The world of architecture and design is full of visionary women shaping the future.
From established leaders to rising talents, these architects, academics and designers are redefining the built environment in bold and meaningful ways. While their impact deserves recognition every day, International Women’s Day is a fitting moment to highlight some of the incredible female talent driving change.
In no particular order, here are 15 women transforming architecture and design worldwide.
Lesley Lokko, Ghanaian-Scottish architect & 2024 RIBA Royal Gold Medal winner
Considered one of architecture’s fiercest campaigners for diversity and inclusion, architect and erotic fiction writer (yes, really) Lesley Lokko had a big year in 2024. Following her curation of the 2023 Venice Biennale with a raw, arresting focus on postcolonial Africa, she became the first African woman to be awarded the RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture in January last year. Notably, she received the award not so much for her body of work but rather for the impact her ideas, values and teachings have had on the wider community.
She went on to be named both on TIME Magazine’s list of ‘100 Most Influential People of 2024’ and the BBC’s annual list of the ‘100 most influential women’ in the world in December. All part of a career sparked, she says, by flipping through homes and interior magazines as a child. ‘I used to love looking through them and examining how kitchens were fitted,’ she says. ‘This never struck me as strange. It was just my thing.’
Jeanne Gang, founder and leader of Studio Gang
One of the most prolific, climate-focussed designers in the world, American architect Jeanne Gang once described architecture as ‘a catalytic force’ for sustainability. Since setting up her practice Studio Gang – which is headquartered in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco and Paris — in 1997, she has built up a reputation for emulating ecological systems through design to ‘create places that connect with people, each other, their communities and the environment.’ The winner of the 2022 ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development and the WSJ’s ‘Architecture Innovator of the Year’, Gang recently hit the headlines for wrapping a building in San Franciso in green ceramic tiles to give the building ‘a rhythmic play of light’. She is also the architect behind the US’s first carbon-positive hotel, which opened in Denver last October.
Professor Sadie Morgan, founder and director of dRMM
A founding partner of award-winning firm dRMM Architects, Sadie Morgan is one of the greatest advocates for infrastructure in the UK, if not the world. She’s Chair of the Independent Design Panel for HS2 and on the board of the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission.
She added yet another string to her already impressive bow (which already includes an OBE for services to design advocacy in the built environment) last month when she was awarded a fellowship from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).
Aya Al-Bakree, chief executive of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation
A contemporary culture specialist and a ‘power player leading Saudi Arabia’s cultural boom’, Aya Al-Bakree has not only become one of the most influential people at the heart of the Saudi art world but on a global stage. As she builds an international cultural community through her work in both Riyadh’s Diriyah Biennale and Jeddah’s Islamic Biennale – both non-profit cultural organisations — in the Kingdom, it has been with a view to connecting Saudi Arabian and international cultural discourse.
Al-Bakree, who initially left Saudi Arabia to study at the American University in Paris, was described in an interview with Harpers Bazaar Arabia last year as being ‘part of a generation coming back to the Kingdom to contribute to phenomenal change.’
Marina Tabassum, principal of Marina Tabassum Architects
It’s been a major year for Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, who was announced as the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion designer in January. Two decades after founding her Dhaka-based firm MTA – which researches the impact of climate change in Bangladesh in addition to her work as an architect and designer – Tabassum revealed her design for the coveted annual commission, which will be her first significant project in the UK. Entitled ‘A Capsule in Time’, its design reflects themes of temporality, permanence and legacy in architecture. The structure features two arched spaces and two half domes made from glulam wood. After its five-month period in situ, it can be relocated and reused, perhaps in a library or a school, according to Tabassum. The commission followed Tabassum’s inclusion in Time’s list of ‘Most Influential People 2024’ and scooping Dezeen’s ‘Architect of the Year’ award, also in 2024.
Tatiana Bilbao, founder, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO
Made an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects just last month, Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao is also a Mies Crown Hall Americas 2025 architecture prize finalist for her aquarium design in Mazatlán, Mexico. The award, which identifies and celebrates new examples of built architecture and urbanism making outstanding contributions to communities across the Americas, will be presented in May. Bilbao’s design, a striking new aquarium building inspired by the thought that ‘the aquarium was a ruin and the ecosystems of the Sea of Cortez had taken over’, is a bold example of her focus on sustainable design where geometry merges with nature.
Lina Ghotmeh, founder of Lina Ghotmeh Architecture
The designer of the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion and winner of the 2023 ‘Architecture and Design Award’ from the Great Arab Minds Initiative in the UAE, Lebanese-born architect Lina Ghotmeh hit the headlines last month when she was appointed to complete a major development of the British Museum in London.
Her Paris-based studio was selected to renovate the famed institution’s Western Range galleries—part of a project that will see initial designs developed by mid-2026. ‘I am looking forward to continuing this rich and collaborative process as we work towards transforming this section of the museum into an extraordinary space,’ said Ghotmeh on her selection. ‘A place of connections for the world and of the world.’
Professor Sumayya Vally, principal of Counterspace
Having risen to prominence as the youngest architect ever to have designed the Serpentine Pavilion in 2021, 35-year-old South African architect Professor Sumayya Vally is on a mission to ‘redefine architectural roles aligning with non-hierarchical, co-creative approaches.’ Named Emerging Architect of the Year in the 2023 Dezeen Awards, she went on to be part of the Obel Award jury in 2024, for which the theme was ‘incorporating diverse knowledge in contemporary architecture’, was appointed curator for and artistic director of the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2022 and, last year, revealed plans for a wellness centre for refugees in Kenya inspired by the resilience of termite mounds.
Yasmin Al-Ani Spence, director, WilkinsonEyre
Architecture practice WilkinsonEyre’s lead on modern methods of working and creating productive, effective workspaces, Yasmin Al-Ani Spence, is spearheading the retrofit of the Citi Bank Tower in Canary Wharf — one of the largest workplace refurbishment projects in Europe. Following the news last month that Citigroup has committed a massive £1bn to the retrofit, all eyes will be on the building and Al-Ani Spence’s ground-breaking design, which puts health, balance and sustainability at its heart. It’s set to complete in 2026.
Alexandra Hagen, chief executive of White Arkitekter
Chief executive of White Arkitekter, one of Scandinavia’s leading architectural practices and Dezeen’s ‘Architect of the Year’ 2023, Swedish architect Alexandra Hagen is leading the charge when it comes to sustainable design – not least given the fact that White Arkitekter has set itself the challenge of becoming carbon neutral across all projects by 2030. Hagen will also be instrumental in delivering Wood City, the largest mass timber project in the world. The timber neighbourhood will cover 2.5m sq ft of land in southern Stockholm, and comprise 7,000 office spaces, 2,000 homes, shops, restaurants and public realm. It’s due for completion in 2027, and the goal is to decrease the climate footprint of the project by 40 per cent compared to one of a similar size deploying more commonly used materials such as concrete and steel.
Suhailey Farzana, co-founder of Co.Creation Architects
A community architect based in Bangladesh with a deep interest in exploring ‘the co-creation process with people, focussing on empowerment through collaboration’, Suhailey Farzana was the joint recipient of the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the International Union of Architects 2030 Award for her work on Urban River Spaces, a community-driven project to provide housing and public spaces along the river in her home town of Jhenaidah, Bangladesh. She actively engaged the local community in the project, as she does on all of her schemes, and has become well-known for working particularly closely with women and marginalised groups. ‘Within each of resides an architect,’ she said in an interview with the Business Standard last year. ‘For the Jhenaidah housing project we were fortunate to collaborate closely with a marginalised community, drawing inspiration from the thoughts of these individuals at grassroots level. Every woman holds a unique vision for the architecture of her house, seeking a harmonious blend of functionality and aesthetics.’
Dinah Bornat, director of ZCD Architects
A leading expert on child-friendly housing design, Dinah Bornat is a firm advocate for creating a built world that better considers children and young people. The founder and director of ZCD Architects, which specialises in design specifically for this demographic, was recently an advisor to the UK Government as part of a select committee inquiry into children and the built environment. She published a book, All to Play For, with the RIBA earlier this year and urges designers and developers to use their own childhood memories of play to create spaces and places that are more aligned with what children and young people actually need rather than with what adults think they want from the world around them.
Nana Biamah-Ofosu, director of YAA Projects
When architect and writer Nana Biamah-Ofosu was selected by Lesley Lokko to teach the first-ever Biennale College Architettura programme between June 2022 and July 2023 in Venice, her status as an up-and-coming name in global architecture was signed and sealed. Alongside her work as a lecturer and a director of London-based architecture and design practice YAA Projects, Biamah-Ofosu has also become well known for her extensive research and writing on subjects from African modernity to counter-histories and material and diasporic culture.
Elizabeth Diller, partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Considered one of the world’s most influential designers of cultural spaces, Elizabeth (Liz) Diller has described her vision of architecture as ‘restless’ and ‘in constant motion like the world that hosts it’. A founding partner of New York studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a professor of architecture at Princeton University and a member of the UN Council on Urban Initiatives, Diller believes that an architect’s vision for a project is to be treated like a ‘compulsion’ and has become best known for her work on museums and cultural projects including New York’s High Line, The Shed and renovation and expansion of MoMA.
Margarida Caldeira, head of Broadway Malyan’s Lisbon studio
The head of Broadway Malyan’s Lisbon office and global lead for hospitality, Margarida Caldeira became the Chair of Urban Land Institute (ULI) Portugal last July. Caldeira founded BM’s Lisbon studio in 1996 and subsequently its São Paulo studio in 2010, and since then, has split her time between Portugal and Brazil. Her expertise in designing high-profile leisure, hospitality and workplace schemes has seen her become project lead on the Tivoli Avenida Liberdade hotel in Lisbon as well as the Tivoli Beira Hotel in Mozambique. She is currently refurbishing the Mundial in Lisbon, a modernist landmark in the city designed by Porfirio Pardal Monteiro and completed in 1958.
