“Of the 640 listed statues in the UK only 15% are women,” writes James Merry, of the creative design agency Squint/Opera.
In support of International Women’s Day this coming Sunday, March 8, the company offers some recommendations in the form of spiffy renderings to increase that number. As visualizations, they wow. In practical terms, they vary in realizability. One of them — in classic utopian, sci-fi fashion — is an asteroid. The others include a tech incubator, housed by the crinoline of Ada Lovelace’s massive Victorian dress, an Amelia-Earhart-inspired control tower at Heathrow, and a colossal sewing machine as a bridge over the Thames.
The fantastic images envision “how London could be transformed by giant statues of positive female role models,” writes Merry, after citing stats on the current state of women in architecture. “In the built environment, just 34% of officially qualified UK architects are women. That’s 4,000 of the 27,000 registered. Closer to home, preliminary findings from a recent CGArchitect survey show that just 6% of survey participants employed in architectural visualization are women.”
Below, behold the statues in all their feminist glory. It’s regrettable that there are no women of color included, such as politicians Diane Abbott and Valerie Amos, organizer Olive Morris, or Seaman William Brown (the first black woman in the Royal Navy), but we applaud the advocacy for a more equitable — if rather literal — representation of women in the built environment.
The Giant Ada Lovelace of Silicon Roundabout
“The English mathematician and writer was the world’s first computer programmer, and her algorithm was used by Charles Babbage who invented the concept of the computer. This giant rotating colossus is designed to tower over Old Street’s Silicon Roundabout. Her outstretched spinning arms drop glittering ‘1’s and ‘0’s to give the impression of being in a Matrix shower to the people going around the roundabout below. Within her impressive Victorian dress there is space dedicated to the incubation of tech start-ups.”
Amelia Earhart Control Tower
“A new control tower built at Heathrow Airport in the shape of Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. [Earhart] was also the first women to be awarded the U.S. distinguished Flying Cross. [She] set many other records and was an author and campaigner for equal rights. In 1937 she disappeared whilst flying solo over the Pacific, but her legacy lives on as an inspiration to female aviators everywhere.”
The Mary Wollstonecraft Rock
“In honor of the writer, philosopher and advocate of women’s rights Mary Wollstonecraft, a space mission is sent to retrieve the famous asteroid named after her. After a long and dangerous expedition, the space-rock crash-lands into Parliament Square, where it becomes a serendipitous tourist attraction.”
The Dagenham Sewing Machine Bridge
“A much-needed bridge is built across the Thames, between Dagenham and Thamesmead in the shape of a giant sewing machine — reminding us of the Ford Sewing Machinist’s Strike of 1968, dramatized in the film ‘Made in Dagenham.'”
Read the full letter — and see concept sketches of the above designs — here.