27 Jul 2020

7 Women Who Engineered These Amazing Buildings

Engineering STEAM

The Shard – Roma Agrawal MBE

Roma Agrawal, MBE FICE is an Indian-British-American chartered structural engineer based in London. She attributes her enthusiasm for engineering to her love of making and breaking things, cultivated by playing with Lego as a child. She spent six years working on the tallest building in Western Europe, the Shard, designing the foundations and the iconic spire.

London Aquatic Centre – Zaha Hadid

Meet Zaha Hadid - Zaha architecture | Stemettes Zine
Architectural Digest

Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid DBE (31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016), was a multi-award-winning Iraqi-British architect. During her career, she taught architecture at many prestigious universities. This is where she gained a reputation among her students for her colourful and radical designs.

The London Eye – Julia Barfield

Women Who Engineered These Amazing Buildings - Julia Barfield | Stemettes Zine
The Times

Julia Barfield, MBE RIBA FSA, is a British architect and director of Marks Barfield Architects. She created the London Eye with her husband. Julia was interested in vernacular architecture, geometry and the way nature “designs and organizes itself so efficiently”. Barfield remains involved in a diverse array of projects within architecture, including the categories of culture, education, transportation, sports, leisure, and master planning.

The best thing about the Eye is the journey. It’s not like the Eiffel tower, where you get in a dark lift and come out on to a platform at the top. The trip round is as important as the view.
Julia Barfield.

 

The Eiffel Tower – Sophie Germain

Women Who Engineered These Amazing Buildings - Sophie Germain | Stemettes Zine
Brain Pickings

Sophie was a French mathematician studying number theory and elasticity. Sophie’s work of elasticity was not only important to the field of mathematics but was vital in the construction of the Eiffel Tower but her name was not inscribed on the tower along with the other engineers and mathematicians behind the tower.

Okay so Sophie isn’t the designer of the Eiffel Tower, but she is an integral part of the design and development, so we think she’s definitely worth mentioning here. Read more on Sophie’s contribution to the Eiffel Tower here >>

Aqua Tower – Jeanne Gang

Jeanne Gang, FAIA, is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang. Her inquisitive and forward-looking approach has distinguished her as a leading architect of her generation. Drawing insight from ecological systems, she creates striking places connecting people with each other, their communities and the environment. Jeanne’s design process emphasizes research, experimentation and collaboration inside and outside of traditional design fields.

Aqua was awarded the Emporis Skyscraper Award as 2009 skyscraper of the year and was shortlisted in 2010 for the biennial International Highrise Award. The skyscraper is currently the world’s tallest building designed by a woman.

New Museum of Contemporary Art – Kazuyo Sejima

Kazuyo is a Japanese architect. She is known for designs with clean modernist elements such as slick, clean, and shiny surfaces made of glass, marble, and metals. She also uses squares and cubes, which can be found in her designs in various degrees. In 2010, Sejima was the second woman to receive the Pritzker Prize.

The Brooklyn Bridge –  Emily Roebling

Women Who Engineered These Amazing Buildings - Emily Roebling | Stemettes Zine
A Mighty Girl

Emily was an engineer known for her contribution to the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband Washington Roebling developed caisson disease. She had to manage, liaise and campaigning between city officials and workers to see the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge to completion. She would later become the first person to cross the bridge, too.

Engineering STEAM
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