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 […]
As students in the NEW ORDER studio at the Academy of Architecture, Mendrisio, led by Clancy Moore, Elena Gallo and Tahnee Rutter used the novel Swing Time as a starting point and guide for the developments of their design projects. This is a selection of the memory drawings and and fragment models that they made.
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 […]
I sometimes indulge in imagining my ‘dwelling of dreams’, even though I am pessimistic about ever being in a position to actualise my perfect space. hooks’s essay poignantly touches on the power of the imagination, the politics of space, who gets to access architecture and cultural differences in approaches to building and placemaking.
Bad Behaviour consists of multiple short stories. Set in 80s New York, Gaitskill’s narratives capture the essence of the city through the way the characters interact with one another. Not only are the stories in the book about interpersonal relationships and how people treat each other, but the descriptions of the spaces that the characters […]
Another compendium on women in architecture, that presents not only current but also historical figures–our architectural “pioneers.” A suitable book to catch up with our history.
How are artists trained today? What service do they provide? How much is an artwork worth? What is the market price? What is value? Why is ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts) no longer decentrally spread over the city of Zürich? Is Toni-Areal really the place where contemporary artists are educated? Why in an impermeable […]
The written and film work of Amélie Essesse is about the historic construction methods of mud construction by women in western Africa. Her work encompasses many layers and spans from workshops in New Mexico to Paris, as well as community implementation in western African historic preservation.
As a graduate student, I came across a bizarre novel about a woman architect that negatively inspired me, if that is the correct term. Johanna Böhm, a Swiss writer, published Das Haus der alleinstehenden Frauen (The House of Single Women) in 1932, at a time of increasingly reactionary views of women, sexuality, and domesticity. The […]
In Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900, Annmarie Adams explores the middle-class home in nineteenth century England as a battleground among health reform minded women, doctors, and architects. Middle-class women positioned themselves as the healers of houses, which Victorians considered toxic and disease-ridden, and thus a potential mortal danger to their […]
As students in the NEW ORDER studio at the Academy of Architecture, Mendrisio, led by Clancy Moore, Dawid Roszkowski & Dongyong Oh used the novel Purple Hibiscus as a starting point and guide for the developments of their design projects. This is a selection of the memory drawings and and fragment models that they made.
In Victoria Rosner’s text, “Fear in a Handful of Dust,” she discusses how the germ theory led to a paradigm shift in how people started to view spaces, specifically the cleanliness of them. Rosner explains how senses used to be the main assessment of hygiene, meaning that people would rely on vision and smell to […]
Anna Tsing unravels stories of hidden ecologies emerging around the matsutake mushroom on different continents, unveiling the mushroom as an emotional anchor, a commodity, and a sign of resurgence in disturbance-based ecosystems. These disobedient ecologies, arising from deteriorated grounds, fascinate me as an alternative way of thinking about the relationship between non-human beings, architecture […]
The House on Mango Street, despite its title, is not a book about architecture, but about life… inside a house. A series of short stories or vignettes, written from the perspective of a young Latina girl in Chicago, tell us about migration, struggles, and life in general. Architecture is described as a setting, but also […]
Even if not directly on architecture, through the stories of these women, this book offers interesting descriptions of the landscape and consolidation of the cultural understanding and inhabitation of late 19th- and early 20th-century US Southwest.
Catherine Colby has done good work researching and writing on a relatively unknown woman architect: Kate Chapman. Chapman work extensively on adobe constructions in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the first decades of the 20th century. She was also part of a vibrant artistic and cultural community that produced one of the most distinctive architecture […]
Gwendolyn Wright explores the historical challenges women face in the field of architecture. She highlights how architectural practice is influenced by rigid sexual stereotypes and how women tend to have segregated roles in the periphery. She dissects the experiences of women from discriminatory hiring, salary, and advancement opportunities to double standards like discrediting domestic architecture […]
‘La perfection de l’acte créatif requiert de l’amour, et donc de la liberté’. Elisa Valero is an architect and a teacher. Her work, demanding and rigorous, is oriented towards the transmission of an architecture that is thought as much as built. This book, which reads like a manifesto, is a kind of first lesson in architecture. In […]
Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) was a Dutch Jewish writer whose diaries, written during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, offer an intimate and profound reflection on life, memory, and personal resilience. She was a woman of extraordinary intellectual independence, defying traditional gender roles with her deeply introspective and philosophical approach to existence. Unlike many of her […]
In the context of the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, one cannot overlook the compelling discourse on cultural heritage articulated by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in their text The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics. I am particularly intrigued by their argumentation regarding the ethical dimensions of acquiring and exhibiting African […]
The Reading Circle started off with a separation of the attendees into groups. Every group would receive a certain perspective into the world of the Kunsthaus, all of which were then discussed collectively. The visit confirmed many opinions I had already had of highly institutionalized museums, like the atmosphere of tension or the high threshold […]
A WHITE SANCTUARY E-1027, a house born from a collaboration between Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, was conceived and designed with emotions. It reflects their shared ideals and their individual perspectives while also embodying their relationship. Gray brought an acute understanding of how people live, creating spaces that respond to both practical needs and emotional […]
I came to feminism early. I sensed things were biased. But as many others, I thought this was getting fixed, or had already fixed itself. I eye-rolled at my mother when she mumbled while watching political debates on TV— ‘not many women in these meetings.’ I ignored the red flags when going into architecture, I […]
Reading Circle 01.11.2023 at Museum Rietberg with Studio Caruso The origin of objects has always been characterised by the Latin prefix “Ex”: extraction, exploitation and export were the determining principles that led the things of everyday, spiritual, religious and cultural life from the colonised countries to the colonising countries. The report by Bénédicte Savoy and […]
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 […]
In the midst of the Portuguese dictatorial regime (1933-1974), Maria Lamas (1893–1983) wrote in 1948 a book titled As Mulheres do Meu País (The Women of My Country). Intended to portray and highlight the experiences of women as well as to report the policies imposed on them during the regime, this book, in my view, […]
Nos encontramos ante un apasionante escrito donde Josenia Hervás registra la historia de la Escuela de la Bauhaus desde una perspectiva singular y novedosa, la de género, que permitirá comprender, de forma más amplia y objetiva, lo que aconteció dentro de los muros de tan innovadora escuela. Entre los consabidos relatos e imágenes de esta […]
In the summer of 2024, Carla Capaul, director of the Hotel Alpina Lumbrein in Val Lumnezia, Graubünden, and Jaehee Shin, editor at Women Writing Architecture, met in the gardens of zum Alten Löwen in Zurich to talk about Annelise Leu, Switzerland’s first female hotelier, and her granddaughter Nina Zumthor, who has written a book about […]
A discussion with a fellow student made me think that everything in this day and age is dependent on money. People set a price for all objects. Market players are given a decisive role in determining artistic value, thus linking the art world with the market world. The Reading Circle group represented this connection between […]
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 […]
These student projects respond to Harriet Tubman as a figure to inspire liberatory constructions. The starting point for their research was the 1869 book Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman by Sarah H. Bradford. The projects are from the Masters of Architecture Theory Seminar Oppressed Fantasies, Liberatory Constructions led by Anna Kostreva. It took […]
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)
