ABSTRACT
American architect Sigrid Miller Pollin, FAIA, has spent her career shifting the professional paradigm, one project and one student at a time. While written chronicles often focus on the work of starchitects such as Zaha Hadid or Jeanne Gang, the majority of talented women in architecture still do not enjoy broad attention and advocacy. In this chapter, Miller Pollin’s 1290 Residence and Studio in Amherst, MA, is emphasized, identified, and evaluated as a pioneering statement and a work of a remarkable architect, artist, and educator as the means to address sustainability, career equality, and the legacy of past traditions.
Beginning in 1998, Miller Pollin and her colleagues Kathleen Lugosch and Ray Kinoshita Mann built up the Department of Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (now comprised of a faculty of eleven women and three men), into a trailblazing program of academic rigor, architectural exploration, and equity, thus upending the educational status quo. Sigrid Miller Pollin’s credo, as represented in her Residence and Studio and her teaching career at UMass, exemplifies her nuanced and deep understanding of the issues of gender in architecture and offers an inspirational insight into contemporary challenges of the discipline.
