Phyllis Birkby

Noel Phyllis Birkby (December 6, 1932 – April 13, 1994) was an American architect, feminist, filmmaker, teacher, and founder of the Women's School of Planning and Architecture.

Noel Phyllis Birkby was born in Nutley, New Jersey to Harold S. and Alice (Green) Birkby.

As a child, she made drawings of cities and towns, and miniature three-dimensional environments in her mother's garden.

An early fascination with architecture led her to express interest in the profession at the age of 16, to a career counselor who would tell her the profession was inaccessible to her, despite her aptitude: "Well, Miss Birkby, it appears that if you were a man, you should be studying architecture." In 1950, Birkby entered Women's College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, North Carolina to study fine art, and she was an active participant in extracurricular activities, such as Canterbury club and art club.

She was considered a rabble rouser.

In 1954, she was expelled in her senior year after an incident that purportedly involved drinking beer.

Birkby later attributed the outcome to her public expression of love for a classmate.

"I wasn't hiding my love for another woman," she explained, "... didn't think there was anything wrong with it."

After Birkby returned to her family home in New Jersey for a brief period of time, she moved to New York City.

In Manhattan, Birkby worked as a technical illustrator.

In 1955, she traveled to Mexico with American Friends Service Committee to work on development projects with the Otomi people.

A year later back in New York, another female architect encouraged Birkby to pursue professional education and training.

Birkby enrolled in graduate school at Yale School of Architecture, and studied under the deanships of Paul Rudolph (chairman 1958–65), and Charles W. Moore (chairman 1965–1970), two renowned educators and leaders architect of the post-modern movement.

At Yale, Birkby was one of six women enrolled in the department of architecture, among a student body of approximately 200 men.

Birky would later say the gender gap compelled her to "rise above the female role" to prove she was as "good or better than the men."

In 1959, Birkby enrolled in the undergraduate architecture night school program Cooper Union School of Architecture, and she worked by day at the offices of architect Henry L. Horowitz, from 1960 to 1961, and Seth Hiller, from 1961 to 1963.

During the late 1960s, she was introduced to feminism, which she had thought was "mostly about housewives in the suburbs."

In this attitude, Birkby was like many bisexual and lesbian women of the period yet to find signs of a visible social justice movement, and put off by the mainstream women's movement.

However, eventually she and Sidney Abbott, Kate Millett, Alma Routsong, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.

In 1963, Birkby earned a Certificate in Architecture from Cooper Union, and she was awarded the Service to the School Awards by the Cooper Union Alumni Association for having demonstrated exemplary service and leadership during her time as student.

"I have not by any means been a linear oriented professional person."

Birkby described her methods of teaching in terms of "environmental activism" or the integration of environmentalism and architecture in a manner in which she learned at Yale University from Professor Serge Chermayeff, the author of several books, including Community and Privacy with Christopher Alexander (1964) and The Shape of Community with Alexander Tzonis (1971).

Birkby taught her students practical techniques, such as a "bug listing" to denote the frustrating aspects of an environment, and also conceptual strategies like fantasy projection to encourage a thorough investigation into the social implications of form and design.

For Birkby, professional success required her to live a closeted life.

After graduate school, she suffered from depression.

Birkby achieved a Masters of Architecture at Yale University in 1966, after completing a course of training and study, including her thesis on a physical education complex on Hofstra University.

From 1966 to 1972, she was worked for the firm of Davis Brody and Associates, (later renamed Davis Brody Bond), during which time she contributed architecture services to many notable projects, including a new residential high-rise neighborhood on the Hudson River in Manhattan called Waterside Plaza, a Library complex at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus; New York City urban renewal projects in the South Bronx; Amethyst House, a women's residence commissioned by Bayley Seton Hospital, in Staten Island; and a recreational facility at Hampshire College.

On September 16, 1968, Birkby earned an architecture license in New York state.

Between 1968 and 1973, Birkby taught architectural design as a member of the faculty of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture to hundreds of students, only a small number of whom were women.

By that time, Birkby was a recognized architect but felt her professional life was discordant with the rest of her life.

In the late 1970s, Birkby worked at the architectural offices of Gary Scherquist and Roland Tso in California, and she taught architecture and environmental design at Southern California Institute of Architecture, California State Polytechnic and University of Southern California.

Throughout the 1970s, Birkby engaged and documented the significance of The Feminist Art Movement, including its slogan "the personal is political."

Beginning in 1971, Birkby became active in professional organizations for women in architecture and urban planning.

Birkby also began documenting the women's movement in film, photography, oral history, and collected posters, manifestos, clippings, and memorabilia.

In 1973, Birkby came out publicly, resigned from her job at Davis Brody Associates, and traveled to Bien Hoa, Vietnam, with the firm Dober, Paddock, Upton and Associates, to work on a reconstruction plan for Thu Duc Polytechnic University.

In 1973, Birkby co-edited a collection of essays, "Amazon expedition: A lesbian feminist anthology," which included radical feminist essays by Ti-Grace Atkinson, Esther Newton, and Bertha Harris, and that same year, she edited a compilation of participant statements at the October 14th World Fellowship in Kerhonkson, New York, entitled "Dealing With the Real World: 13 Papers by Feminist Entrepreneurs."

Upon returning to New York, Birkby opened her own private practice and taught architectural design at Pratt Institute School of Architecture from 1974 to 1978, New York Institute of Technology, and City College of New York.

Together with Leslie Kanes Weisman, Birkby coauthored the essays "A Women-Built Environment: Constructive Fantasies" (1975), "Women's Fantasy Environment: notes on a project in process" (1977), and "The Women's School of Planning and Architecture" (1983).

Returning to New York in the early 1980s, Birkby worked for Gruzen and Partners (later renamed Gruzen Sampton), from 1973 to 1981, and the architect Lloyd Goldfarb.

Throughout the 1980s, Birkby taught building construction, design fundamentals, and architectural design at New York Institute of Technology.