These Are the Women Who Changed Modern Architecture

As a teenager in Japan, Toshiko Mori was passionate about science, engineering, art, and philosophy, but she chose to study architecture because it combined those subjects in a fascinating way. She studied at Cooper Union during the 1970s and, upon graduation, worked for modernist Edward Larrabee Barnes, a student of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1995, Mori became the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s first tenured female professor. She speculates that because she was fortunate enough to be mentored by "men who shared similar values," she only recently became fully conscious of herself as a "woman architect." Mori says she is excited to see how women will continue to bring "fresh and creative" viewpoints to the profession.