The latest audio documentary on female architecture pioneers from BWAF sheds light on two women behind an unusual and groundbreaking studio founded in 1945, The Architects Collaborative.

Presented by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF), the award-winning series New Angle: Voice — which just won a New York State Council on the Arts NYSCA Grant — debuts its Season 2 finale. BWAF has also announced its lineup for Season 3, starting in March 2024.

ABOUT THE FINALE: Based in Cambridge, Mass., The Architects Collaborative was founded in 1945 "by two husband/wife couples and a handful of their classmates … with Walter Gropius thrown in to give them the gravitas that concealed their youth,” according to BWAF.

The episode details the illuminating stories of Sarah Pillsbury Harkness (1914-2013) and Jean Bodman Fletcher (1915-1965), and the eight-person venture that designed buildings around the world under an ideal of anonymity. Titled “Architecture, Family Style – The Lives and Work of Sarah Harkness and Jean Fletcher,” the episode completes the popular second season of documentaries that includes Ray Eames (1912-1988), trailblazing African American architect Amaza Lee Meredith (1895-1984), and famed Wall Street Journal critic Ada Louise Huxtable (1921-2013).

NEW ANGLE: VOICE, SEASON 3: Next year, New Angle: Voice will present its third season beginning in March, with a lineup that includes public housing advocate and city planning educator, Catherine Bauer Wurster (1905-1964) and an episode recounting the Brooklyn Museum’s landmark 1977 exhibition, “Women in American Architecture,” curated and chronicled by Susana Torre, highlighting the documentary season’s expanded exploration of women's larger influences in architecture. 

ABOUT NEW ANGLE: VOICE: The revealing audio series adds to BWAF’s "Pioneering Women of American Architecture" program. It is created and produced by BWAF and the organization’s executive director Cynthia Phifer Kracauer. Also conceiving and producing the audio documentaries are noted writer and editor Alexandra Lange Ph.D. and acclaimed producer Brandi Howell. 

Since its successful first season, BWAF’s critically acclaimed New Angle: Voice episodes have gained a fast-growing international audience and have won major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and, most recently, the NYSCA award.

Listen to BWAF’s latest New Angle: Voice episode wherever you stream podcasts, or on BWAF's website, at https://bwaf.org/resources/podcast.

For interviews and assets, please contact C.C. Sullivan. 

Image: The Architects Collaborative, partners, circa 1951, courtesy Pioneering Women in American Architecture by Victoria Rosner and Mary McLeod., shows from bottom to top, left to right: Jean Bodman Fletcher, Walter Gropius, Sarah Pillsbury Harkness; Benjamin Thompson, Norman C. Fletcher, Robert McMillan, Louis A. McMillen, John C. Harkness. Courtesy of Perry Neubauer