by Women Writing Architecture

The central tenet of this powerful word is a belief in the social, economic, and political equality of women, and it is in this general sense that it has been applied as a thematic term in this annotated bibliography. While this is a clear statement, many complexities are embodied with the ambiguity of its terms, as well as the history of its struggle. As a descriptive term, it has been broken down into various categories which vary with the ideological, geographical and social status of the categoriser. For example, feminism is sometimes assigned chronological waves or stages: from the 1830s into the twentieth century – women’s fight for suffrage, equal contract and property rights; between 1960 and 1990 – a widening of the fight to embrace the workplace, domesticity, sexuality and reproductive rights; between 1990 and 2010 – the development of micropolitical groups concerned with specific issues; and the current wave of feminism that draws power from the me-too movement, and recognises the fluidity of biological womanhood.

by Women Writing Architecture

Learning is a most difficult term to describe – perhaps considering it as a noun is a good place to start, as a quality that exists in relation to a body of knowledge – they have been learning so they are learned, they are a person of learning, that quality of erudition all scholars supposedly seek. The question that women writing architecture asks in relation to this idea of learning is: what if the body of knowledge, by nature relatively static and only slowly changing and then preferably in relation to itself, does not have defined boundaries (as a canon, or a hegemonic structure for example) but is a state of disintegration and transformation that allows outside, perhaps totally alien, contradictory, disruptive or just not from the same medium, field or reference pool in, as equivalents? In this messy place, what does learning as a verb mean, does it rely on a consensus, an attitude, and, or, a relationship to the world? In practice, the texts to which this term are attached don’t really ask these questions, yet.

by TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Tacit knowledge, described in 1966 by Michael Polanyi as what we ‘can know but cannot tell’, often denotes knowledge that escapes quantifiable dimensions of research. Much of architecture’s knowledge resides beneath the surface, in nonverbal instruments such as drawings and models that articulate the spatial imagination of the design process. Awareness of the tacit dimension helps to understand the many facets of the spaces we inhabit, from the ideas of the architect to the more hidden assumptions of our cultures.

From: Lara Schrijver, Margitta Buchert, Angelika Schnell, Tom Avermaete, Christoph Grafe, The Tacit Dimension: Architecture Knowledge and Scientific Research, 2021

by The Alternative School of Economics

As an ‘alternative school’, Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck [The Alternative School of Economics] set out to learn together, collaboratively, in a non-hierarchical way. This is a social practice and form of pedagogical critique, questioning ideas through conversations and relationships. They use diverse and creative methodologies, and collaborate with experts from a variety of disciplines, from sociologists to writers. By studying economics through the lens of day-to-day reality and personal experience, they tackle what are often perceived as difficult subjects.

by Christine Tohmé

Around 2003, some friends and I were obsessed with the idea of creating a model of education that could complement the traditional structures that are still present in the city. Some of these friends became the first curriculum committee […] “What Elements of academia were you trying to avoid?” The stultifying frameworks, the same old codes of what you need to learn and unlearn, and the set way of doing things in a chronological way. Rather, I see the history of art as a dispersed, volatile structure that can start or happen anywhere.