Presented in a writing workshop for the production of a Post-Colonial publication, Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild explores a world post-earth where humans are domesticated and controlled by other species in order to carry their reproductive labor. Although Butler claimed that the story is about ‘love’, it impossible to overlook its parallels with colonization, white supremacy, and […]
In opposition to article four of the French law of 2005 that states that colonialism in the North of Africa has a ‘positive role’ Samia Henni ‘dissects the effects of’ counterrevolutionary architecture in the ‘transforming of Algerian territory’ and exposes its intrinsic relationship with ‘military manoeuvres, political ideologies, and colonial doctrines.’ Leopold Lambert loudreads Architecture […]
One of Puerto Rico’s leading feminist collectives examines how racial states operate, focusing on the colony of Puerto Rico. In this six-point manifesto la colectiva reaffirms, together with the Black feminists who have gone before them – ‘that the liberation of Black women will be the end of all oppression, the end of the racial […]
From texts on free love to utopias where workers rob banks and live happily ever after in the countryside, Love and Anarchy is a compendium of texts by Luisa Capetillo, the Puerto Rican anarcho-syndicalist, feminist, and utopian author. Capetillo joined the practice of loudreading in the tobacco factories and added her utopian and feminist imaginaries […]
Loudreader Luisa Capetillo writes about politics, anarchism, solidarity, mutual aid, free love, philosophy, poverty, class, and emancipation in this bilingual compendium.
A lingering trace of the influence is always present in the work of American Artist Diane Simpson. Her process begins by finding a subject to transform. Taking from the world of applied arts, her research is primarily focused on the female garment and other wearables which enhance bodily proportions, such as Elizabethan petticoats, Amish bonnets […]
Escaping her violent husband and her life in France, Flora Tristan embarked on a journey to Peru in 1833 to find her estranged Peruvian family and seek her father’s inheritance to gain financial independence. Tristan returned to France in 1834 and published her travelogue of Peru under the name Pérégrinations d’une Paria 1833– 1834 in […]
Johanna Garbald-Gredig kam 1840 in Zuoz als Tochter eines Lehrers zur Welt. Mit 21 Jahren heiratete sie den Zolleinnehmer Agostino Garbald und zog mit ihm nach Castasegna im Bergell, wo sich das Paar von Gottfried Semper 1863 eine Villa erbauen liess. Ihre Ehe blieb 16 Jahre kinderlos, wodurch Johanna Zeit hatte sich ihrer Ausbildung und […]
‘Fuck you Mr. Smith’, wrote a teenage Judith Chafee (1932–1998) to her principle upon graduating (she had found out the board of her high school had revealed her religious origins to the universities she had applied to, which at that time had a limited quota for Jewish students – she was anyway eventually offered admittance […]
Liza Fior was one of the first people to contribute an annotation to Women Writing Architecture, and here she is being interrupted and joined by Helen Thomas as she talks about the idea of annotating texts during discussion about A Little Princess, with references to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series of […]
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (de Beauvoir, 1949) Simone de Beauvoir’s work as a pioneering feminist philosopher and writer is not lost on anyone. In her most famous contribution to feminist theory, “The Second Sex” published in 1949, she challenged traditional conceptions of gender by introducing the notion of “Woman as […]
Humans see themselves as the centre of their environment, as the highest of the pyramid, the natural environment being there to sustain their race. Each time Western Europe discovers new aspects about living creatures, it directly infantilises them. With agriculture, humans started to fulfill their need for control over their environment to obtain more stability […]
This book takes you by the guts. You are captivated but also disgusted. However, you have to face a truth, you are not scared of a space, you are scared of a specific specimen, men. Why are we scared at night, walking, biking or driving home alone ? What is the problem with today’s public […]
Episode Four of A Book I Love was chosen by Linda Sjoqvist and Paul Grieguszies, the conversation can be listened to here:
The office I worked with gave me the book Anna Viebrock: Das Vorgefundene erfinden as a gift. I didn’t know the famous stage designer at the time and as a rare book out of print, it arrived in a bit of a weary state. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed having seen […]
To: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, agent provocateur and Assistant Professor of Architectural and Urban Design, School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, EPFL
for the Reading Circle RaMPE Grand Opening, on the 8th of November 2023, at Löwenbräukunst, Limmatstrasse 268 & 270, 8005 Zürich Andrea Fraser or the irony as a tool for “institutional critique” „There is indeed much to suggest that in recent years, whether or not an artwork was considered artistically relevant depended to […]
What is the main focus of consumption at a vernissage? Is it about the art or is it about the drinks, the exchange, seeing and being seen? Does the artwork lose more and more value and does the character of the artist and his performance gain in importance? I can’t remember the art, but I […]
Adichie’s rich and immersive descriptions of interiors, gardens, climate and the changing seasons serve to situate fictional events within a world so tangible that it is hard to leave it behind even when the book is finished. Her domestic settings in particular unfurl to reveal the hidden structures of class, religion and power that […]
The God of Small Things is Roy’s debut novel. Set in Kerala, India, the novel tells the story of a family through the experience of young fraternal twins, Estha and Rahel, and examines their place within caste society and their navigation of post-colonial India. This focus on the life of the family extends to the […]
Adichie’s rich and immersive descriptions of interiors, gardens, climate and the changing seasons serve to situate fictional events within a world so tangible that it is hard to leave it behind even when the book is finished. Her domestic settings in particular unfurl to reveal the hidden structures of class, religion and power that underpin […]
Du Maurier’s novel explores the malevolent quasi-home of Jamaica Inn, a coaching inn turned smugglers’ den on the Cornish moors between Bodmin and Launceston. Her protagonist, Mary Yellan, is a young woman whose mother has died, necessitating her to move from her childhood home on a farm on the banks of the Helford River in […]
Dusapin’s first novel explores Sokcho, a seaside resort city close to the freighted border between North and South Korea, through the eyes of the narrator – an anonymous young woman who works as a live-in receptionist and cook at Old Park’s guesthouse – and one of its guests, a French graphic novelist called Yan Kerrand. […]
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 […]
Arriving in front of the Kunsthaus the rain trickles on my head. There is no shelter, not even at the tram next to me. Why wouldn’t they make the entrance more comfortable? I’m sorted into a small group of 6 people, and I suspect some went to the wrong one. Our group is then led […]
A few notes after a discussion at the Rietberg Museum: We discussed the tradition of collectors’ museums in the context of the “harvest” concept. The Rietberg Museum has an incredible collection of 23,000 objects. Culture is not static “European cultures have benefited from the input they have received from these distant objects that were soon […]
The idea of content today is mainly hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism. Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”. Of course, regardless of specifics, I always insist that the final form must be beautiful. Kazuyo Sejima, “Conversation with Kazuyo Sejima”. Against Interpretation Explanations come afterwards. This interview instead concerns the design […]
This annotation has been constructed by WWA from ‘A Conversation with Kenneth Frampton: Kenneth Frampton, Stan Allen and Hal Foster’ published in the journal October (vol. 106 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 35-58, this reference p.42 and 43): Frampton: … Somehow we’ve reached this point in our conversation without mentioning Hannah Arendt, who was also a key […]
Kenneth Andrew Mroczek suggested Juliaan Lampens, edited by Angelique Campens, to women writing architecture. He sent us a link with the following review by jw468 on Goodreads: September 13, 2014 Originally posted 04/09/2014 I put off ordering a copy of this book and now it’s become expensive; however, the graphic designer has made the entire […]
In summer 1939, Swiss pioneering architect Berta Rahm (1910–1998) undertook a long-desired trip to Scandinavia with the small prize money from an architectural competition she had won. Young, impecunious, and eager, she took detailed notes and sketches, commenting on the whole range of Scandinavian everyday culture and observing the progressive professional situation of women there. […]
Christine de Pizan, a successful writer and one of the first women living from her profession, aims with this allegorical text, to rehabilitate the position of the woman in society and in theory. She narrates a utopian project of a female community performing the conception, planning, and building of the city. This city is carried […]
In a time when urbanism was mostly viewed from a technical and legal perspective, French art and architecture critic Françoise Choay offered a reflection on the modern city through the lens of theoretical discourse. Organising heterogenous ideas from various disciplines in ideological currents, such as progressism, culturalism, anti-urbanism, and naturalism, she pointed to the necessity […]
Throughout architectural history, women were always in the background, many shadowed by their male coworkers or husbands. Just like Denise Scott Brown with Robert Venturi, incredibly talented female architects had major roles in contributing to great designs, but never received the recognition they deserved. In this text, Scott Brown advocates for the importance of accurately […]
Although the title suggests that this book is about writing a dissertation, the content goes well beyond that. It is about going through and hopefully finishing a project, when several other projects and obligations run in parallel. It is about female life in contemporary western societies, where women but also people are expected to fulfill […]
Swentzell addresses how the conflicting world views of the people of the Santa Clara pueblo and European settlers were reflected through their divergent relationship with landscape. Through lived experience of both spaces, she recalls the powerful connection between pueblo’s architecture and the land as well as the impact the Bureau of Indian Affairs school for […]
In her 2016 book, Where Are the Women Architects? author Despina Stratigakos dedicates a chapter to ‘Unforgetting Women Architects: A Confrontation with History and Wikipedia.’ In this extensive work, Stratigakos, a writer, historian, and professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, elucidates the challenges faced by women in the architectural profession. She explicitly identifies […]
Aotearoa New Zealand has long been recognised as a place that advances the standing of women in society. It was, after all, the first country in the world to grant women the vote, in 1893. But, to date, there has been no comprehensive account of women in architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand aimed at a […]
The Reading Circle at the Kunsthaus Zürich guided us through the highly contested art institution, a “box with only backsides” as it was described in the closing discussion. These “backsides” became even more apparent in our tour, led by (students impersonating) the cleaning team, an invisible workforce, operating out of hidden “backrooms” and closed doors, […]
Where is the place for protest? On the tour of the Kunsthaus Zürich, the guides presented us with quotes criticising the Kunsthaus. Criticism does not leave the Kunsthaus unscathed. It does not refuse to engage in discourse but tends to play a defensive and conservative role. The ground floor of the Moserbau currently houses an […]
Together with illustrator Mariana Rio, Portuguese architect Joana Couceiro co-created the children’s book collection Casas com nome (houses with names), published by Circo de Ideias. These books are based on Ana Luísa Rodrigues’s doctoral thesis, Habitabilidade do espaço domoméstico : o cliente, o arquitecto, o habitante e a casa (The habitability of domestic space: the […]
Abandoned land, vacant lots emerge from human neglect, yet the urban wilds that form in these spaces challenge our perception of nature. For humans, nature has long been a target of conquest, a source of endless resources. After industrialization, it became a romanticized refuge—a pristine wilderness offering escape from artificial environments. In both cases, nature […]
The report The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy explores the contentious issue of repatriating African cultural artefacts. The Rietberg Museum, like many other museums, is facing concerns about the provenance of some of its artefacts, with questions about whether they had been acquired in […]
Everything we release comes back to us in some form, like an endless stream of looped rivers. And it flows everywhere, whether it is clumped or unclumped. It is in this sense that there is no nature untouched by humans. The entire system changes when some artificial action occurs. At first, people believed that changes […]
A study of the technological, theoretical, and cultural significance of the transparency of the glass structures of François Mitterand’s Grands Projects in Paris.
As an experienced architect and professor of building construction, Annette Hillebrandt co-founded IRBau (Initiative for Resource-Conserving Building) and the Urban Mining Student Award in 2016 and established www.urban-mining-design.de in 2017. The Recycling Manual is a comprehensive and detailed guide to environmentally sustainable construction with intelligent use of decommissioned materials. It provides quantified comparison between conventional […]
Light Revealing Architecture is an inspiring book I got during my research on the translucent effect created not by the opacity of glass but by the reflection on its surface. It coincides with Marietta’s observation that the luminous effect of all light sources depends upon the source, the geometry, the surfaces that receive and modify […]
This book was recommended to me by a friend when I somewhat stumbled into starting my own practice, and was searching for guidance on how to do just that. How do I connect our studio’s ideological, creative and intellectual pursuit in architecture to a fair economical compensation and entrepreneurial value? More than once I have heard complaints […]
Sara Hendren provides a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideologies and innovations that have emerged from it. ‘What Can a Body Do?’ is a phrase initially coined by philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler in conversation with Sunaura Taylor in The Examined Life, a documentary which has […]
