Planting the Seeds
Date Posted: April 14, 2022
Posted In: Discussion, Environment/Sustainability,
From Architect Magazine:
by Dan Hart, FAIA, 2022 AIA President
“So deep is the environmental crisis; so urgent is the demand for change, that architecture must become not only a profession … but a form of public service.”
That’s first lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, addressing the 1968 AIA convention. Although she wasn’t an architect, Johnson’s legacy as an environmentalist and champion of the built environment is second to none.
I wish I could say the crisis is less urgent now, but we know that’s not the case. We also know another sad fact: The barriers Johnson faced as a woman working for change remain all too familiar to women today.
As first lady, she set out to make the nation’s capital, and the nation, more sustainable and equitable.
Starting locally in Washington, D.C., Johnson convened a group of public officials, architects, business leaders, and philanthropists in 1965 to kick off her “Committee for a More Beautiful Capital.” She planted trees and flowers; installed park benches, fountains, and playground equipment; and took barren stretches of ground in D.C.’s traffic circles and medians and made them beautiful and welcoming. She took the same approach nationwide through the 1965 Highway Beautification Act.
Lady Bird did truly groundbreaking, transformative work—only to be dismissed as inconsequential.
When critics said what she was up to was no more than “beautification,” it bothered her. But she didn’t back down. In fact, she doubled down—pointedly stating her work wasn’t “merely cosmetic.” She would say, “If I can get people to care about the beauty of flowers, maybe I can get them to care about the earth through which they grow.”
Today, we might call Johnson’s experience “prove-it-again bias”—a dynamic under which women and people of color are stereotyped as less competent, so they are forced to prove themselves more to get the same respect and recognition as white men from elite backgrounds.