Victoria Solan

Stereotype is the term for an eighteenth-century French printing process which allowed for quick reproduction and the inexpensive spread of ideas and image. The American journalist Walter Lippmann recast the word to mean a crude condensation of characteristics in the 1920s, when film spread ideas even more powerfully than print. Today, stereotypes create anger and fury. Yet artists and designers still use shorthand to communicate. What is the responsibility of the artist in the age of Twitter? Designer Lisa Rosowsky and I discuss the history and meaning of stereotypes in Design Observer.

Lisa Rosowsky's newest project is a limited edition book, Blood Libel.

Image: L. Rosowsky, Family Reunion, 2008. 

Architects have long traveled to inspect the artifacts of other cultures. But does it matter what they learn or how they learn it? Designer Ashley Mendelsohn explores Cape Town's apartheid-scarred landscape for her Harvard thesis.

See more student work on Design Observer's Thesis Book Project.

See more of Mendelsohn's innovative design work.

Image: A. Mendelsohn, 2014.

Can a machine replace a baby? I write about MIT Media Lab's "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck" hackathon for Design Observer. 

If you want to contribute, "Make The Breast Pump Not Suck" is still taking suggestions.

Compress Express won the pioneer award and the popular vote at the hackathon. Rebranded as Kohana, team members have just launched a startup.

Still interested in babies and milk? Read Jill Lepore's excellent New Yorker essay on the history of the pump.  

Image: PumpIO, 2014.

Thousands of women graduate from architecture school each year, but leadership positions in the field are still largely held by men. What can organizations and individuals do to help patch the leaky pipeline to the top of the profession? In this interview for the Society of Architectural Historians' blog, I talk about professional development and gender issues with Wanda Bubriski, Founding Director of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.

Did you know that more than one hundred women trained with Frank Lloyd Wright? The BWAF-produced film A Girl is a Fellow Here: 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright explores the lives and legacies of the women who trained with Wright.

Photo copyright: Wanda Bubriski, Architect Barbie at the Bauhaus Dessau, 2013.