Two decades ago, Milka Bliznakov noticed something was missing from Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies.
Having grown up in Bulgaria, Bliznakov understood men and women to be professional equals. Yet as an architecture professor in America, she seldom heard colleagues reference the work of women.
In 1985, encouraged by the obscured female reputation, Bliznakov founded the International Archive of Women in Architecture, a collaboration between the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and the University Libraries.
To entice new archive contributions, the International Archive of Women in Architecture created the Milka Bliznakov Prize in 2000, which honors the professor emeritus. The $1,000 award is given to original projects, research and other scholarly compositions.
Newman Library houses the catalog, which now offers more than 300 archives ranging from simple resumes to complete career portfolios.
The winners for 2009: the book “A Woman’s Berlin, Building the Modern City” by Despina Stratigakos; and the report “Odilia Suarez: The Exemplary Trajectory of an Architect and Urbanist in Latin America” by Martha Alonso, Sonia Bevilacqua and Graciela Brandariz.
Archive director Donna Dunay recently spoke with the Collegiate Times about the prize recipients and the organization.
COLLEGIATE TIMES: While the author of “A Woman’s Berlin” lives in New York, the three authors of “Odilia Suarez” hail from Argentina. How does the International Archive of Women in Architecture have such a broad reach?
DONNA DUNAY: One, because our advisory board has a broad reach, has broad representation. And we have women from many of the continents and have had past advisers from those continents. So for instance, one of the original advisers, Susana Torre, is both from New York and South America. She’s largely known in this country, now residing in Spain. In the last board of advisers we had ... Martha Thorne. She’s the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, and she was in Chicago and now she lives in Madrid.
Other advisers: Ute Westrom is from Berlin; Junko Matsukawa is from Tokyo; and (Ochirpureviin) Sarantsatsral is from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. So the reach is there through the advisers. The reach is through information going out on the Web as to what we have. And also the reach is through the archives that we have, and people that know of the archives and come and visit.
CT: What is particularly extraordinary about this year’s winning entries?
DUNAY: I think in the case of Odilia Suarez, where the title is “The Exemplary Trajectory of an Architect and Urbanist in Latin America,” I think it’s about that: that her trajectory, or her life, was extraordinary. And when you look around and you see that this is not well known, we want to have that information become more widely known and more available. In the case of Despina Stratigakos’ work, “A Woman’s Berlin,” I think it was unknown how much women changed the way cities are lived in by both women and men, and how their coming into the urban life in fact changed urban life. So those two in particular were really outstanding. The third one was the commendation was a collection of work by emerging women in architecture, and it traveled to a series of schools in the United States. And we felt that was strong as well and wanted to recognize it with a commendation.
CT: Do you think College of Architecture and Urban Studies students utilize the International Archive of Women in Architecture resources adequately, or would you like to see it increase?
DUNAY: (laughs) Of course. It would be nice to see that. It is happening. In fact, this semester we are working on an exhibition that will be mounted in Richmond, Va. Center for Architecture. And as a key component of the exhibition, we have a seminar group that is utilizing the archive and they are making 100 postcards or small exhibition panels deriving material from the archive. We met in fact today with the exhibition curator and went through the archive and met with the students and faculty and reviewed some of the work to date. So it’s being utilized. They’re going over there and investigating. We’re all learning in this process, and that was the point.