Rediscovering a Heroine of Chicago Architecture
By Megan • Jan 3rd, 2008 • Category: News for Creatives (archives)Fred A. Bernstein reports for The New York Times:
Correction Appended.
If women are underrepresented in the architecture profession in 2008, a century ago they were hardly represented at all. Which makes Marion Mahony, the first woman to obtain an architecture license in Illinois, seem all the more remarkable. By 1908, she had been working for Frank Lloyd Wright for a decade.
Mahony (pronounced MAH-nee) had developed a fluid style of rendering derived partly from Japanese woodblock prints, with lush vegetation flowing in and around floor plans and elevations. Her masterly compositions also made the buildings appear irresistibly romantic. Mahony’s drawings, retraced in ink, formed much of what came to be known as the Wasmuth Portfolio, a compendium of Wright’s designs published in Germany in 1910. The portfolio not only established him as America’s reigning architectural genius but also influenced European Modernists like Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
Megan is a creative producer at Wise Elephant.
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