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Research Collection Journal Article Making Trouble to Stay With: Architecture and Feminist Pedagogies Author(s): Lange, Torsten; Scott, Emely E.; Athanasiadou, Lila; Harriss, Harriet; Merrett, Andrea J.; Moeini, Iradj; Rendell, Jane; Sara, Rachel Publication Date: 2017-11 Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000228427 Rights / License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use. ETH Library social in architecture” in late modernistic housing areas. In relationship to that I’m How can we challenge the fundamental male interested in posing the question of how is, as the architecture profession becomes transparent structures), and what could be planning phase? production? that could change the public sphere, that in How is a feminist architecture to develop responsible and caring approaches to that it will welcome and host all living beings Women do not have time to spend in public; invented forms of life? to cafés, shops etc.? One example is Stepwells subjectivities possible within architectural practice? Could a method be developed to give a strong motif that collaboration between feminism and architecture generates an important tool How should we raise the question of social and environmental justice to become a mainstream topic in architecture? mainstream political objective? to space? architecture? How can feminism, within and about, (feminist spaces, practices, etc), or is it about equal rights? Do public planning need feminist separatist How do we engage those who consider groups so change the norm? To exclude to be able to include? Architecture? How could the concerns of feminism be architecture, as an active component of How does the privatisation and neo as activism? liberalisation of universities impact on feminist teaching and research in architecture schools? and research into the architectural profession? address the patriarchal nature of much of the How can we improve wages and childcare pre existing built environment? support for women in the profession to ensure more women are able to develop their To what extent is it possible/desirable for careers in architecture? within mainstream structures? In which context and scale is it possible to act Becoming a Feminist Architect 7 ISSN: 1755-068 ISSN: 1755-068 vol.7 (1) Editorial Becoming a Feminist Architect, … visible, momentous, with 1 Karin Reisinger and Meike Schalk Becoming visible Jane Rendell From, in and with Anne Tallentire Jane Rendell 13 Hyper-visible Invisibility: Tracing the Politics, Poetics and Affects of 39 the Unseen Marie-Louise Richards Situated Knowledges and Shifting Grounds: Questioning the Reality 53 Effect of High-resolution Imagery Aikaterini Antonopoulou Urban Sonographies: A Feminist Art Work and the Transformation of 65 Architectural Culture in the Infosphere Amelia Vilaplana Scholarship as Activism: Doris Cole’s and Susana Torre’s Pioneering 79 Feminism in Architectural History Andrea Jeanne Merrett Becoming momentous Making Trouble to Stay With: Architecture and Feminist Pedagogies 89 Torsten Lange and Emily Eliza Scott with contributions from Lila Athanasiadou, Harriet Harriss, Andrea Jeanne Merrett, Iradj Moeini, Jane Rendell, and Rachel Sara The Gender-Eye Approach: Eleven Tales from KTH School of 101 Architecture in Stockholm Malin Åberg-Wennerholm TAKING PLACE 8: INTERSTITIAL BREAKFAST Making Space for 115 Questions about Architecture and Feminism Teresa Hoskyns and Katie Lloyd Thomas with (Jos Boys, Julia Dwyer, Helen Stratford) 129 Feminism and Built Environment Activism in 1970s London Christine Wall Parlour: The First Five Years Naomi Stead, Gill Matthewson, 143 Justine Clark, and Karen Burns Becoming with Thinking Through Creative Merit and Gender Bias in Architecture 163 Gill Matthewson 175 Royal Cemetery Evan Pavka Reconsidering Chôra, Architecture and “Woman" Louise Burchill 191 Of the Urban and the Ocean: Rachel Carson and the Disregard of Wet 205 Volumes Charity Edwards Notes on Contributors 221 89 ISSN: 1755-068 Making Trouble to Stay With: Architecture and Feminist Pedagogies Torsten Lange and Emily Eliza Scott with contributions from Lila Athanasiadou, Harriet Harriss, Andrea Jeanne Merrett, Seyed Hossein Iradj Moeini, Jane Rendell and Rachel Sara Architecture is, at its most basic, about imagining desirable futures. Yet, (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 the outlines of an approach to architectural education rooted in feminist politics. Our goal is to offer possible tools at our disposal, from revisionist gender-centered design studios. 90 If the architectural profession is to play an incisive role in current and future world making, we believe that the discipline must fundamentally change. How “architectural” knowledge is produced and reproduced as well as contingency. Yet architecture, a notoriously conservative discipline with roots in the long nineteenth century, all too often clings to traditional notions of individual mastery, genius, and autonomy, while also maintaining deeply hierarchical and patriarchal structures. Feminist thinkers such as Donna Haraway and bell hooks have, by contrast, championed diverse practices that hold the potential to “trouble” such prevailing models, while furthermore providing fruitful alternatives 1 See: Donna Haraway, Staying with the to normative forms of knowledge production.1 Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene stresses that all knowledge is situated as opposed to objective or universal, (Durham and London: Duke University encouraging the persistent acknowledgement of positionality with regard Press, 2016); bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (New York: Routledge, 2010); Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (New fabulation” – that are grounded in the world, while, at the same time, York: Routledge, 2003); Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of recognizing their potential to make worlds otherwise. Meanwhile, Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994). hooks highlights the emancipatory potential of education, espousing pedagogical practices that transgress the limits of the classroom. With particular sensitivity to gender, race, and class, she aims to transform the dominant power relations that are socially reproduced through knowledge. might we—as educators committed to forms and practices of architecture that are progressive, egalitarian, socially and environmentally just, and so on—implement and promote feminist pedagogies? The following, collected inputs—framed by way of three loose and roundtable panel on pedagogy at the “Architecture and Feminisms” conference hosted by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in November 2016. Along with our fellow “educator-kin” and a lively audience, we discussed not only ways that feminist pedagogical strategies might contribute to meaningful “troublemaking” in the architectural discipline, but also how we might build the alliances and networks necessary to keeping that trouble productively alive. Our aim, in other 2 Isabelle Stengers, “Introductory Notes words, was to further an “ecology of practices”2 and practitioners in on an Ecology of Practices”, Cultural architectural education that might transform the discipline in responsive Studies Review, no. 11 (2005), 183–96. and sustainable fashion. Making Trouble to Stay With: Architecture and Feminist Pedagogies 91 What forms might feminist pedagogy take in architecture and who are its potential protagonists (imaginary or real)? Andrea Merrett 3 From Tipi Although not immediately concerned with pedagogy, the feminist to Skyscraper: a History of Women in Architecture (Boston: i press inc., 1973); Susana Torre, ed., Women in 3 American Architecture: A Historic and students. Contemporary Perspective (New York: who challenged the disciplinary boundaries of architectural history Whitney Library of Design, 1977). to include not only female architects, but also other histories not 4 4 Grand previously told. The work of recuperating these histories is ongoing Domestic Revolution: A History and has yet to radically alter what and how history is taught, at least of Feminist Designs for American here in North America.5 Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981). 5 Meltem Ö. Gürel and Kathryn H. historian in a professional school? Beyond developing students’ skills Anthony, “The Canon and the Void: Gender, Race, and Architectural presentation of their ideas, the historian can help students understand Journal of Architectural Education 59, no. 3 (February 2006). I believe that historians can be instrumental in countering the insularity of the architecture school around the design studio by connecting architecture to the larger social, political, and cultural forces that shape it. Feminist scholars in the 1970s, after all,
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