Just kids. More than a biography. A quest. A story of self-discovery. In Patti Smith‘s narrative, the spaces she inhabits transcend mere physical settings. They are the silent architects of her identity, shaping not only her artistry but also the very essence of her being. Each place in the story—be it the chaotic streets of […]
Embracing the mess and absurdity, commonplace objects and materials are stacked and elevated, and monstrous structure appears. The process and composition of Phyllida Barlow’s sculpture completely alter the perception of the individual objects and the space it occupies. The enormous scale, which in common practice implies a sense of monumentality, is conversely the result of […]
Frauen waren lange nicht sichtbar in der Welt der Architektur. Zeit, dass sich das ändert! Ein prächtiger Bildband feiert nun die Arbeit von zeitgenössischen Architektinnen und wegweisenden Pionierinnen. Die Niederländerin Nathalie de Vries etwa ist mit ihrer an einen Bücherberg erinnernden Bibliothek (Spijkenisse, 2012) vertreten, die Dänin Lene Tranberg wird mit einem visionären Studentenwohnheim (Kopenhagen, […]
A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay published first in 1929, based on the lectures Woolf delivered at two women’s colleges at Cambridge University. Woolf’s writing is about the women’s struggle for independence and creative opportunity and is a landmark in feminist writing. At the commencement of the essay Woolf narrates how she […]
A non-fiction narrative description of the journey from conception to construction of the Parisian monument La Grande Arche de la Défense. Through a series of interviews and extensive research, the author recounts and condenses the complexity of all aspects of state-funded, large-scale architectural projects – a fragile balance between beauty, technique, politics, and finance. Cossé […]
In 1950, following her fourth year studying at the AA and prior to her final year of her degree, Jean Symons decided to consolidate the theory she had been taught during her education by engaging in practical ‘on site’ work. This took the form of a technical assistant position in the site office of the […]
Once the audio guide was in operation, we entered the Rietberg Museum through the Villa Wesendonck. We began to wander through the various rooms without any planned route, guided solely by our curiosity. Until the voice of the narrator started speaking, we felt a little overwhelmed by the large number of objects on display without […]
Helen Thomas : Group two, Session two! So we’re going to start off by reading out the statements by the first group to read this text going around in groups there are six statements and so somebody from each group is going to read one statement to each. A. Disrupting dualism by acting […]
For Women Writing Architecture, Silvia Federici’s book, Caliban and the Witch, is a central and influential text. Not bound by academic methodology and written with ideological energy it is easy to read without being explicitly emotional. Federici challenges and questions the location of women in history as hidden and secondary through her examination of one […]
Yasmeen Lari wrote this book about the vernacular architecture of Thatta, an ancient city in the province of Sindh, about two hours drive from her home town of Karachi. On the outskirts of the city is an archeological site very important to Lari, where she has carried out various conservation works and located her Zero […]
The Cairngorm mountains in the heart of Scotland inhabit my dreams, a constant provocation. This is perhaps because I have never been in the area long enough, or with enough energy perhaps, to make the long preparatory journey that a walker must make before arriving. Instead, Nan Shepherd’s account of her observations made during many […]
Within the heart of this book lies a mysterious, and although sinister, still compelling institution where women can enjoy the fruits of age, from growing a beard to discovering that women can be men in disguise and vice versa. The curious social and psychological character of the place is reflected in its architectural forms, which […]
Although written in German, this story uncovering a complex socio-economic situation can be understood with even a rudimentary – a childlike – grasp of the language. That is, I, a perpetual student of German, could follow it, supported by sequences of drawings that show in fascinating detail the human, the architectural, landscapes of Glarus and […]
This seventeenth century poem was first published in 1692, but the date of its writing is unknown. It is one of the most important poems written by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, who was born out of wedlock as Juana Ramírez de Asbaje in or around 1651. She chose to become a nun in […]
This provocative article written for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a serious high-quality Swiss newspaper for which Stahl was features section editor at the time, is a critical response to the exhibition ‘Frau Architekt’ held at the German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt. Stahl’s response won her the Michael Althen Prize for Criticism a year later, and provides an […]
This annotation was written in 2021 in response to the SAFFA Growing Library’s call for commentary on books in their collection: The last book in the chain is more difficult, but keeping with the Latin American theme, it would perhaps be a book by Ida Prampolini, a Mexican art historian who I admire. She tells […]
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 […]
This annotation was written in 2021 in response to the SAFFA Growing Library’s call for commentary on books in their collection: Choosing Fahrten einer Paria I:Peru by Flora Tristan, by association leads me to one of my favourite books ever, which is American novelist Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, published in 1927. There […]
I have just finished reading Amelia Groom’s book Beverly Buchanan, Marsh Ruins and feel compelled to write about it. Aside from Groom’s clear prose that presents this specific work of Buchanan – Marsh Ruins, 1981 (at the Marshes of Glynn, Brunswick, GA) in an unusually easy to understand and relate to piece of writing about […]
Berta Rahm is an important inspiration for women writing architecture, especially through her publishing work, which she carried out under the title ALA Verlag (1966-1993). Pionierinnen und Pioniere is one of the books that she produced during that time. Edited and written with her colleague, Renate Möhrmann, the pioneers referred to in the longer […]
Katarina Bonnevier believes that the house, E. 1027, by Eileen Gray “hides and reveals simultaneously”. Gray’s first built home blurs spatial programmes, without discarding their remains. The building hides the ongoings inside, with an entrance from above and a private terrace at its depth. Bonnevier explains that while that the layout protects its visitors, it […]
Since the rise of modernity, humans have largely disregarded the value of non-human entities such as nature, technology, and other non-human beings. Should this approach be rethought, and should the distinction between human and non-human subjects be abolished? In a seminar course on architectural criticism titled ‘Architecture × Nature’ at the Korea National University of […]
In the Portuguese translation: O interior da História: historiografia arquitetônica para uso de Latino-americanos (2013), which was first published in Spanish as El interior de la historia: historiografía arquitectónica para uso de latinoamericanos (1990), the architectural critic and historian Marina Waisman discusses the concept of regionalism as used in international criticism and understood as a positive […]
Cities in the Northeast: From the Pot to the Street: Traditional Construction Methods (2017) – was organized by the architect and teacher Ana Rita Sá Carneiro, coordinator of the landscape laboratory at UFPE. This unprecedented study on Traditional Construction Methods from the Northeast was realized in 1978 by the architects Liana Mesquita and Neide Mota […]
This publication was organized by the architects Guilah Naslavsky and Andréa Gáti, it is a collection of articles that resulted from research on architecture and gender in Northeastern Brazil. The objective is to give visibility to the trajectories of some female architects who worked in the region and were forgotten by the Brazilian hegemonic architectural […]
There are many things I love about the book Schizogenesis : The Art of Rosemarie Trockel by Katherine Guinness. Katherine Guinness is an Australian art historian currently working at the University of Visual Arts at Colorado. First of all, it’s the first real theory book about Rosemarie Trockel, a German conceptual artist, which is […]
In the last chapter of her book, Donna Haraway tells the fabulated story of the ‘communities of compost’ and tracks their evolution over five generations. In these communities, the ‘children of compost’ recrafted the conditions of living and dying to enable flourishing in the present and in times to come. Their work is international kin […]
The Shelbourne Hotel is a book about the history of the Dublin Elizabeth Bowen describes in her autobiographical Seven Winters (1942), well-known but no longer available, grand dame touches on the Georgian restraint necessary to hold the rational character of the humanist city. Formerly a terrace of three Georgian houses, the owners of the hotel […]
In Seven Winters (1942), the city of Dublin, where Elizabeth Bowen spent her early years, appears as a reflection, a translation of the felt experience of a seven year old, now in mature years, piecing together the characters of the city, its form and colour where the tense distances that one only slowly demolished gave […]
One of Elizabeth Bowen’s most well-known non-fiction works is her history of the great house, Bowen’s Court in County Cork, which she eventually inhabited. She allows the reader an intimate knowledge and understanding of the structure and arrangement of the rooms, its relationship to the land, its deep cultural and social history. One is constantly […]
The Ornamental Design of the Chosun Dynasty House written by Chun Byung-Ok, shows a wide array of elements of the Hanok, the traditional Korean house, using photographs, drawings, and text. Covering everything from floor plans to individual pieces of furniture, the book reveals diverse aspects of traditional Korean architecture that are often overshadowed by […]
‘The beauty of the house is immeasurable, its kindness infinite.’ I felt very close to this book, although fantastic fiction is not my favorite genre. I absolutely loved the precise descriptions of the house in its grandeur, with all its many halls and sculptures, and its enormous ‘benevolence’ towards its inhabitant. I visualise it like […]
This emotional essay by Katia Zapata – the voice of Covachita architecture office in Monterrey, Mexico – comes the closest to my ideal of a Cartha article: it takes you by the hand through an unknown path while offering you the needed references to understand the ‘new’ you come in contact with. Her voice is […]
I came across this book whilst researching utopia and its built manifestations. While De Pizan’s book is not an architectural text, it does speak of the process of building a city, from foundations to detailing and populating. It proposes this new city in its materials, forms, and functions as a spatial manifestation of a message […]
Annebella is not an architect, she is a photography historian, researcher, and lecturer. This helps to give background to my surprise at how sharp and precise her takes on the typological analysis of photobooth are in this text. Without neglecting the sharing of the information specific to her background, Annebella expands on the formal, material, […]
Before reading the AG4, I saw Sandra presenting its content at a small symposium at the Arkdes, in Stockholm, back in 2017. Besides a deep knowledge of the site’s past and present, Sandra shared with us a fantastic enthusiasm for both the Tiergarten and for the detailed, emotional analysis of it she had undertaken. While […]
Julia Kristeva analyses Giovanni Bellini’s work as a representation of successive stages in his processing of the absence of a mother figure in his childhood. By linking the evolution of Bellini’s art to the theme of motherhood, she provides a different perspective on the establishment of the Venetian Renaissance. At a time where a prevailing […]
The rain was pouring while we were standing at the entry in front of the Kunsthaus. A well-needed canopy in our own hands, thanks to the colleagues who were prepared and brought an umbrella. We waited for the church bells to ring at 9 am and then ran inside, together with the other “kaffee schabracken” […]
Margaret Hicks, does this name sound familiar? To me, it was unheard of before reading Despina Stratigakos’s book ‘Where are the Women Architects?’. Somehow, sadly, Margaret was the first US woman to obtain a degree in architecture, more than that, she was the first ever woman to have her work published in an architectural journal, […]
The text below contains my contribution to the printed book, ‘Lives of the Most Excellent Architects’, edited and curated by Thomas Weaver and Cecilia Da Pozzo (2024). This work stems from a course taught during the spring semester of 2024 in Mendrisio. In this piece, I present an intimate conversation with Lilly Reich, which serves as […]
Abigail Van Slyck’s exploration of the library interior is a compelling description of the importance of women and women’s labour on the architectural interior and the structural barriers that continue to keep women’s narratives out of history. In On the Inside: Preserving Women’s History in American Libraries, Van Slyck advocates for preserving the interior and […]
Silke Kapp is a professor of Architecture and Urbanism in the Escola de Arquitetura of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The book Canteiros da Utopia, whose title can be translated as Construction Sites of Utopia, is the result of her Post-doc research in Urban Sociology from the Bauhaus Universiteit […]
This is an autobiographical work that records the career of modernist architect Minnette De Silva, a designer who is worth knowing and remembering. This document integrates a diary, an archive, an exhibition, and a monograph into a single volume. It is important to me personally because it memorialises the aesthetic richness of the twentieth century […]
Originally penned in 1975 and held from publication for fear of a ‘hostile reception’, this article is an honest and important record of architect Denise Scott Brown’s encounters with misogyny as a professional. Even today, despite the progress made by multiple waves of feminism and the more recent #MeToo movement, women still have a distance […]
Arundhati Roy was trained as an architect and matured to become a writer and one of India’s leading public intellectuals. This prophetic piece was written in the midst of the climate crisis and in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many nations in the Global South went into lockdown with little regard for […]
There is an urgent need for perspectives in architecture that come from the ground up and this book demonstrates the invaluable and deep insights that authors who share a cultural context with their subjects can offer architectural discourse. Within these pages Shanti Jayewardene does the intellectual work of unpacking the inimitable Geoffrey Bawa’s legacy in […]
Writing in her late-twenties, Angela Davis’ autobiography documents her childhood, education, activism, resulting imprisonment, and trial. Using her lived experience, Davis makes a case for the abolition of prisons, offering a critical perspective on the larger systems surrounding this architectural typology and provides insight on how we as individuals can become engaged to minimize oppression […]
While great writing about architecture has been dominated by men, although this has shifted in the last 20-30 years, I feel that the discipline of art history has, in contrast, long championed great women writers and historians. When I think of great writing by women on architecture, I find that I more frequently turn to […]
Another book about architecture and memory, a very recent one, this time examining its preservation through cast copies. This book is very close to my own research interests, and deals with the topic of ornament and its reproduction in a very novel way. Lending is really concerned with cast fragments not as isolated educational or […]