Voices of Experience is a collaborative project led by Suzanne Ewing, Jude Barber and Nicola McLachlan. Voices of Experience is motivated by the lack of recognised female presence and role models within architecture and the build environment. Voices of Experience is an investigation into undiscovered legendary women who have made important contributions to architecture and the built environment.
The project constructs a series of conversations between a highly experienced architect or maker of the built environment, and an architect or other professional at the outset of their career. Working with Glasgow Womens' Library we are starting to build an audio archive around females working in the late twentieth century Britain.
Each ‘conversation’ has a project or thematic concern in common and the participants discuss their work on location. The contextual focus is late twentieth century Scotland, at a time when we need to rethink the social and public purpose of architecture.
Insights from our seven paired conversations and both Voices of Experience public events have been broad-ranging and generous. They have included ways in which architects discover their preoccupations, strengths, range and niche through different working relationships and formats; resonating experiences of women entering into architectural education decades apart; and the making and remaking of homes and work at different stages of life and outlook.
Voices of Experience is now in it’s 4th year and a new website now features the range of conversations, publications and events that have evolved from this.
