Being Different: Gisue Hariri and Mojgan Hariri on Culture, Success, and Mentoring Women
By Julia Gamolina
Gisue and Mojgan Hariri are two Iranian-born, Cornell-educated sisters, who founded Hariri & Hariri Architecture in 1986. Today they are celebrated as two of the most accomplished women in American architecture and design and are described as one of the most progressive and out-of-the-box firms currently working in the United States. Their projects range from luxury residential developments and hotels, to single-family houses, and high-concept, high-tech experiments. For the Hariris, design is a holistic, boundary-less enterprise, ranging from master planning and architecture to interior design, furniture, lighting, product design, and jewelry. In 2010 they were named as one of today’s greatest talents in Architecture & Design in AD-100 by the Architectural Digest and in 2014, they were included on the Design Power-100 list by Surface Magazine. Their recent monograph, Hariri & Hariri: Leading Architects, published in January 2018 by The Images Publishing Group celebrates the firm’s nearly three decade of international projects and work.
Gisue Hariri has devoted time to teaching since 1987, to emphasize the importance of academic and philosophical discourse within the context of a professional practice, and has been an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and a Visiting Critic at Cornell University. She is an activist promoting “Women Empowerment, Equality & Equity” for all women, especially in the male-dominated field of architecture. In their interview with Julia, Gisue and Mojgan talk about coming to the United States from Iran, setting up their practice, and what success means to them, advising young architects to nurture and create opportunities for others, and to remember that architecture is not just one thing.
JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
GH: We grew up in a small Iranian town in the south, attending public schools early on as my father’s profession — he was an engineer for an Iranian oil company — required that we live far in the desert near the oil fields. The desert became both deeply isolating and nurturing. Isolation encouraged our imagination to run wild and develop ideas that a more conventional childhood would have found odd as we often had to invent our own world, toys, and games. I think this creative process, envisioning and inventing my own world when there was not much around me, was definitely the beginning for me.
My earliest recollection is when, at the age of twelve, I announced to my family that I was going to be an architect. While I was determined to pursue this path, I had only a youthful understanding what that meant and no realization that one day it would be a way of life, a way of being in and seeing the world, a way of harnessing my past and constructing the future.
MH: I actually didn't want to study architecture. I was not sure what it actually required and I didn’t want to follow the footsteps of my older sister [laughs]. I wanted to become an inventor and was told there was no such a college in the United States, and perhaps I should study product design or industrial design instead - which is what I started with at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was there, in the first year studios that I was introduced to architecture and loved it. One of my professors told me if you study architecture you will learn about structure, form, and function and with that you can design everything and anything. When it was clear to me that architecture is what I want to be studying, I transferred to Cornell University where my sister was also studying architecture and the rest is history!
“Being different is an asset, being a woman is a gift, and being Iranian is a cultural strength.”
What did you both learn about yourself and about architecture in studying it at Cornell?
GH: I learned that the way I saw the world — conceptually, formally, spatially and emotionally — was very different from others! Being different is an asset, being a woman is a gift, and being Iranian is a cultural strength. Most importantly I learned that I wanted to be a great architect without having to try to be “one of the boys” in the very boys club mentality and the male domination in the profession of architecture! That meant some isolation and solitary existence yet again for me, being in the minority!
In studying architecture I also learned to be a warrior, fighting for justice, equality and equity for women. In our time most women went to university to find a suitable husband! If you were not one of them then they resented you and disliked you, and that was brutal. I learnt to become stronger, more focused, and ambitious than them all in order to triumph and prevail. Sexism and racism exists in most fields and I learned to speak up and not allow it to go on for yet another generation. As Madeleine Albright’s sayings go: “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." and “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”
MH: Architecture school was like a military camp. There were certainly do’s and don’ts. If you drew curves it was considered very feminine and therefore a weak design, until the boys of architecture started using them. Plants and natural elements were not acceptable in your drawings even though Frank Lloyd Wright, Corbu, and most architects we admired drew them in their drawings! The Modular Man of Corbusier was the only accepted figure allowed to show scale and proportion. I realized that the Modular Man was a very short man with unacceptable system of proportions to me and I refused to put him in my drawings.
However, the biggest lesson I learned in studying architecture is that there is no right or wrong way and if you are self-disciplined, you will find the best way.
Jewel of Salzburg by Hariri & Hariri
Jewels of Salzburg master plan & aerial view
How did you both first get your start in the field?
GH: I had a very bumpy & turbulent take off! As I was graduating from Cornell, a revolution took place in Iran. At the same time, there was a recession in the USA and no one was hiring any architects, especially not recent graduates with no work experience. To make it even worse, the postmodern and historicist trend in architecture that I didn't approve of, with fake columns and broken pediments, was what everyone was doing. It was a very difficult and solitary time for me and my family.
I did get a brief internship in San Francisco, where I realized I didn't have a clue about construction or how to put a building together! SoI packed up and drove to Taliesin West, hoping to volunteer at Frank Lloyd Wright's desert laboratory in Arizona. Unfortunately, Olgivanna Wright was sick and not interviewing at the time so I was directed to Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti not too far away. I ended paying them to work on the construction of a theatre, and I did kitchen and cleaning chores as well. I would say that experience was one of my most influential work experiences to date. Arcosanti was an experimental city being built with the help of students! This concept of a combination of architecture and ecology meant to evoke an idea of a built environment that worked with, instead of against, nature, resulted in exploring the meaning of architecture, the relationship of architecture and nature, architecture as an art-form, as a profession. My time there was my version of attending graduate school.
MH: I was lucky enough to skip the recession by going into the graduate school for urban studies with the legendary Colin Rowe. We looked at architecture from a new point of view of the macro scale of cities and urban renewal, which then helped me get a job in New York City quickly at the office of James Polshek who was the dean of The Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the time. Polshek was a great office — somewhere between a small artsy studio and a large corporate office. I had the opportunity to work with a lot of great designers and at the same time had access to very experienced people in the production and detailing of architecture. I learned a lot from them. I also learned however that I was not cut out for the corporate world — its politics, compromises, and mostly mediocre designs.
“...there is no right or wrong way and if you are self-disciplined, you will find the best way. ”
How did you eventually start Hariri & Hariri?
MH: While still working with James Polshek, I started doing competitions and other freelance work with Gisue every night after work, until we finally had enough small interior projects to form our own Hariri & Hariri studio, in 1986. We were poor without any connections or major work but we were excited, passionate, and determined in making our own meaningful architecture.
GH: What is interesting is that we were not afraid to go on our own and work against the paper architecture and the trend of the postmodern era. We wanted to design and build solid, memorable projects. At Hariri & Hariri we started with small projects, renovations, additions, anything that could pay our expenses. But on the side we did art projects, competitions, exhibitions, and other experimental work. We also attended a lot of art openings, cutting edge lectures and discussions, and drank a lot of cheap wine. We were working day and night, and every project was an important stepping stone for the next and had to become a work of art. Finally in 1990 we were the winners of the Young Architects Forum, sponsored by The Architectural League of New York. To then have our own work and portfolio be selected among submitted work for the 1990 Young Architects Issue of Progressive Architecture magazine, was a huge, and things really took off from there.
Where are you both in your career today?
GH: After nearly four decades of making architecture I am grateful for all the opportunities, recognitions, and trust that our clients have invested in us. With this, I feel we have the experience and expertise for an opportunity to design a museum or cultural project. We are certainly ready for it!
MH: I am content with building many different building types, but still wanting to design a museum.
Alvand Tower - Jewel of Tehran
Alvand Tower- Jewel of Tehran
Looking back at your careers, what have been the biggest challenges?
GH: Overcoming sexism is the biggest challenge we face not only in architecture, but in all professions! Gender equality and equity have always been a challenge and are still the biggest challenge facing women today. Looking back at our education in architecture, it is all based on a male-thinking model, a white privileged male architect, often creating very banal, rational, rigid structures and pragmatic boxes in the name of architecture. What I learned however was to examine everything and to look within myself for answers and to find a way to express my own ideas and experiences in life.
MH: Among many challenges we have had, one of the most important ones was surviving economically without following the typical boys club business model for architectural firms.
On the flipside, what have been the highlights?
GH: Our projects are the highlights of our career and are the rewarding confirmation of our firm belief that design is fundamental to improving quality of life and that, with an integrated and holistic approach, it can become a total work of art. Our Jewels of Salzburg project has been one of our most challenging and rewarding. This project, which we won in an international competition, is important to us not only because we were the winners among the world’s best known architects, but that this 100 million dollar development also demonstrates our holistic philosophy where we designed the master plan, the architecture of the six new buildings, the integration of an adaptive reuse structure in addition to weaving in renovated existing historic vaults, and the main landscape elements as well.
It is however neither the scale nor the challenges we confronted with the city agencies and the building codes that make our Salzburg project significant. It is the relationship between architecture and nature that we have created, a dialogue and meditative experience we have carved at the edge of the rock wall, which guides and invites the public along a creek on the edge of the site while providing privacy for those living there, offering Mozart’s birthplace a destination for the architecture of the 21st century.
“My hope is to increase the visibility and voice of women not only in creating great architecture but also in challenging the definition and practice of architecture. Women will change the field.”
MH: Another highlight and a very rewarding project is our Jewel of Tehran, an office tower located in a dense urban fabric and commercial center of Tehran, Iran. It was very special to us to create a significant, iconic and highly visible project as a gift to the country of our birth. We asked ourselves how does one create a new architecture within a culture so rich in its art and architecture already?
What makes this twelve-story office tower iconic is its double skin exterior. The pattern chosen for this outer façade is inspired by the Persian belief that heaven is the geometric manifestation of the intersection between square and circle — the earth and the sky. We wanted to create a heavenly architecture, a piece of jewelry in the middle of the chaotic, dusty, old Tehran! With LED lighting allowing the whole structure to glow like a lantern at night, turning into a beacon of light. This in turn makes the geometric openings in the outer façade turn from negative into a positive and become tiles of colored light reminiscent of the earlier structure covered with blue handmade tiles. It is precisely this understanding and balance of essential cultural identity and the dialogue between the interior and exterior, public and private, old and new that is addressed and explored in this office tower that makes it one of our highlights.
Mojgan Hariri & Gisue Hariri at the opening celebration of their Salzburg Project
GH: I would also say another highlight for us is the exhibition design of the “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” at the deYoung museum in San Francisco. This exhibition was highly political and controversial due to the President’s Muslim Ban Act and immigration policy and at a time when Muslim women were being increasingly targeted for using their fashion choices to assert their independence and identity. We hoped that this exhibition would allow a positive review and examination of a community that's often talked about but rarely given the chance to speak and present itself. We explored the interplay between the seen and unseen, the idea of being covered and protected, allowing the visitors to be seen and to gaze through openings and portals of the architecture of the exhibition.
It was extremely rewarding to create an environment that celebrated women and demonstrated that, while the veil is intended to protect women’s bodies from becoming the sexualized object of the male gaze, the “gaze” in this context becomes a charged signifier of sexuality and power.
That’s incredible. Who are you admiring right now?
GH: Greta Thunberg, the teenage environmental activist, is whom I admire. Her leadership and dedication to an important cause, her fearless interaction with global leaders at such a young age, and her courage in standing up to the president of United States for what she believes in, is truly admiring. I also share her belief in recognizing that climate change and environmental abuse is an existential crisis facing humanity today!
MH: I admire W. Kamau Bell, the host and executive producer of docu-series United Shades of America. I think it is time addressing & talking about problems & issues that exists in America like systemic racism, sexism, and cultural diversity.
What is your core mission? And what does success mean to you both?
GH: My hope is to increase the visibility and voice of women not only in creating great architecture but also in challenging the definition and practice of architecture. Women will change the field and I would like to be remembered for my contribution as one of the pioneering women to do so.
We all have witnessed global disasters caused by climate change. There is a broad consensus that our planet earth cannot be exploited indefinitely. My mission as one of the custodian’s of our planet is also to design projects that would have the least negative impact on the environment. This commitment to the environment comes from my Persian heritage, where the genius of indigenous knowledge led to innovations and techniques that are still in use today. These innovations harness nature’s own bounty and were sustainable designs, years before the concept was even understood in the west. I grew up understanding that nature is our ally, and within its beauty and mysteries lies endless possibilities for design solutions that are environmentally sustainable, organic and humane.
Success is a state of mind and is not about what you have, but who you are and the impact you will have in the world. My goal in life is to create a just, healthy, inspiring world to live in and to end the global systemic sexism and racism with creativity, positive energy, and love.
MH: We live a short life in this world and my mission is to inspire and elevate the sense of the spaces and environment in a healthy way. Success means to be happy!
“Architecture cannot be defined as one thing, style, philosophy or ism. It is the amalgamation of many things, that at it’s best, helps us define who we are today and who we might be tomorrow.”
Finally, what do you wish you knew when starting out that you know now? What advice do you have for those starting their career?
GH: I wish I knew that going into architecture is like going to war and that if you are not a warrior you are not cut to be an architect. There are so many challenges and obstacles in your way of making an inspiring project. If you are not ready to face them with conviction and strength you might as well do something else.
My advice would be to nurture and create opportunities for women in architecture, as I truly believe that women have a lot to offer to the field. We need to be mentors and sponsors to younger women. According to the Architectural Record essay by Sarah Williams, men still largely control architecture’s higher reaches, and they are more likely to lavish attention on younger men. Remember that until we respect, recognize, and appreciate women’s contribution to the field of architecture we cannot change the boys’ club culture, and the sexism and racism that exist globally in architecture.
MH: I wish I knew that the simplest things in life are the most complicated, magical, and extraordinary. What is important is to create memorable experiences, moments, and structures. Great architects are the ones trusted by the public to make buildings that offers a wider range of human experiences.
My advice to the young architects is to remember that Architecture cannot be defined as one thing, style, philosophy or ism. It is the amalgamation of many things, which at it’s best, helps us define who we are today and who we might be tomorrow.