Episode 138: Alice Constance Austin

 
Alice Constance Austin
She Builds Podcast // Gābl Media

Alice was a visionary American architect and urban planner whose radical ideas challenged the norms of housing and domestic life. Born in Chicago to Joseph and Sarah Austin, she was largely self-taught and completed only one built project—a home for her family in Santa Barbara in 1888. Influenced by European workers’ housing and socialist experiments, she turned her focus to reimagining urban life.

Around 1915, Austin partnered with lawyer and socialist leader Job Harriman in planning Llano del Rio, a cooperative colony in California. Her design for a city of 10,000 people proposed a circular layout to maximize efficiency and equal access. She envisioned shared kitchens, laundries, and childcare centers, connected by underground tunnels that streamlined food delivery, utilities, and infrastructure. Housing was to be equal in size, built of concrete row houses with shared courtyards for passive climate control, radiant-heated tile floors, built-in furniture, and Arts and Crafts–inspired details produced in local workshops. Alice’s approach reflected her belief in material feminism—the idea that women should not be confined to unpaid domestic labor. By shifting household work to communal facilities, she aimed to free women’s time for education, civic participation, and creative pursuits. Her plans also preserved land for future experimentation, including traditional single-family homes.

Though Llano del Rio never realized her full vision, Alice published widely, including her 1935 book "The Next Step: How to Plan for Beauty, Comfort, and Peace". Her proposals anticipated aspects of New Deal housing programs, modernist experiments by Le Corbusier, and today’s sustainable planning concepts.

While few of her designs were built, Alice’s work stands as an early and influential attempt to merge architecture, feminism, and socialism into a blueprint for equitable community living.

Caryatid: Mariam Issoufou Kamara

Mariam Kamara, a Nigerien architect and founder of Atelier Masomi, is known for designing culturally grounded, climate-responsive spaces that address overlooked communities. Originally trained in computer science, she later turned to architecture, gaining international recognition for her thesis on women and public space in Niger. Her work ranges from reimagining urban growth in Niamey to developing affordable, energy-efficient housing, often using local materials and traditional techniques in innovative ways. She has also co-founded a Seattle-based design collective, contributed to major urban projects in West Africa, and currently teaches urban studies at Brown University.

References:

Alter, Lloyd. “Alice Constance Austin Designed Houses Without Kitchens in 1917.” Treehugger, 17 Sept. 2021, www.treehugger.com/alice-constance-austin-houses-without-kitchens-5201804.

Colony, Museum of the New Llano. Musuem of the New Llano Colony. www.newllanocolony.com/DBcolonist/austinalicec.html.

Pioneering Women of American Architecture. pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org/alice-constance-austin.

Reeder, Linda. “Alice Constance Austin’s City Plan to Reduce Domestic Drudgery — THE ARCHITECTRESS.” THE ARCHITECTRESS, 10 Dec. 2023, www.lindareederwriter.com/blog/alice-constance-austin.

Williams, Robert, et al. Llano’s Lumber Industry. 19 Oct. 1916, www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westerncomrade/1611-westerncomrade-v4-n07.pdf.

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Episode 139: Judith Chafee

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Episode 137: Marie Triepcke Krøyer Alfvén