Bo­bie-lee Dixon

For­get the adage "it's a man's world," when it comes to ar­chi­tect Sue Courte­nay. In fact, when the T&T Guardian asked if she shared the view of renowned Iraq-born British ar­chi­tect Za­ha Ha­did that fe­male ar­chi­tects are of­ten side­lined, she re­spond­ed quite calm­ly, "No doubt about it, but I try not to dwell on it." Courte­nay, who was born in Sri Lan­ka but raised in Zam­bia, In­dia, the UK and Be­lize, where she cur­rent­ly lives, has al­ways been a lover of art and de­sign. As a child, she would of­ten find her­self ex­plor­ing the bush­es in her back yard, doc­u­ment­ing the things that were around her like anthills and bird nests.

"I used the lit­tle bit of tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming avail­able to me as in­spi­ra­tion to cre­ate the beau­ti­ful things I did not have ac­cess to, by re­cy­cling things such as tins cans, laun­dry de­ter­gent box­es, clip­pings from mag­a­zines, etc."I al­ways had an ap­ti­tude to solve prob­lems us­ing the things avail­able to me. As I grew up, this evolved in­to an in­ter­est in fash­ion de­sign, in­te­ri­or de­sign and even­tu­al­ly ar­chi­tec­ture," said Courte­nay.Courte­nay, a moth­er of two, who was in T&T on busi­ness at the time of her in­ter­view, want­ed to fol­low her heart and make her first love– fash­ion de­sign­ing–her life­long ca­reer, but when it's your par­ents' mon­ey that's fund­ing your tu­ition, you study what they be­lieve is more of a valid and lu­cra­tive ca­reer, and in this case ar­chi­tec­ture was.

Courte­nay would get her for­mal train­ing in ar­chi­tec­ture at the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia. She al­so has a mas­ters in busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion from UWI, Cave Hill Cam­pus, Bar­ba­dos. Since be­com­ing qual­i­fied, Courte­nay who is now in her 40s, has de­signed over 70 build­ings, most­ly in col­lab­o­ra­tion with struc­tur­al en­gi­neers and oth­er con­sul­tants."As the ar­chi­tect, I take the lead role. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of them are res­i­den­tial, but I have al­so de­signed restau­rants, shops, schools, and of­fice build­ings."My largest project is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion in Be­lize city, called the Fort Point Pedes­tri­an Walk. It is an ur­ban de­sign project en­com­pass­ing an area of Be­lize City most fre­quent­ed by cruise-ship pas­sen­gers."

Asked if her de­signs car­ried a sig­na­ture look, Courte­nay said her ap­proach to ar­chi­tec­ture is very sim­ple. "I want peo­ple to live and work in an eds­d­nvi­ron­ment that stim­u­lates their sens­es. Bad­ly de­signed spaces can be very drain­ing and un­pro­duc­tive to in­hab­it, and I've seen the pow­er of in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, con­fi­dence, and sat­is­fac­tion through the pow­er of good de­sign."Courte­nay said in the Caribbean, we tend not to val­ue good de­sign."In every project I un­der­take, I try to im­part this val­ue to the client through the re­sults we achieve, and in every in­stance get great plea­sure when they come to that 'aha' mo­ment, when that re­al­i­sa­tion sets in and they fi­nal­ly see the pos­si­bil­i­ties."

She has met with nu­mer­ous lo­cal ar­chi­tects and some in the re­gion as well, and she counts them all tal­ent­ed."I have been very priv­i­leged to get to know some very tal­ent­ed ar­chi­tects in T&T and the re­gion, and I'm al­ways look­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate on a project. Hav­ing stud­ied ar­chi­tec­ture in the US, I was ex­posed to it as a col­lab­o­ra­tive en­deav­our. It was not un­usu­al for more than one ar­chi­tect to col­lab­o­rate on a project."She said she has al­ways found it very strange and un­for­tu­nate that Caribbean ar­chi­tects tend to shy away from this prac­tice as there is great po­ten­tial to get ex­po­nen­tial­ly bet­ter re­sults through col­lab­o­ra­tion.A mem­ber of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al Ar­chi­tects in Be­lize, Courte­nay made his­to­ry when she was elect­ed the first fe­male pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Ar­chi­tects (FCAA), in Sep­tem­ber 2012. Be­fore her term ends in No­vem­ber 2014, she hopes to raise the stan­dards of ar­chi­tec­ture in the Caribbean by ad­dress­ing the struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies in the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion to bet­ter pro­tect and serve the pub­lic's in­ter­ests, and to in­crease aware­ness of the val­ue of ar­chi­tects and good de­sign to the re­gion's de­vel­op­ment.

"I would like to in­crease the pro­file of ar­chi­tects and their con­tri­bu­tion to our de­vel­op­ment. As I had men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I have been com­mit­ted to this cause for many years and see my role as FCAA pres­i­dent as a plat­form to make progress to­wards this end," said Courte­nay.She not­ed the next FCAA bi­en­nale and con­gress is sched­uled to be held in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in No­vem­ber 2014."I look for­ward to work­ing with the ar­chi­tects there to or­gan­ise a con­gress that will en­able the ar­chi­tects from the Caribbean and the world to learn and grow from this wealth of knowl­edge," said Courte­nay.She is al­so com­mit­ted to work­ing very close­ly with her col­leagues to ne­go­ti­ate the Mu­tu­al Recog­ni­tion Agree­ment (MRA), which recog­nis­es the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of ar­chi­tects reg­is­tered in each of the Cari­com coun­tries. "This is a crit­i­cal piece of in­fra­struc­ture on which we can raise the lev­el of ar­chi­tec­tur­al prac­tice in the Caribbean–this will put us in a po­si­tion to be able to com­pete for greater mar­ket share out­side of our ever shrink­ing do­mes­tic mar­kets."

On the cur­rent state of reg­is­tered lo­cal ar­chi­tects, and the op­por­tu­ni­ties of work out­side of T&T, Courte­nay said, "Even though the Cari­com re­gion is sup­posed to be a sin­gle mar­ket and econ­o­my, and as skilled pro­fes­sion­als ar­chi­tects are sup­posed to be able to work in any Caribbean coun­try which is par­ty to CSME, the re­al­i­ty is that they can­not. They will not be able to do so un­til an MRA is in place."Re­gion­al­ly ar­chi­tects have been in the process of ne­go­ti­at­ing this agree­ment for sev­er­al years now."It is a te­dious and com­pli­cat­ed process as each coun­try is at a dif­fer­ent stage of de­vel­op­ment as far as the pro­fes­sion goes. In ad­di­tion, it a not some­thing which the re­gion has un­der­tak­en be­fore–it is re­al­ly paving the way for oth­er pro­fes­sions to do the same," she ex­plained.She said she hopes an MRA will be in place be­fore the year's end."Af­ter that, as pro­fes­sion­als we have to step aside and leave it in the hands of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of each Cari­com coun­try to breathe life in­to the agree­ment by rat­i­fy­ing it."

Great po­ten­tial in the Caribbean

Ar­chi­tec­ture has tak­en Courte­nay all over the globe and she has met ex­treme­ly vi­sion­ary ar­chi­tects, but she be­lieves ar­chi­tects in the Caribbean are equal­ly tal­ent­ed.She said: "Ar­chi­tects do not live in a vac­u­um. The fact that many of us are ed­u­cat­ed out­side the re­gion and still main­tain close con­tact with our alum­ni; the fact that we have an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cred­it­ed school of ar­chi­tec­ture in the Caribbean (the Caribbean School of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Ja­maica); that we have in­creased ac­cess to the In­ter­net, and trav­el fre­quent­ly out­side the re­gion, all con­tribute to an un­prece­dent­ed ab­sorp­tion of build­ing tech­niques, so­lu­tions, build­ing ma­te­ri­als, and know how. How­ev­er, like every­thing else, this comes to a sat­u­ra­tion point, and be­yond this Caribbean ar­chi­tects are start­ing to con­vert these in­puts in­to Caribbean so­lu­tions."

She be­lieves the re­gion is on the thresh­old of some very pro­gres­sive de­vel­op­ments where Caribbean ar­chi­tec­ture is con­cerned. It is this promise that feeds her pas­sion to work hard to fos­ter greater col­lab­o­ra­tion, im­prove the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment and un­leash the cre­ativ­i­ty of our ar­chi­tects."I've trav­elled through­out the Caribbean as a re­sult of my ad­vo­ca­cy ef­forts on be­half of my pro­fes­sion and this has been very grat­i­fy­ing. I see so much promise and tal­ent in my fel­low Caribbean ar­chi­tects and I con­tin­ue to feel very in­spired,"said Courte­nay. Lo­cal ar­chi­tect Mark Ray­mond said Courte­nay was deeply com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the role and sta­tus of ar­chi­tects in the re­gion was ef­fec­tive­ly sus­tained in the face of nu­mer­ous chal­lenges. He de­scribed her as a high­ly tal­ent­ed ar­chi­tect who has the un­usu­al com­bi­na­tion of strong lead­er­ship skills but al­so a great team play­er."Sue is well placed and well re­spect­ed among the re­gion­al ar­chi­tec­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty and con­tin­ues to guide re­gion­al ar­chi­tects through what are for all of us un­chart­ed wa­ters with a sense of pur­pose," Ray­mond said.