FEMINIST SHIFTS: FROM ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN TO CONSTRUCTED ENVIRONMENTS
The 1990s were a decade of significant change, as the BFA in environmental design evolved into separate architectural and interior design programs, and a new Master of Architecture program was founded. The three founding sisters of the architecture programs at Parsons, who successively served as chairs throughout the 1990s. Previously absent front the archives are newly conducted oral histories with Susana Torre, Sharon Haar and Karen Van Lengen.
Susana Torre
Sharon Haar
Karen Van Lengen
SUSANA TORRE:
ORAL HISTORY
Susana Torre was Founding Chair of the Department of Architecture and Environmental Design in 1991, ushering in a decade of feminist leadership in the Department, and a temporary split between architecture and interior design, as the BFA in Interior Design, with its own Chair was reinstituted in 1992..
Listening to her oral history, it is remarkable how her feminist vision of creating a new Master of Architecture program within environmental design aligns with Allen Tate’s. The undergraduate program continued to offer studio options from the scale of furniture to urban design, and her commissioning of Allan Wexler’s Parsons Kitchen is a testimony to that shared ethos.
SHARON HAAR:
ORAL HISTORY
Sharon Haar served in various roles as Director of Public Programs, Associate Chair, Director of the Master of Architecture program and Acting Chair of the Department in 1995. My own digital installation for the Queer Space show at Storefront for Art and Architecture was done with the assistance of two Parsons students using the computers and pin-up wall at Parsons East in the transitional summer during Susana’s departure and Sharon’s inclusive leadership.
Queer Space.
KAREN VAN LENGEN:
ORAL HISTORY
Susana encouraged part time faculty member Karen Van Lengen to apply for the position, but she was not sure as she was pregnant at the time, but our colleague Mary Miss quickly dismissed the notion that a woman had to make a choice between motherhood and career.
Karen’s oral history includes a description of the first Design Workshop studios led by COlin Cathcart and Jim Garrison, that she initialed, and the importance of Joel Sanders leadership of the M.Arch program and his infamous Curtain Wars symposium which, in a way brought interior and architecture back in conversation together.
Design Workshop.