Audrey Matlock’s story is an interesting one that’s worth telling. Not just because she’s a successful woman, but rather because she has built on her past experience, something that today allows her to tackle contemporary challenges with intelligence and entrepreneurial flair. Matlock started out as a sculptress, graduating from the University of Syracuse’s Fine Arts College. After a while though she realised she was not interested in developing a solitary idea with a group but rather wanted to work with other professionals to create a single work. So, she went to Yale and became an architect, working for a short time with Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier before joining Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). There, despite her still young age, she was soon entrusted with the considerable responsibilities of large-scale projects. Thanks to this experience at SOM - a practice that has always set great store by multidisciplinary work - Matlock felt ready to strike out on her own. Her decision coincided, however, with the far-reaching crisis that hit America’s architecture world towards the end of the 1990s. Undeterred, she set about transforming her New York loft into a workplace/apartment, bringing in architect friends in need of a job. Her aim was to gain visibility through competitions and small projects. Thanks to her previous experience on large-scale complex programs, Audrey Matlock won several competitions, earning a reputation as a talented architect able to think outside the box and propose systems whose technical excellence combined with contemporary materials and quality detailing deliver examples of outstanding architecture, each with their own distinctive character. Matlock’s practice now has 12 people but she can also boast of being able to harness the best professionals around to ensure top quality solutions. In this sense she could be said to be carrying on the moral legacy left by SOM, for while following all projects personally, she encourages her...
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