“To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.” – Julia Morgan
Biography
People called her Miss Morgan.
And Miss Morgan was just five feet tall, slender, dressed in drab, fragile looking. There was something Quakerish about her people said.
“She looked like a nobody.”
And when she spoke, she did so softly. But “when she issued orders it was with the finality of a Marine drill sergeant.”
Miss Morgan was Julia Morgan. And Julia was an architect. One who graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1894. One who waited for two years for admission into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris because of her gender. And then became the first woman to graduate. And then she become the first woman to be registered as an architect in California.
In 1904, Julia opened her own architectural firm. Where she cared for all the details. “No architectural detail is too small to be overlooked,” she would say. And where she shared profits with her workers. And where her career lasted 42 years. Over which she designed about 790 structures, including Hearst Castle.
A snapshot biography of Julia Morgan source: https://bit.ly/2MIVSl9
