As founder of Chicago Underground Practice (C_UP), and as a female architect, the need for role models come from two individuals breaking ground in new frontiers for woman in American society. The two individuals are Jane Jacobs and Billy Jean King.

Both Jacobs and King were struggling for equality within an urban context for their gender. These two women were activists combating male centric models in America during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Jacobs and King confronted two men who were gender racist and the public needed their fortitude as a beacon during this time. The two men were Robert Moses and Bobby Riggs, both from a generation, which suppressed woman’s rights. With all this said, I used both Jacobs and King as the precedents for the two projects, which are included in the portfolio for the Lisbon Triennale. The two projects contained within the portfolio are Whispers to Washington and King of Texas.
Whispers to Washington is a project for the Designing for Free Speech competition. The brief for the competition was to select a site anywhere in New York City as a location to express the 1st amendment. The site of Washington Square Park was chosen because it was the spatial battleground between the citizens of NYC versus Robert Moses. Jane Jacobs was the activist leader who organized her community and won the battle to block a proposed expressway to pass through Washington Square Park. Jacobs’s actions in the 1960’s were groundbreaking and still act as models for grass root movements nationwide. Her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” is a testament to the urban strategies, which C_UP uses in approaching all projects. Whispers to Washington is a true expression of free speech in that its architectural construct was modeled after the space under the canopy of a tree. A tree and the shade it provides to anyone of any race or gender is the natural space for free speech. If Jacobs and her actions of the 1960’s did not take place the idea of any park as a place for free speech would have been removed from American society. As the title of her book proclaims, a death would have occurred in a great American city, and the place removed could never be recovered. Whispers to Washington as a project is both a tribute and a memorial to Jane Jacobs as a woman effecting urban design globally to this present day.
The second project in the portfolio is King of Texas, which was for the Reimagining the Astrodome competition. Many events took place in the Astrodome during its history, but the most important was the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match in 1972. The match was between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King. Billy Jean King was the top ranked female player in the world, but more importantly she was the spokesperson for the Houston Nine. The Houston Nine were a group of woman who organized the first female professional tennis league. The “Battle of the Sexes” was a fight for gender equality on national television that Billy Jean King won for all women. The precedent set by this event allowed for the US Open to offer equal pay to both woman and men in professional sports. The site of the Astrodome and the “Battle of the Sexes” is a historic moment in architecture as a symbol of what the combination of gender and space can create.
Both Whispers to Washington and King of Texas are projects which act as touchstones for all the work of C_UP. Without the role models of woman the likes of Jacobs and King, C_UP would not be the female driven architecture firm, which it is. As an architect, and as the founder of C_UP, I take seriously the position the female gender must fight for in the profession. This portfolio is evidence to that commitment and the woman who make this work possible.

Location: NYC, NY
T. Joseph Surjan - design scientist & writer
S. Hjelte Fumanelli - project architect & digital modeling