Nuoya Fang on Domesticity, Gender, and Architecture
Lillian Chee’s chapter, “Domesticity, Gender, and Architecture” provides a rich analysis of the complex interplay between domesticity, gender, and architecture. The text engages with a variety of disciplines, historical examples, and contemporary perspectives to offer a nuanced understanding of the implications of domestic spaces in shaping and reflecting societal norms. One key aspect of Chee’s […]
Nora Zoe Schären on The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage
The term “harvesting” I found very interesting. It generates a cycle for each system you harvest from. It’s very specific. Harvesting from a grapevine works differently than grain. It’s about harvesting the right amount in the right way without destroying the system. It’s about learning about each system and adapting to their needs in time. […]
Niels Olsen on El Planeta Film Companion
Before having the chance to see Ulmann’s film, I came across this printed matter accompanying its release. Very interested in her new work after a few years of pause since her infamous on self-exposure and foreseeing the increasing dominance of social media – Ulmann a “jeune-fille”, an amateur “avant la lettre”. The booklet invitation as well Natasha Stagg, […]
Nicolai Dinkel on Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest
While exploring the Kunsthaus Zürich, I observed a recurring pattern within my group – each time we encountered a new entrance, we would come to a halt. Our guide would then share insights about the Kunsthaus or read aloud an article, adding an enriching layer to our visit. It intrigued me to realize the frequency […]
Natália Peťková on Whereabouts
Nilanjana Sudeshna or ‘Jhumpa’ Lahiri is a Bengali American author of novels, short stories and essays. She writes in English and, more recently, in Italian. Lahiri was born in London to Indian immigrant parents and moved to the United States with her family when she was three years old. Her work is largely autobiographical and […]
Natália Peťková on Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living & Real Estate
Deborah Levy is a British novelist, playwright and poet. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the granddaughter of working-class Lithuanian Jewish immigrants on her paternal side and an upper-middle-class English family on her maternal side. Her father, Norman Levy, was a historian and a member of the African National Congress. He lived under a banning order from the Apartheid government from […]
Natália Peťková on Theory and Philosophy of Architecture
This is the text of the opening speech from a lecture series entitled ‘The Problem of Space in Architectural Criticism’ that Lina Bo Bardi gave at the Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade Federal da Bahia in the Spring of 1958. I came across it in the Architecture Words series by AA Publications on my […]
Natália Peťková on Friedrich Weinwurm
This monograph on the life and work of Friedrich Weinwurm (1885–1942), one of the protagonists of the New Objectivity movement in Slovakia, does a few things. It is a handsome object that allures with carefully restored original documents and photographs of Weinwurm’s buildings today by Olja Triaška Stefanovič. By situating the work of Weinwurm in […]
Natália Peťková on Carolotopia
I met Carla Frick-Cloupet, a young architect and PhD candidate at the l’Université Jean-Monet and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne, at a seminar, themed the ‘Norm and its Contrary’, at the architectural school in Rennes in early 2020. She delivered her rigorous yet playful reading of contemporary architectural production in France and Belgium […]
Natália Peťková on Asylum Road
Olivia Katarina Sudjic (born 1988) is a young British fiction writer Sudjic was born in London, England. Her father is Dejan Sudjic who grew up in Acton, London; his parents, who were immigrants from Yugoslavia, spoke Serbo-Croatian at home. Sudjic’s third novel Asylum Road was published in 2021. Therein, the narrator Anya is from Sarajevo. […]
Natália Peťková on A Lover’s Discourse
Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese-born British novelist and film-maker whose work deals with themes of migration, alienation, feminism, translation and trans-national identities. She spent the first 30 years of her life in China, first in the coastal province of Zhejiang and then in Beijing, where she studied sociology and film making at the Beijing Film […]
Naomi Caruso on The Dictionary of Lost Words
In this novel, Australian writer Pip Williams combines historical facts with fiction. The facts are based on the long and arduous process it took to compile and publish the venerable Oxford English Dictionary which took place from 1857-1928. The fiction describes the life of Esme, the book’s main character, who is the daughter of one […]
Naomi Caruso on Rimon
I chose this magazine, Rimon (in Hebrew/Milgroim in Yiddish the word for pomegranate), a large format, trail blazing, glossy magazine for the arts and letters with a focus on Jewish art of the past and the present, because it was co-founded by Rachel Bernstein Wischnitzer, who acted as its art editor. The vision and ambition […]
Nandini Somaya Sampat on Rediscovering Dharavi
It is wonderous when the narratives of books are intertwined with one another. I first read Rediscovering Dharavi by Indian journalist Kalpana Sharma to gain insight into what is considered to be one of the Asia’s largest slums. However, growing up in Mumbai, Dharavi was always perceived differently – a place with its own distinct […]
Murielle Morger and Eva Schneuwly on Caliban and the Witch
In the text Caliban and the Witch, it is posited that history can be read in different ways. Based on the episode Bandersnatch from the Black Mirror series, in collaboration with Lucia Giacobbi and Cristina Urzola (two students from ETH Zürich) we carried out a performance. A group of students and assistants from ETH Zürich […]
Murielle Morger and Eva Schneuwly on Caliban and the Witch
The story of Caliban and the Witch begins in times of upheaval. Society continues to evolve and starts to put the capital in the foreground. It seeks to increase efficiency. We can read this story from different viewpoints, but we decide to read ‘the “transition” from feudalism to capitalism from the viewpoint of women, the […]
Monica Ciobotar on Louise Lawler’s Rude Museum
In this essay, Louise Lawler talks about the deconstruction of the conventions in cultural institutions defined throughout history by by men. In the church as in the museum, the pervading power of men made women feel uncomfortable and powerless in the religious sphere. This process begins with illustrations of the 14 apostles, none […]
Mona Dillier on The Living Mountain
The mountain is not a place to which you go. It is a place you become. The description of the Cairngorm Mountains in The Living Mountain speaks directly to my soul, as someone who only feels complete with mountains around. When I read the book before visiting Scotland, it could just as well have been a […]
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 […]
Mindy Seu on Testo Junkie
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 […]
Milena Buchwalder on Frauennetzwerke in Architektur und Planung
One of the main interests in the exhibition The Power of Mushrooms lies in the question of how women work together. In this book we can learn to understand what difficulties might appear, and why some groups cannot endure.
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.
The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion
Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger
Kicked a Building Lately?
Meredith Clausen on three books by Ada Louise Huxtable
Of the numerous books and scores of articles – in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere – all are important, but these three (Kicked a Building Lately?; Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger; and The Unreal America) come to mind as perhaps the most emblematic of her work. They […]
Arab Women in Architecture
Women Architects and Modernism in India Narratives and Contemporary Practices
Mayyasah Akour on Women Architects and Modernism in India
Desai’s introduction to “Women Architects in India” encapsulates perfectly how similar the discourse of feminism in architecture is across the world. It is not particularly limited to the western world (although many of the regions that reveal a similar fight have in the past been colonized by a western entity). With certain contextual nuances in […]
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 […]
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 […]
Mary Pepchinski on The Time of Life
Women writing about women writing about architecture. At the 2008 conference held at the FU Berlin to commemorate the 100th birthday of Simone de Beauvoir, many speakers called for new frameworks to understand her prodigious and diverse oeuvre, which included philosophy, literature, biography, letters, and gender studies. Intrigued by this suggestion, over the years I […]
Mary Pepchinski on America Day by Day
At the 2008 conference held at the FU Berlin to commemorate the 100th birthday of Simone de Beauvoir, many speakers called for new frameworks to understand her prodigious and diverse oeuvre, which included philosophy, literature, biography, letters, and gender studies. Intrigued by this suggestion, over the years I have been reading de Beauvoir, and discovering […]
Mary Pepchinski on A Very Easy Death
Women writing about women writing about architecture. At the 2008 conference held at the FU Berlin to commemorate the 100th birthday of Simone de Beauvoir, many speakers called for new frameworks to understand her prodigious and diverse oeuvre, which included philosophy, literature, biography, letters, and gender studies. Intrigued by this suggestion, over the years I […]
Mary Norman Woods on Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
Published in 1971, Linda Nochlin’s essay was truly a clarion call. Written amidst the Second Wave of feminism, it has had many afterlives in books, journals, conferences, and course syllabi. It helped to create entire fields like women’s and queer studies. And it has resonated in disciplines and professions far beyond the arts and architecture. […]
Mary Norman Woods on The Invisible Flâneuse
In Janet Wolff’s article on the gendering of modern urban spaces, she argues that the flâneuse was not only invisible but really non-existent. Instead it was the flâneur, the male stroller and wanderer allowed to gaze and reflect on chance, fleeting, and impersonal encounters, that first Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and then Richard […]
Mary Norman Woods on Jane Drew Memoirs
Although there has been a Jane Drew Prize honouring innovation, diversity, and inclusiveness in architecture since 1998, writings about the award’s namesake are rather few in number: a tribute written by friends and colleagues on the occasion of her 75th birthday in 1986: a monograph on Drew and her partner and husband Maxwell Fry’s practice […]
Mary Norman Woods on Brinda Somaya
Full disclosure I was involved in planning this monograph, contributed an essay, and moderated one of its dialogues between Somaya and others. Still I am immodest enough to include it because this publication is an important departure from the typical architect’s monograph. It is really an archive between two covers, documenting a multifaceted practice of […]
Marta Vives on Écrire
Writing itself is a privileged house. A communication within walls which you can either share or keep private. A whole structure of expression and meditation that its revelation is as active as the writer’s intention. The bricks and the feathers of writing are accurately clear and blurry at the same time. Whereas most of the […]
Maristella Casciato on Laura Gallucci
‘I was used to changing spaces as if they were clothes and moving walls as if they were lego blocks’, said Laura Gallucci, describing her childish fascination for the love of her life: architecture. A passionate architect, as committed to craft as she was to high tech. She was naturally minimalist, avoided any concession to […]
Maristella Casciato on l’architettrice
Who is ‘l’architettrice’ – the woman architect in the title of this novel? She is Plautilla Bricci, or Briccia, (1616-1705), the first architect of modern history. Until recently she was ignored, and now is very much in the spotlight. The author gives us the portrait of an extraordinary woman in the seventeenth century, who was […]
Marie-José Van Hee on The Female Eunuch
A book I read at the beginning of the 1970s, about the time I was finishing my studies. This book doesn’t directly talk about architecture but it does explore the status of women in society and their fight for equal rights. It has supported and stimulated me to realise my ambition as a woman and […]
Marie-José Van Hee on The Dust Roads of Monferrato
By travelling to Italy throughout the 1970s, my interest in Italian literature grew. The description of the landscape and the walk up to the house have opened up my way of looking and experiencing architecture placed within the landscape.
Marie-José Van Hee on Geschichte der Gartenkunst
I read this book in German to document my graduation thesis (1974) at the architecture school. It is a reference book on gardens starting from the Egyptian era up until the early twentieth century.
Mariana Siracusa on The Lure of the Local
Up close and personal: This is how Marguerite Duras in ‘Écrire’, Lucy Luppard in ‘The Lure of the Local’, and Rosalind Krauss in ‘Passages in Modern Sculpture’ describe the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ they write about. The stories they tell are always about personal experience, even private in Duras’ case, and this allows readers to picture […]
Mariana Siracusa on Passages in Modern Sculpture
Up close and personal: This is how Marguerite Duras in ‘Écrire’, Lucy Luppard in ‘The Lure of the Local’, and Rosalind Krauss in ‘Passages in Modern Sculpture’ describe the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ they write about. The stories they tell are always about personal experience, even private in Duras’ case, and this allows readers to picture […]
Mariana Siracusa on Écrire
Up close and personal: This is how Marguerite Duras in ‘Écrire’, Lucy Luppard in ‘The Lure of the Local’, and Rosalind Krauss in ‘Passages in Modern Sculpture’ describe the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ they write about. The stories they tell are always about personal experience, even private in Duras’ case, and this allows readers to picture […]
Maria Lederer on Interiors: nineteenth-century essays
In a feminist review by Juliet Kinchen, “Interiors: nineteenth-century essays on the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ room” unpacks the constraining gender normalities that existed in the Western world for users of the home. The author initially states that the home represents the “antithesis of public space” (Kinchen, 13), an environment in which women, the assigned decorators […]
Maria Conen on Why have there been no Great Women Artists?
This essay talks about the notion of ‘Greatness’ in the art context. How ‘great’ artists and art is constructed in our society and what this means for female artists. Linda Nochlin shows the patterns according to which art institutions have always been organized and influenced the art scene. These descriptions and observations can probably be […]