Collections Citations

May Bi on Room at the Top

In Denise Scott Brown’s “Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture”, the author recounts her experiences and observations of sexism in the field of architecture. She criticizes the star system for perpetuating the oversight of women’s contributions and positions no matter how significant. Scott Brown’s observations of the vicious circle generated […]

19 September, 2023

Soo Jin Kim on Jeju Haenyeo Collective

  A Short Introduction to the Haenyeo Collective: A Dive into Eco-Feminism Haenyeo 해녀, is a group of remarkable women divers who fearlessly explore the ocean’s depths without any equipment, relying solely on their expertise to gather seafood for their livelihoods. While diving has historically been associated with male-dominated traditions across cultures, the Haenyeo communities […]

19 August, 2023

Emily Priest and Dylan Radcliffe Brown on The Hybrid Practitioner

To: Caroline Voet; Eireen Schreurs; Helen Thomas; combined editors of The Hybrid Practitioner   Dear Editors, We attended The Hybrid Practitioner book launch at the office of architects Henley Halebrown in London, as part of their Dialogues lecture series in April this year. The launch included talks by Yeoryia Manolopoulou and William Mann, who framed […]

1 August, 2023

Emily Priest on New Lives, New Landscapes

New Lives, New Landscapes provides an enthusiastic account of the English landscape at a time when its suburban-rural countryside was being infiltrated by mechanised farming, mass vehicle ownership and industry during the post-war decades. It balances a precise and broad understanding of the regulatory complexity of land ownership with the very material and human effects […]

21 July, 2023

Matthew Phillips on Air as Medium

Eva Horn’s “Air as Medium” examines the overlooked role of air in shaping our perception and communication within a technologically mediated society. Through cultural and historical analysis, Horn highlights the significance of air as a medium and calls for a deeper understanding of its influence on our reality. In recent projects working with perfume to […]

13 July, 2023

Jaehee Shin on Why I Write

  “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Joan Didion, Why I Write, New York Times, 1976   When I moved to Europe from South Korea in February 2015, I learned a new language that […]

11 July, 2023

Milena Buchwalder on Behind Straight Curtains

Behind Straight Curtains, Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture presents theatrical queer feminist interpretations of architecture, staged within a series of architectural scenes. Lifting the curtains of heteronormative and sexist assumptions, the book explores examples of architecture that challenge social norms.

11 July, 2023

Helen Thomas on Fahrten einer Paria

This annotation was written in 2021 in response to the SAFFA Growing Library’s call for commentary on books in their collection: I have two reasons for choosing this book – Flora Tristan sounds like an amazing and inspiring woman who I know almost nothing about. I have never read one of her books, and so […]

10 July, 2023

Emilie Appercé on Box Furniture

I spotted a similar pocket DIY book, written nearly 40 years before the Berta Rahm one at the exhibition Here We Are! Frauen im Design 1900 at Vitra Design Museum. A pioneering champion of DIY, Louise Brigham designed simple pieces of furniture built from standard wooden packing crates. Her how-to manual Box Furniture was published […]

7 July, 2023

Sonja Flury on Chratz & Quer

This book is a compilation of seven walks through Zurich put together by a group of historians that set up the organisation “Frauen Stadt Rundgang Zürich”. The thematic tours uncover the almost untraceable marks of women on Zurich’s cityscape, be it in politics, culture or commerce. The title of the book “Chratz und Quer” commemorates […]

7 July, 2023

Adhrita Roy on Seen From The South

The course “Seen from the South” curated by Cathelijne Nuijsink (chair of Professor Avermaete, ETH Zürich) aimed at investigating the relationship of the western world to its Global South counterparts. As Jean Comaroff says – the Global South – the ‘non-West’ has always been seen as the area of raw, unprocessed data so what if […]

27 June, 2023

Soo Jin Kim on A Killjoy Survival Kit

“Conclusion 1. Killjoy Survival Kit” is the opening conclusion chapter of Sarah Ahmed‘s book “Living a Feminist Life” (2017). In this chapter, Ahmed introduces the idea of feminist project as a killjoy survival kit, highlighting the intersection of survival, self-care, self-preservation and community-building. While the title may not immediately convey its content, it is essential […]

25 June, 2023

Paul Grieguszies on Caliban and the Witch

What I take from Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is how the condemnation of mostly lower-class women for witchcraft was used as a disciplinary instrument to silence and domesticate them. Federici’s connection with Marxist and Foucauldian theories are important because they fill out the missing gaps that her male predecessors left out. But for […]

30 May, 2023

Mindy Seu on The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction 

On the occasion of Mindy’s Cyberfeminism Index tour, the WWA editors Emilie Appercé and Jaehee Shin met with her at the Zurich University of the Arts to exchange about the evolution of her project since she launched the website in 2020 and the future of the index, which now exists in both digital and physical […]

13 April, 2023

Bilge Bal on Muhafaza/Mimarlık

Muhafaza/Mimarlık, which translates into English as Conservation/Architecture, is a conservation history of Turkey. It examines the conservation policies and ideologies of Istanbul’s architectural heritage from the Tanzimat Period to the end of the 1960s. It explores the approaches of governments, architects and intellectuals and discusses the resulting conservation projects and practices. The compilation also has […]

13 April, 2023

Yagmur Kültür on Kuskus

I felt disturbed and uneasy when I first read the short story ‘’Kuskus’’ . I even felt the need to stop for a while to think about what was disturbing me. The harsh exposure of the domestic spaces, the questioning of family structures, and the very intimate and ruined mother-daughter relation were not usual themes […]

10 April, 2023

William Mann on Bring up the Bodies

“The bricks ready for use today were fired last summer, when the king was still on his progress through the western counties; the clay for them was dug the winter before, and the frost was breaking down the clumps while he, Cromwell, was trying to break down Thomas More.” Hilary Mantel, ‘Bring up the Bodies’ […]

16 December, 2022

Laia Meier on Residence in Chile

On the perception of beauty in Maria Graham’s Residence in Chile It is such accidents as these which the poetical Greeks delighted to adorn with the rich fabulous imagery which spreads a charm over all they deigned to sing of. In Residence in Chile (1824) Graham reflects on beauty and the importance of its transmission […]

6 December, 2022