AWA Legacy: Mini-Stories

I’m bringing you a set of mini-stories that were taped live at the AWA 100th Building Our Legacy event on September 10, 2022 at the HenryBuilt showroom in LA’s art district. This event not only celebrated AWA+D’s 100 year anniversary, but also focused on how we can preserve the legacies of women in architecture—especially our own legacies. As we know, too often women’s work was historically unrecognized, erased, and forgotten, and we lose so much by not being able to access this information. We can’t keep repeating this mistake! For example, Christina Morris from the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave a presentation on Where Women Made History, an effort to bring more recognition and respect to women’s achievements. One of the projects she highlighted was Azurest South, the home of Amaza Lee Meredith, significant as it was designed by a black queer woman architect for her and her partner Dr. Edna Meade Colson. I didn’t know about Amaza Lee Meredith, but I feel like we all should know more about her. The legacy event was coordinated with the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), which holds the official archive for AWA+D at Virginia Tech. The main takeaway from the event was how important it is to document our work, and we should all consider submitting work to the IAWA, not just when we’re at the end of our careers, but even along the way. On that note, we set up a recording booth at the event with a few prompts, hoping to capture short stories and mini-interviews from event attendees, and this recorded material is being released on this podcast, as well as being sent to the IAWA as part of the AWA legacy. The women featured in this recording are: Virginia Tanzmann, Sona Gevorkyan, Alicia Morales, Beatriz Navarro, Christina Monti, Christie Wang, Stefanie Cheng, Danielle De Young, Anne Zimmerman, Koje Shoraka, Michelle Weisman, Magdalena Glen-Schieneman, and podcast host Audrey Sato.
https://www.librarystack.org/awa-legacy-mini-stories/?ref=unknown