example, she led a series of "environmental fantasy" workshops throughout the country, and Europe, to encourage women to imagine "their ideal living environment by abandoning all constraints and preconceptions." These workshops were created with the intention to contrast the term Birkby coined, "patritecture" or the architecture of the patriarchy. Systems of domination are in place in the architecture of all buildings. Birkby wrote often about how even the architecture of structures are about power and domination over marginalized groups, especially women. In a 1981 article for MS Magazine, Birky wrote, "I am troubled that no matter how much rhetoric is expounded about equal rights and the full humanity of women, if the physical world we build does not reflect this, we speak in empty phrases." Her comparison goes as far as to say that the accommodation for women in physical spaces is just as important as physical violence against women. It is because of this that she started holding workshops, to have women explore spaces created by women for women. Ms. Birkby researched vernacular architectural created by women, some of which she later published. In 1974, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable published the American Institute of Architects (AIA)'s "appalling" statistics on national membership : 24,000 men and 300 women. By then, Ms. Birkby had become active in the feminist movement, defining herself as a lesbian, and joined "CR One," a Consciousness raising group composed of dynamic and radical theorists and writers, such as Kate Millett, Sidney Abbott, Barbara Love and Alma Routsong. As a member of "CR One," Ms. Birkby contributed to visible, activist projects, such as the homesteading a building at 330 East 5th Street, in the East Village section of Manhattan, to establish a temporary residence for women. That same year, Ms. Birkby joined forces with other trailblazing women architects, such as Judith Edelman, to create the Alliance of Women in Architecture in New York. A firebrand advocate, Ms. Edelman challenged the 1974 AIA national convention with the objectionable fact that women had only represented 1.2 percent of American registered architects. An Architecture Symposium held at Washington University in St. Louis in 1974 became the inspiration for the Women's School of Planning and Architecture. The financial support for the symposium came from a grant from HUD, and sponsor organizations, including WSPA, American Indian National Bank, Coalition of 100 Black Women of D.C., Center for Community