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, […]
The architecture of bias in artificial intelligence “Seeing men as the human default is fundamental to the structure of human society”. This is the premise of Caroline Criado’s book. The text depicts how female perspective and needs have often been envisioned as a deviation of men’s and thus have been misrepresented in all aspects of […]
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 […]
Anne Massey has been a fundamental figure for me. In her historical reconstruction of the Independent Group, she skilfully highlighted their contribution to the history of art, architecture, and design, offering a fresh and female point of view. She perfectly embodies my idea of the transition from merely “looking” to truly “seeing”. Beyond emphasising the […]
“There are two ways to go – towards competition or towards collaboration.” The discourse about how to work together within the complex field of architecture still poses many inconsistencies. How are we going to face the journey ahead of us? Which course do we want to pursue? And above all, with whom do we want […]
I was reminded of “Having Words”, a collection of essays by Denise Scott-Brown, when reading a foreword Berta Rahm wrote for the book “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” by Mary Wollstonecraft, which she published through her own publishing house ala Verlag in 1975. Rahm tells the story of how, during the 1960s, she […]
It was 1993 when I first picked up this book and tried to read it. My mother had read and put it on the pile of other books on her bedside table; she was 41 and I was 15 years old. The cover of the first translation into Turkish was very appealing, with the handsome […]
Charlotte Perriand lived through almost the entire twentieth century – she was 96 years old when she died in 1999 and produced work for 70 years in a row. Though not usually attracted to autobiographies, I was very curious to read her story in her own words. As first-hand life stories tend to be, there […]
‘Sua Maestà,’ I say. Then I bow and close my eyes. Gran Sasso d’Italia, ‘Your Majesty,’ is not just a mountain. She is a magnificent and omnipotent entity, a deity that has watched me grow up and offered me comfort when I needed it. Whenever I stand in her vicinity, I offer a salute. I […]
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2013) review of ‘Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities’, Canadian Architect, No. 4 2013, 38
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1998) review ‘Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, December 1998, 474-476
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2015) review ‘The Spaces of the Hospital: Spatiality and Urban Change in London 1680–1820’, Journal of Architectural Education, 69:1, 130-131
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1996) review ‘The Scottish Home’, Material History Review, Spring 1998, 93-95
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1992) review ‘The Queen Anne Revival Style in Canadian Architecture’, Material Culture Review, No.35 1992, 72-73
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2007) review ‘The Parlour and the Suburb: Domestic identities, class, femininity, and modernity’, Gender, Place & Culture, a Journal of Feminist Geography, 24 July 2007 (from a collection of reviews 499-511)
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2001) review ‘The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life’, Historical Geography, Vol. 27, 2001, 106-108
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1994) review ‘The Edwardian House: The Middle-class Home in Britain 1880-1914’, Journal of Historical Geography, Apr.1 1994, 211-212
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2001) review ‘The Architect: Reconstructing her Practice’, Design Book Review, No. 44/45 2001, 71-73
This annotation is an extract from: Annmarie Adams (1991) article ‘Rooms with a View: Domestic Architecture and Anglo-American’ that reviews Building Domestic Liberty: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Architectural Feminism and Living Space in Fact and Fiction, Design Book Review, No.20 1991, 61-62
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2016) review ‘North Oxford’, Design Book Review, No. 31 1994
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1992) review ‘New Households New Housing’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Spring 1992, 64
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2000) review ‘Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display’, CAA Reviews, Nov. 7 2000
Wright’s book and earlier dissertation was a huge motivation for my own work, especially Architecture in the Family Way (1996), which was also my dissertation. I set out, in fact, to ‘do’ a book like Wright’s but looking at architecture outside the United States. Her book is thus a model about models.
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2019) review ‘Montreal, City of Water: An Environmental History’, Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Vol. 41 No. 1, 2019, 73-74
This annotation is an extract from: Annmarie Adams (2020) review of: ‘Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in France’, Winterthur Portfolio, 54:1 2020, 112-113
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2000) review ‘House Life: Space, Place and Family in Europe’, Journal of Family History, October 2000, 557-559
This annotation is an extract from: Annmarie Adams (2016) review ‘Hitler at Home’, Buildings and Landscapes, Fall 2016, 130-132
This annotation is an extract from: Annmarie Adams (2018) review ‘Freedom and the Cage: Modern Architecture and Psychiatry in Central Europe, 1890–1914’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March 2018, 97-98
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1991) review ‘Ernest Cormier and the Universite de Montréal’, Design Book Review, No. 22, 1991, 30-32
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2006) review ‘Demons of Domesticity: Women and the English Gas Industry 1889-1939’, American Historical Review, December 2006, 1602-1603
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2013) review ‘Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals’, Times Higher Education, August 1 2013, 46
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1994) review ‘American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services’, Material History Review, Spring 1994, 87-89
Although the book itself was inspirational, a real epiphany occurred for me when I heard Elizabeth Collins lecture on the content at UC Berkeley in the late 1980s. The eye opener for me was that she could project a plan on the screen and walk the audience through it, from the perspective of a New […]
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (1997) review ‘ All the Modern Conveniences: American Household Plumbing, 1840-1890’, Material Culture Review, No.46 1997, 85-87
This annotation is an extract from Annmarie Adams (2016) review ‘A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950’, Planning Perspectives, December 2015, 138-140
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.
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.
Besides contributing to art criticism and historiography, Maria Graham (1785-1842, née Dundas and later Lady Callcott) was most successful at publishing the diaries of her travels. In these, she drew on a range of registers, from aesthetic and scientific to economic and political, besides that of gender. It is this range of approaches to understanding […]
Helen Maria Williams was a contemporary of Mary Wollstonecraft and the two met at the time of the French Revolution in Paris, both British and both women concerned with politics. Williams sided with the moderate faction of the Girondists, was imprisoned for a time under the reign of terror and soon undertook a journey to […]
Carla Lonzi’s figure is fundamental for understanding Italian feminism in the 1970s, within which Lonzi occupied a radical position that can be understood by reading three books by her: Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile (1970), Sputiamo su Hegel (1978) and La donna clitoridea e quella vaginale (1974). These and other texts were published at the time […]
King Kong the fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla? King Kong the anti-hero? Not here. Despentes invites us to consider King Kong without sexual attributes, a metaphor of power (he is still King), but of a sexuality that predates the distinction of genders. King Kong beyond the female and beyond the male, indeed, if anything, […]
Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick is both a novel and an essay on the role of women (and men) in our society, whose story is based on her own life. Chris is a flailing middle-aged indie film-maker married to Sylvere, a famous literary scholar 15 years her senior. The marriage has slipped into a sexless […]
I had a lot of fun at the Löwenbräu Reading Circle. The way they opened the imaginary exhibition made me think of all the real vernisages and openings I have been to. What drew my curiosity, was the hierarchy of all the different characters involved. Questions like “Who makes the most money?” or “What degree […]
[Joyce], you already are a great woman [architect]. In her reframing of Canadian artist Joyce Wieland’s work, feminist historian, and artist Cynthia Hammond challenges prior biography-based interpretations of Wieland’s oeuvre with analyses of four creative works: three paintings, read as self-portraits, and Beaver Lodge, the artist’s former studio and house at 497 Queen St. East, […]
My interest in alternative sources for constructing architectural historiographies came about through multiple various conversations. Jane Hall spoke about how and why documents are preserved during the Parity Talks V in relation to her own experience with Lina Bo Bardi’s archive. Helen Thomas recommended that I look at Janina Gosseye’s research, which has since led […]
I first came across Brady’s work in 2019 when organising a workshop on ‘crits’ in architectural education. Her use of humour in a space where the overriding emotions in the room are often fear, frustration or relief, was refreshing. Yet beyond the first impressions of silliness at dressing the participants of a crit in costume, […]
