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 […]
This performance was conducted within the context of Studio A. Caruso ‘Making Plans for Living Together’ at ETH Zurich in the spring semester of 2021.
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 […]
Two novels, very much intertwined, where architecture and landscape are central to the thematic content and are used to develop the character of each protagonist.
Dolores Hayden was my professor in graduate school, this book was read in one of her seminars that centered on gender in architectural and urban design. Her work provided me with a new and deeper understanding of the history of modern housing in America and the central role women played in its development.
This novel describes architecture and space very vividly. Architecture here serves as metaphors or to emphasize moments of action in the story, rooms or spaces sometime take on human qualities to reinforce the protagonist’s state of being.
Hito’s writing is so enjoyable and this has become a seminal text for how to consider images for many, including myself.
These two texts outline some of the most important aspects of my thinking as an architect; on the interconnectivity of elements of design and the information embedded in them, and the role of media (as in the plural of mediums) in affecting change. Keller was my teacher in Architecture School and I found this way […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In this article, Sarah Williams Goldhagen offers those in search of a different way of thinking about modernism – and, indeed, architecture more generally – a really significant steer. She moves away from relying on stylistic definitions and towards a positing of architecture as discourse: a set of debates about (in this instance) its relationship […]
This is a great book, chosen because of the type of architectural historical writing it exemplifies. It offers a careful and detailed historical analysis of the new building types that emerged out of social and urban initiatives such as Settlements, in the later 19th century. I love the way the spaces and forms of buildings […]
I read this while studying for my Master’s in Architectural History in 1990-91. It was key for me in seeing how one might challenge the unthinkingness in the discipline (still regrettably present) about who is thought to be worthy of study. I loved all the chapters but especially that by Barbara McFarlane, on the women’s […]
Published in 1938, Europe Rehoused became one of the most influential housing texts of the post-war era, and is still widely cited today (including my Master’s degree reading list). Written by the housing consultant Elizabeth Denby (1894–1965) it offers a survey of the nearly two decades of social housing built in six European countries since […]
When I read Joke J. Hermsen’s essay ‘With Hannah Arendt to Paris’ I was amazed to realise that the philosophical framework I was taught until then only stretched between male thinkers. The bewilderment concerned the fact that this was the prevailing educational practice, but above all that I had never questioned it myself. Continuously opening […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I first read this as a student. I worked in Waterstone’s bookshop and read everything as we had to be able to recommend books to customers. This was a Penguin Classic and went hand in hand with my obsession with everything French and ‘making’. This book is a short collection of David’s writing and takes […]
I can remember the anticipation of waiting for my copy of this to arrive. I was finishing my dissertation when I had read reviews of this book and ordered a copy. It was during a time in the 1990s when gender and architecture were a growing theme. This collection of essays made me react with […]
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 […]
In her book Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit unravels walking throughout time as a bodily experience interwoven with culture, politics, and society. Whatever the story or background, walking is always put in relation to the space that is walked in or at. From the perspective of this physical dimension, Solnit lets people bodily enter a story. Walking […]
‘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 […]
I have read parts of this book by the Leiden art historian Caroline van Eck for my PhD research on material culture in architecture, and I kept picking it up because is so insightful, but also because it is written so elegantly. Each chapter is systematically set up but also refreshingly compact, and every paragraph formulates ideas you […]
In the historical novel by the Roman writer Melania Mazzucco, the long life and work of the painter and architect Plautilla Bricci (1616-1705) are part of a precise but entertaining narration, which develops against the background of Baroque Rome. As a protagonist of the culture of her time, Plautilla appears alongside figures such as Gian […]
The screenplay for Fritz Lang’s legendary film Metropolis, which shaped the classic, albeit dystopian, image of the modern city, goes back to an often-unnamed author, Thea von Harbou, who was well known during her time as the writer of screenplays for the film. The script was preceded by a novel in which the disturbing and […]
In the nineteenth century, urban criticism was often formulated by the pen of travelling women, such as the Peruvian-French publicist and walker Flora Tristan (1803-1844), who processed her experiences as a single, working woman in her socio-politically committed writings. Five years before the publication of Friedrich Engels’ Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, Tristan […]
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 […]
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 […]
When I decided to organise the first conference of Women Architects, which was named Women in Architecture 2000 Plus I created it on the foundation that it be a celebration of women’s work. I did not want to focus on the negativity that we all have experienced in some way or another in our careers, […]
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 […]
In early ’90s I read The Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequel, the Valley of Horses, by Jean M. Auel. In these, I experienced the power of storytelling that can make history tangible. The author’s stance on women as carriers of knowledge and instrumental in change has left an indelible impression. But it’s […]
As a second year architecture student in 1986, I have this picture memory of me reclining in my dorm, flipping through an architecture magazine, (‘Architect and Builder’ or ‘Architecture + Design’), when I literally sat up. I was looking at the portraits of two saree-clad women! The facing pages featured projects by two architect sisters, […]
In recent years, the dialogues on gender politics and cultural conditioning as mentioned by author Deepa Narayan in her book titled Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women. This book highlighted the importance of recognising a schism that has expanded my own world view, as well as the level of engagement with society too. I do […]
The ‘Women in Architecture in South Asia’ conference in the year 2000 by HECAR Foundation in Mumbai is a touchstone in my memory. The most striking moment that stands out distinctly from the three days of uplifting proceedings was the release of the book The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect by Minnette […]
Most people do not know this, but the Australian academic and writer Jaynie Anderson received an Italian knighthood in 2015 from the Italian President, and is to date the only art historian ever to have been awarded the Order of the Star of Italy. In 1970 she was the first female Rhodes Fellow at Hugh’s […]
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 […]
Cammy Brothers is a prolific Italian Renaissance scholar. She is closer to an art historian, but I also appreciate that her work is not concerned with the boundaries between art and architecture, which in fact reflects a very Renaissance stance. For Brothers to focus on Michelangelo’s drawings and what they reveal about his turn to […]
