HOW DID YOU FIRST BECOME
INTERESTED IN ARCHITECTURE?

I probably was 20 years old before I first thought about architecture as a possible work, and I knew very little about it at that time. I had been interested in painting and the arts in general always. I had studied painting at the Museum School, where I grew up, from my preteen days right through to college, and when I got to college I thought I would continue with that. But in fact, the studio painting program, it was a liberal arts school, was not a good one at that time, and so I was directed into art history, and I enjoyed that very much. But toward the end of my college years, I began to think again of something more active, more actively creative. I enjoyed art history but I felt as though I didn't want to just study the work of others. I really wanted to be actively engaged in making, and I think I hit upon architecture in a very general way.

I did not know any architects. I didn't really know what the work of architecture was; I knew architecture through the study of art history. And it was intriguing to me, probably more as sculpture and as artistic idea than as a craft. I had very littlepicture of what it would be like to work as an architect or to study architecture. I really was quite uninformed in that way. There were no career internship programs at the time; and so what I determined to do was to just start and try it and see if I would like it, see if I had an aptitude for it, if it interested me, and if it seemed exciting. And that's what I did. Actually, I took a trial semester at MIT, and I began with a real "Let's see how it goes" attitude. By the end of that semester I was very excited about it and I thought, "Yes, I can see doing this, this is interesting." So, it was really a discovery at that point, about what the learning and doing of architecture was.

I Actually it was in, I think it was 1962, that I first spoke with my dean of students, who was a wonderful woman named Teresa Fresh, an art historian of Viennese training, you know, wonderful Old World art historian And I went to her and said, "You know, I'm thinking about architecture," fully expecting her to discourage me and say "Oh, no, a life in art history is a full life, my dear, and you must go on." And she was very encouraging. She was extraordinarily encouraging and I would say that that was the turning point for me. I also had another teacher, this was at Wellesley College, another woman who was very important in that decision for me, and that was my philosophy professor, named Ingrid Stadler, and she also encouraged me.

I So I was being encouraged by women professors to pursue that, and it actually didn't occur to me that it was such an odd thing, despite the fact that I knew no architects, certainly no women architects, or any architects, so it wasn't a surprise that I wouldn't know any women architects. And it really wasn't until I got into school and started going at it that I began to encounter the other kinds of expectations; that it was unusual, that it was strange, that it was not to be expected. So I really didn't encounter that until I was into it already. That was my experience