The Public Architect: Identity of the Architect
Shownotes
In the third episode of our series on 'The Public Architect', we explored how the professional identity of architects has reflected changing gender, class and race. We spoke to architect Kate Macintosh about her career and the fight for equal pay for women architects. We were then joined by architectural historians Karen Burns and Elizabeth Darling to trace the longer history of women entering the profession through public institutions, from interwar progressives at the AA to postwar civil servants navigating quiet discrimination. Finally, we spoke to Yẹmí Aládérun (Ealing Council) and Sarah Allan (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) about how moving between private practice and public service reshaped their sense of authorship, leadership and care.
Episode Contributors
Yẹmí Aládérun is an architect and Head of Development at Ealing Council. She is a NED for Women's Pioneer Housing association, co-founder of Paradigm Network and core member of Part W. She was named in the Architects' Journal's 40 under 40 in 2020.
Sarah Allan is an architect and Head of Architecture at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Before this she worked in local government as housing lead for an Ecotown in Hampshire. For over seven years at CABE, she was head of urban design and homes, helping to embed design quality tools and processes in large-scale government programmes such as the Thames Gateway.
Karen Burns is an architectural historian and theorist, and Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. She is co-editor, with Lori A. Brown, of The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020, a two-volume survey with over 1,000 entries covering architects, designers, landscape architects, planners, historians and activists.
Elizabeth Darling is an architectural historian, curator and writer specialising in histories of modernist cultures in Britain, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, and is an expert on women and architecture from the 1890s to the present day. She has published extensively in both fields and has also written a number of entries for the ODNB on key women architects who worked in the public sector, including Ann McEwen and Rosemary Stjernstedt. Her book, Palace of the Ether, Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922-1932, will be published by Lund Humphries in June 2026.
Kate Macintosh MBE is a Scottish architect known for her work for local authorities. She studied at the Edinburgh School of Art, now part of Heriot-Watt University. After graduating in 1961, she spent a year studying in Warsaw on a scholarship from the British Council, then worked in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki before returning to the United Kingdom in 1964, when she was recruited to Denys Lasdun's National Theatre Team. She designed Dawson's Heights in Southwark and Leigham Court in Lambeth.
Recent Episodes
The Architectural History Podcast
Architectural History is the podcast of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. This miniseries, The Public Architect, was made possible thanks to funding from the Royal Institute of British Architects. It was hosted and produced by Claire Jamieson and Jess Kelly, with editing by Front Ear Podcasts and production support from Matthew Lloyd Roberts.
