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, […]
Charlotte and Torsten ran the Parity Group on my arrival at the ETH with sharpness, clarity, drive, and an intoxicating quick wit. My first meeting in 2019 was energising – to hear a group of people discuss how to combat the homogeneity of the department in real terms, whilst listening to the concerns of each […]
This fanzine, created by Brady Burroughs with master’s students attending her seminar in 2019, is part of a parallel series to the Routledge ‘Thinkers for Architects’ which follows the tradition of offering an easily digestible, predominantly male cannon of philosophers for architecture students. This short publication is a collective attempt at a new series […]
One uses a word when describing the phenomenon of having experienced something in the past that is happening to the self in the now. It is called déjà vu. I have never been to Scotland nor its mountains, but as I read Nan Shepherd’s book, I strongly believe that I fell into this state of […]
Rina Swentzell utilizes her childhood memories of school to illustrate the importance of place in a person’s development. Born into a Pueblo in Santa Clara, ones’ connection to the cosmos and the earth was considered vital. Her community consisted of a large courtyard building that was constructed of earthen materials by everyone in the Pueblo. […]
I came across L’arte della gioia approximately ten years ago on a friend’s advice and read it back then. On occasions like birthdays and celebrations, I have given this book as a gift to all the women in my family, to the point that it has turned into a joke since we now have so […]
As a student in the NEW ORDER studio at the Academy of Architecture, Mendrisio, led by Clancy Moore, Albert Jiménez Rodríquez used the novel Swing Time as a starting point and guide for the developments of his design project. This is a selection of the memory drawings and and fragment models that he made.
The course “Seen from the South” curated by Cathelijne Nuijsink (chair of Professor Avermaete, ETH Zürich) aimed at investigating the relationship of the western world to its Global South counterparts. As Jean Comaroff says – the Global South – the ‘non-West’ has always been seen as the area of raw, unprocessed data so what if […]
“Our town and megacities began to extrude their working-class citizens like so much unwanted accrual.” Arundhati Roy, The pandemic is a portal. The pandemic was a lesson for everyone. The enforced lockdown on countries worldwide brought to light a myriad of stories. While some were hopeful, others were tales which were devastatingly sad. In […]
Emerging from Gauri Bharat’s travel experience and interactions with the Adivasi populations, (focusing more on the Santal community) in the regions of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar over the course of the author’s PhD research, the book weaves a captivating narrative of the daily life, housing nuances and social customs of this […]
I first read The Fountainhead as a teenager before I had plans to be an architect. It is a long time since I read the book but I remember how Ayn Rand’s seductive prose almost conceals her extreme vision of society. The book’s relentless tale of the righteous battle with the unworthy rhymed a bit […]
‘Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.’ … So begins Volume 3 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I am not a great reader of early nineteenth century fiction, […]
My cousin Perla gave me Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, I think after a not so easy trip we took together to a freezing Rome over New Year’s. We also visited Hadrian’s Villa, which is one of her favourite places. Although I have been to the villa a couple of times, I remember it as […]
Abigail Van Slyck examines the gendered implications of “the tendency to sacrifice the historic interior” in the name of “emphasizing the integrity of the architectural shell” through the preservation of historic early 20th century American libraries. The text examines how these preservation projects facilitate the erasure of traces of women’s labour in library spaces. Van […]
