We’d love to introduce you to the Women in Architecture team members. As volunteers, they all have different strengths to utilise when pulling together a great network of members and running events which we hope grab your attention and inspire and provoke! Keep a look out over the coming months for lots of interviews and if they inspire you to join us then do get in touch!

Anna Schabel

Anna is a director of Wilton Studio Architects and the Chair of the Women in Architecture committee. Anna writes for German architecture magazines and has critiqued at several universities including Bath, Portsmouth, London Met & UEL. Anna is also the co-producer of the film “She Draws: She Builds”, a school governor and was the jury chair of the Women Architects Prize France 2018. She rides a bicycle everywhere and always carries a smile!

1. How did your interest in architecture develop?

My mum was an architect and city planner and took us to Ronchamps and other places. Before that I built shelters from branches and tiny structures from sticks, and Lego castles and clay pots. I've always been drawing, to make sense of the books and world around me. I might have been an illustrator but I was fascinated by both carving out and adding space, by space between volumes and the interaction of volumes. I've always been watching and, in my mind, cataloguing how people interact, how they inhabit space, how their houses are used. My favourite room would have been an outdoor market.

2. What’s the best experience you’ve had?

I love the experience of architecture - I'm now thinking of the visit of the Roman ruins in the Baalbek Valley in Lebanon to experience the scale of the ruins in the landscape. But also, my best experiences are to visit a space that I have drawn and re-drawn and drawn again. To see how people make it their own, see what the light does, the openings and walls is immensely satisfying.

3. What are some of the toughest challenges?

For me it was coming to terms with combining children and work and adjusting to these new responsibilities. Leaving employment, setting up with my husband, building our own house - with two small children under three - was a really tough time.

4. Who have been your influences?

The first one, my Mum, and then her architect girl friends, who were so creative and powerful. Later my dedicated tutors in Germany and London. The sculptures of Frederick Kiesler, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, paintings, cities, conversations with friends and peers, my former bosses Matthew Lloyd and Pat Woodward, my husband, nature, rocks, the mountains and traditional farm buildings.

5. What advice would you like to give and to whom?

I'd like to give advice to young women architects - maybe not advice, more views into what could be possible and what doesn't have to be so. When I started out, I loved to hear from my - female - tutor on everything about why she was teaching or what she was building etc and I found, in my career, there were points where I missed a good conversation with someone on what was to come next. One of the intentions of our film on women architects' interviews (see film trailer: “She Draws She Builds” HERE) was to show the different career options and pathways through architecture and the challenges and joy in it. The advice I'd give would be to look at what you want to do and plan what steps to take, where to put in work to get there. See architecture in a bigger context and enjoy being part of it.