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Women's School of Planning and Architecture
participants forming a woman symbol,
1975
The Women's School of Planning and Architecture (WSPA) was an experiment in feminist education for women interested in architecture, planning, and environmental design. The School was founded by Katrin Adam, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Noel Phyllis Birkby (see also
The same brochure describes the founders goals:
...to create a personally supportive atmosphere and a stimulating exchange of ideas in a vacation setting. We hope to encourage both personal and professional growth through a fuller integration of our values and identities as women with our values and identities as designers. Our aim is to create a forum within which we may discover and define the particular qualities, concerns, and abilities that we as women bring to the environmental design professions.
WSPA was deliberately experimental. It was to be a new form of organization providing a new style of educational experience. The Coordinators used feedback from participants to make adjustments and innovations designed to help the organization better meet its goals. WSPA's founders understood that the development of an effective alternative school meant that there would be no set format for WSPA sessions. Within a general set of criteria, they envisioned an ever-changing and evolving entity responsive to the needs of the participants.
The School aimed to attract participants from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations by making an interest in environmental design the only admission "requirement" and by holding each session at a different location. Tuition was kept to a minimum and work-study scholarships were available. While the focus of the earlier sessions could be characterized as "consciousness raising, skill building, and [theoretical discussion]" among women who were primarily professionals and academics, in its latter years WSPA was moving toward involvement in political activism based on collaboration with "grassroots women."
According to co-founders Noel Phyllis Birkby and Leslie Kanes Weisman, all participants in WSPA were considered members of a peer group "equally responsible and equally capable of making a contribution" (in "The Women's School of Planning and Architecture," in Learning Our Way: Essays in Feminist Education). Sessions were planned by a group of Coordinators who were essentially self-selected, based on their willinginess and ability to devote the time and energy necessary to bring off a successful session. This was not a volunteer commitment, but a professional engagement paid through income generated by tuition fees.
The curriculum was designed to offer subject matter unavailable in standard academic or professional settings. Courses were conducted by methods designed to "eliminate some of the effects of male-defined and identified educations." Instructors emphasized "the active participation of all members of the group, minimizing the role of the coordinators as experts or authorities," while maximizing their "roles as information sources and organizers" (Birkby and Weisman).
There were five WSPA sessions in all: at St. Joseph's College in Biddeford, Maine, in 1975; at Stephenson College in Santa Cruz, California, in 1976; at Roger Williams College in Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1978; at Regis College in Denver, Colorado, in 1979; and a weekend symposium in Washington, DC, in 1981. A session planned and advertised for 1980 at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, was cancelled when registration targets were not met.
The level of energy and commitment required to create a new style of organization offering an ever-changing educational experience soon proved difficult to sustain. Adding to the complexity was the fact that Coordinators were scattered around the country, making communication and consensus-building extraordinarily difficult. Though WSPA remained a legal corporation after the final session in 1981, no additional sessions came to fruition. Internal struggles developed, the School was perpetually short of money, and, probably most importantly, no group of Coordinators came forward to take on the challenge of planning a session. In a 1989 piece on WSPA for the book Architecture: A Place for Women, Leslie Kanes Weisman described it as a product of its time, ideal for "the consciousness-raising task of defining problems," but less useful for "designing and implementing solutions."
The Women's School of Planning and Architecture Records consist of 10.5 linear feet of audiotapes, correspondence, memorabilia, memoranda, minutes, films, photographs, publications, slides, videotapes, and other materials. They date from 1974 to 1992 with the bulk of the materials documenting the period between 1974 and 1981. The Records contain rich documentation of the founding, planning, and operation of the School. They provide a detailed account of the successes and struggles of an experimental, non-hierarchical educational institution founded at the height of the 1970s women's movement.
The intentions of the School's founders are well documented in the publications and publicity materials in Series I as well as the Coordinators' Records (Series II). Because the Coordinators were scattered geographically and thus forced to communicate primarily by mail, the written record of their work is exceptionally rich. True to the experimental and unconventional nature of the organization, information in Series II is rarely in standardized formal documents such as minutes and reports. Formal minutes exist for a relatively brief period, but other kinds of records of the work of the group, such as notes and circular letters, abound.
Nearly two-thirds of the total volume of the surviving records is materials created for or during the sessions themselves. Sensitive to the ground breaking nature of their endeavor, the Coordinators arranged for extensive written and audio visual documentation of the first WSPA session in 1975, when large portions of the session were captured on video and audiotape (available in Series III and Series IV). Included in the Records is a finished film about the 1975 session. Documentation of sessions after 1975 is less comprehensive.
Related materials in the Sophia Smith Collection can be found in the personal papers of WSPA co-founder
This collection is organized into four series:
The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection.
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to the WSPA records. Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." The donors request to also be informed of any publication from these records.
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Records of the Women's School of Planning and Architecture, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Periodic additions to collection are expected.
The records of the Women's School of Planning and Architecture were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection by the executors of the estate of founding coordinator Noel Phyllis Birkby in 1994 and by founding coordinator Ellen Perry Berkeley in 1997.
Processed by Maida Goodwin, 1999.
Related material can be found in the
#1.
Shots of barns, houses, poster The Women's School of Planning & Architecture", 1976. Large number of women( probably the students and teachers) sitting on outdoor stairway, pan down to front steps, women all the way. Indoor shots of students in workshop. Scrapbook of black and white snaps shots of arch. patterns. Modules, pitched roofs, porches, etc. Diagrams and snaps probably used in workshop. Women making drawings. Women walking down path. Standing at seashore, exploring. Talking. Walking through reeds. Patting sand and building sand forms. Students making presentations. Phyllis' printing of description of days activities. Shots of video of women entering revolving glass doors/children in pushcarts. Class discussing situation. Children. At beach. (stopped watching here/second film break).
#2.
WSPA. Interior shots of workshop, complete w/writing on wall. Women w/video cameras. Women in groups. Flying Saucer School - fantasy architectural school, could make spaces, women spaces, Flying Saucer - a plus for motion sickness. Someone drawing on someone's back. Writing on the wall - Vegetables Running Up Our Ears. Stuff like sauna and swimming pool. Sign - Be Able To Eat Our Own Forms. Mosquito Eaters, Mechanics, Plumbers. Film looks in good shape. Hardly any scratches. Women are building models, looks like a flying saucer model made out of cake, cutting forms. Decorating w/marshmallos and all kinds of sugar. Looks like they are building architectural models of gumdrops, cookies, cake, unfortunately, soft focus on a lot of closeups, but long shots are good.
#3.
Lorna McNeur's name on leader; seems to be the maker. original (I think is same as print # 1)
#4.
#5.
Two women mirror mime; WSPA slides filmed.
#6.
[See box 17A for use copy]
All original open reel videotapes were sent to VidiPax company for preservation and transfer to Beta Cam and VHS cassette format. The VP number listed after titles are the reel numbers assigned to the original videotapes by VidiPax.
THESE COPIES RETAINED FOR PRESERVATION ONLY. USE COPIES CAN BE MADE FROM THE VHS RESTORATION MASTERS. SEE BOX 17A FOR USE COPIES.
[See box 17A for use copy]
[See box 17A for use copy]
[See box 17A for use copy]
[See box 17A for use copy]
[See box 17A for use copy]