Emily Pilloton-Lam stands with arms crossed, smiling, in front of a wall of tools inside the Girls Garage workshop. The Girls Garage logo appears to the left against a green background.

Photo courtesy of Emily Pilloton-Lam/Girls Garage

160 Years of Making... A Difference: Emily Pilloton-Lam and Girls Garage

By Sophia Salganicoff

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) alums have been making history over the last 16 decades! In our “160 Years of Making” series, we’re celebrating the people who shaped the School, Chicago, and the art world at large. Watch for more profiles as we honor this historic anniversary.

What happens when girls get access to power tools, welding equipment, and the space to build whatever they want? School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) alum Emily Pilloton-Lam (MFA 2005) launched Girls Garage to find out. 

In 2013, Pilloton-Lam founded Girls Garage, the country's first dedicated design and building workshop for girls and gender-expansive youth ages nine to 18, in Berkeley, California. Through free programs in carpentry, welding, architecture, and activist art, students work alongside a skilled all-female and nonbinary staff to design and build real projects for their communities. To date, participants have completed 190 projects, ranging from furniture for a domestic abuse shelter to a greenhouse for a community garden.

A group of young people work on wooden construction projects across a large open workshop space. Workbenches, power tools, and organized tool storage line the walls. A blue mural on the back wall reads "Fear Less. Build More."

Photo courtesy of Project H Design/Girls Garage

Students work in the Girls Garage workshop in Berkeley.


"When girls, women, gender non-conforming folks, and people of color have an active authorship of the built environment, our experience in buildings and public space feels more welcoming, vibrant, and inclusive,” said Pilloton-Lam. “The brick and mortar of our built environment represents our lived experiences. A world designed by women is a world designed for all.”
 

A wooden play structure in the shape of a whale sits on sand at an outdoor playground.

Courtesy of Girls Garage

Girls Garage students constructed Humphrey the Whale, an interactive play structure at Berkeley's Adventure Playground, during the Young Women's Design and Building Institute and Builder Bootcamp in summer 2025. The project was built by 73 middle and high school campers ages nine to 18, in collaboration with Girls in Engineering, whose participants crafted and installed custom handholds and iris diaphragm mechanisms for the whale's eyes.


At SAIC, Pilloton-Lam encountered the building tools that would become the foundation of her work. "SAIC instilled a love of space-making, and making space for creativity. The first time I walked into the 280 Building shops, my universe opened up,” she said.

Her path to Girls Garage began with Project H Design, the nonprofit she founded in 2008. Working with a collaborator in Bertie County, North Carolina, the poorest county in the state, she embedded a design-build program called Studio H into local high school curricula—an effort documented in the 2013 film If You Build It. That same year, she relocated to Berkeley and relaunched the organization as Girls Garage. She also serves as a lecturer in University of California Berkeley's College of Environmental Design and is the author of Girls Garage: How to Use Any Tool, Tackle Any Project, and Build the World You Want to See (2020).

“I credit SAIC for my stubborn belief that creative practice in inclusive spaces is our greatest joy and resource," she said. 

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