster_to_build_apples_new_campus.html

Rapid Fire Questions:

• Cal Poly or Berkeley? Cal Poly
• Parallel bar or T-Square? Parallel
• Drafting dots or tape? Paper
• Yellow trace or white? White
• Mylar or Linen? Mylar
• Compass or Circle Template? Circle
• Freehand lettering or Kroy Machine? Freehand
• Pen or Pencil? Pencil
• What’s the Meaning of Life? Happiness

SCORE: 128,201.3

Interview

• What have you been up to since graduation?
  • Got a job in New York right after Cal Poly
    • she sent out a letter to every architect in the yellow pages for New York and got 42 replies
    • she was hired by an Italian architect three days after her arrival in New York
  • Moved back to San Francisco
    • experience of being the only woman a firm and other’s feeling towards women architects
  • Ended up starting her own business doing interior architecture with another woman
    • Called it “Environmental Research”
    • Did not want to work for anymore prejudice male architects
  • Went back to NY for a visit and some research for a current project and was given the opportunity to interview with a major textile company
    • Stood up for fair pay as a woman
  • Did Interior Architecture/Design for hotels across the country for 18 years
    • Designed rooms, restaurants, ballrooms, furniture, exhibit design
  • Then moved into designing textiles
    • From her work and travels during her hotel career she made contacts all over the world from the textile industry
  • It’s all about passion, working hard, having fun and doing what it takes to get the job done
• Why Architecture? Why Cal Poly?
  • Looked at the world of design and saw architecture as the foundation for everything
  • In High School she took a mechanical drawing class and her teacher introduced her to architecture and inspired her to pursue the career
  • She researched where she could go to school as a woman
  • She took the exam and was accepted to Cal Poly (1957), there was a total of 126 women in the entire college, 13 girls in her Freshman Architecture, by Sophomore year she was the only girl to return
• What was Cal Poly like as a woman in the 1950s?
  • All the girls had to live on campus, curfew was at 10:00, but that didn’t work as an Architecture student, so she got creative to get out of the dorm and into the architecture studio
  • 24 in her graduating class of Architecture
• Thoughts about George Hasselen
  • He was like a second father
  • He was an amazing mentor
• Why did you decide not to get your license?
  • Didn’t want to pay the fees every year
  • Her husband had his license so she didn’t need hers
  • She took 2/3rds of the test but got busy with her career and didn’t finish
  • The world of design is larger than just architecture