These Are the Women Who Changed Modern Architecture

Judith Chafee’s family home—an adobe house in Tucson—became the inspiration for her career. Most of Chafee’s designs were residential, although she won an award for a hospital design in 1959 while studying at Yale University where she was the only woman in her class. Because the award ceremony was held in a men’s club, she had to enter through the kitchen. After completing her education, Chafee practiced for a decade in the Northeastern U.S. with such preeminent modernists as Walter Gropius, Sarah Harkness, Eero Saarinen, and Paul Rudolph. She started her own private practice in Arizona in 1970, and her work combined an interest in Sonoran desert landscapes and endemic materials with a strong sense of place and the use of light. Chafee never secured major public commissions during her career, which scholars speculate was due to a perception of her as obstinate. In other words, some gender bias was likely at play.