Tea and Topics of Transgression. On Architecture and Gender

How can we challenge the fundamental male dominance in the building industry (that is, as the architecture profession becomes more gender balanced, the building industry at large is characterised by inertia and nontransparent structures), and what could be the result of a balanced field of practice and production? How is a feminist architecture to develop responsible and caring approaches to transforming/making the world in such a way that it will welcome and host all living beings and all existing, imaginable and still-to-beinvented forms of life? Is a nomadic feminist practice that actually affirms different notions of spatiality and subjectivities possible within architectural practice? There is an urgent need for “rethinking the social in architecture” in late modernistic housing areas. In relationship to that I’m interested in posing the question of how feministic city planning could develop a method not only involving the citizens in social pre-studies, but bringing the process further into the design- and conventional planning phase? There is a need for new types of social places that could change the public sphere, that in many examples are dominated by men – but certainly not are attractive to women. Women do not have time to spend in public; they are occupied in domestic life. Is it possible to create ‘hybrid’ spaces with another type of necessary actives, taking more important roles in everyday life in comparison to cafés, shops etc.? One example is Stepwells in India. Could we mix playgrounds with restaurants, laundry with cafés? Or could we take this spatial challenge even further? Could a method be developed to give a strong motif that collaboration between feminism and architecture generates an important tool for “rethinking the social in architecture”?

Architecture and Feminisms, 2017

Set against the background of a 'general crisis' that is environmental, political and social, this book examines a series of specific intersections between architecture and feminisms, understood in the plural. The collected essays and projects that make up the book follow transversal trajectories that criss-cross between ecologies, economies and technologies, exploring specific cases and positions in relation to the themes of the archive, control, work and milieu. This collective intellectual labour can be located amidst a worldwide depletion of material resources, a hollowing out of political power and the degradation of constructed and natural environments. Feminist positions suggest ways of ethically coping with a world that is becoming increasingly unstable and contested. The many voices gathered here are united by the task of putting critical concepts and feminist design tools to use in order to offer experimental approaches to the creation of a more habitable world. Drawing inspiration from the active archives of feminist precursors, existing and re-imagined, and by way of a re-engagement in the histories, theories and projected futures of critical feminist projects, the book presents a collection of twenty-three essays and eight projects, with the aim of taking stock of our current condition and re-engaging in our precarious environment-worlds.

An essay which addresses and identifies the issues of gendered segregation, feminism, space and architecture. The aim is to understand whether spaces create borderlines between men and women or do we as humans create them - political, social, cultural or historical. The essay draws attention to the crisis and subsequent victories of patriarchy within the twentieth-century design school, Bauhaus after the First World War. To be able to the “gendering of architecture” although it is difficult to pin-point as the ideologies with architecture itself embodies the status gender-free. I will be evaluating social theorists, marxists, marxist feminists as well as feminist to further support my argument. The emphasis of this essay is to identity the different spatial arrangement in a workplace or educational places where typical female and male working spaces contribute towards gender stratification. How is gender sustained in architecture, despite its direct correlation with patriarchy? How architecture is embedded within gender? Why are spaces defined/framed as “feminine” or “masculine”?

Deleted Journal, 2017

was held at KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm, between the 17 th to 19 th November in 2016. The conference gathered around 200 participants and included over a hundred paper presentations and performances, as well as two exhibitions. The overwhelming interest in reviving the feminist discourse in architecture gave us the opportunity to reflect on the process of becoming feminist architects. Becoming a feminist architect is a complex process, rife with strategies, tactics, frictions, advances and retreats, that will continue to engage us in the future as it does now. This became clear through the presentations of a wide range of different feminist architectural practices, both historical and contemporary, their diverse theoretical underpinnings and methodological reflections and speculations. The present publication assembles a series of vital discussions that emerged at the event, including accounts of careful and creative ways of becoming feminist architects by "knowing and doing otherwise," 2 "practising 'otherwise'," 3 or doing architecture in other ways, 4 the implication of which is a rethinking and expansion of the conventional scope of architectural practice. With these three publications -this edition of Field Journal, the Architecture and Culture issue "Styles of Queer Feminist Practices and Objects," and the anthology Architecture and Feminisms: Ecologies, Economies, Technologies -we have made an effort to create space for as many of the voices and positions present at the conference as possible. This issue presents a number of practices, as well as processes of formation, taking into account personal becomings and individual actions, and embracing the "dirty resilience" 5 of collaboration, which refuses to be purified into neat categories or binaries. Instead, we have

2021

Reference site: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Women-in-Architecture/Sokolina/p/book/9780367232344. Book preview (57 pages available): https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Routledge_Companion_to_Women_in_Arch/qhssEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover, https://routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780429278891. Recognition: Top Ten Titles published by Routledge featured at 2022 CAA Annual Conference: Sokolina, Anna, ed. The Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture (2021) https://caa.confex.com/caa/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Session/10840; and The Nomination for the SAH 2023 Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award Description: The Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture illuminates the names of pioneering women who over time continue to foster, shape, and build cultural, spiritual, and physical environments in diverse regions around the globe. It uncovers the remarkable evolution of women’s leadership, professional perspectives, craftsmanship, and scholarship in architecture from the preindustrial age to the present. The book is organized chronologically in five parts, outlining the stages of women’s expanding engagement, leadership, and contributions to architecture through the centuries. It contains twenty-nine chapters written by thirty-three recognized scholars committed to probing broader topographies across time and place and presenting portraits of practicing architects, leaders, teachers, writers, critics, and other kinds of professionals in the built environment. The intertwined research sets out debates, questions, and projects around women in architecture, stimulates broader studies and discussions in emerging areas, and becomes a catalyst for academic programs and future publications on the subject. The novelty of this volume is in presenting not only a collection of case studies but in broadening the discipline by advancing an incisive overview of the topic as a whole. It is an invaluable resource for architectural historians, academics, students, and professionals.

2017

This issue is one of three publications subsequent to the 13th International Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) Conference “Architecture & Feminisms: Ecologies, Economies, Technologies,” which was held at KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm, between the 17th to 19th November in 2016.1 The conference gathered around 200 participants and included over a hundred paper presentations and performances, as well as two exhibitions. The overwhelming interest in reviving the feminist discourse in architecture gave us the opportunity to reflect on the process of becoming feminist architects. Becoming a feminist architect is a complex process, rife with strategies, tactics, frictions, advances and retreats, that will continue to engage us in the future as it does now. This became clear through the presentations of a wide range of different feminist architectural practices, both historical and contemporary, their diverse theoretical underpinnings and methodological reflection...

There are many possible definitions among which to choose with the aim of explaining the significance of architecture being, fortunately, all of them valid as architecture is a broad- meaning field depending on the perception that every single person experiments from it, either as a user or as the creator. "Space (s)" could be one of the chosen words to describe what the meaning of architecture is as briefly as possible; understanding it as surfaces, heights, volumes, communications and the place where lives are developed. But is there space in architecture for the equality of those who dedicate to it or are we facing a clear example of discrimination in both a personal and professional way?

Field: a Free Journal for Architecture vol. 7, no. 1 (Nov. 2017): 84-100., 2017

Architecture is, at its most basic, about imagining desirable futures. Yet, despite growing awareness of the lasting and extensive effects that design decisions have in the world, many people remain inadequately represented (or entirely unrepresented) by the profession, which lacks diversity. The faction of those who hold the power to design is still, by and large, comprised of a relatively homogenous group of middle-class, white men who dominate not only the profession but also architectural education, even though there is now—in most places—near gender parity among students. How, then, might we—as educators committed to forms and practices of architecture that are inclusive, progressive, egalitarian, socially and environmentally just, and so on—implement and promote feminist pedagogies? Together, this set of short responses by young as well as established figures in the field, begins to sketch the outlines of an approach to architectural education rooted in feminist politics. Our goal is to offer possible tools at our disposal, from revisionist architectural history to site-specific, community-based spatial projects to gender-centered design studios. (Coauthored/edited by Torsten Lange and Emily Eliza Scott with contributions by Lila Athanasiadou, Harriet Harriss, Andrea Merret, Seyed Hossein Iradj Moeini, Jane Rendell, and Rachel Sara; based on a panel/roundtable discussion held at the "Architecture & Feminisms" conference at KTH Stockholm in Nov. 2016; appears in an issue of FIELD devoted to "Becoming a Feminist Architect," edited by Karin Reisinger and Meike Schalk.)

architecturaltheory.txt , 2020

Architecture and the Dialectic of Sex deals with the overall question if a feminist architecture does, or respectively, even can exist. Can there be such a thing, or would it remain a mere pipe dream? Within her research, Bettina Siegele connects various concepts and thoughts from the discourse of feminism with architecture, starting with the work of the material feminists at the beginning of the 20th century, across the work of the GDR architect Karola Bloch, and reaching the contemporary discourse through xenofeminism. http://txt.architecturaltheory.eu/?p=2921&lang=en