Women in the History of Building

Between Private and Public

The growing number of professionally active female architects can be linked to changes in the private and public sector. The contemporary meaning of the terms ‘private and public’ deserves investigation, as much for its evolution as for its spatial consequences. Instead of inquiring into a specifically female-inspired architecture, the course considers the social and historical circumstances that hampered women's entry into the architectural profession. In addition to this research, guest speakers offer an insight into their work as it relates to specific themes.

Middle-class role distribution gave women responsibility for the private sphere, making it impossible for them to participate in the public side of architecture – the façade and the shaping of a town as the embodiment of a community. This precondition has inspired interest in the point of intersection between the definition of (private) interior spaces and (public) exterior spaces, where women were able to appropriate spaces for themselves within their allotted role.

The ‘salon’ tradition in 17th, 18th and 19th century Europe, for example, enabled women to use their private homes to influence public life through politics and cultural involvement. Gendered spaces also existed in the town (tearooms and washhouses for women, clubs for men) and in the home (boudoir, smoking room, and so on.) Lectures by women holding public office about the politics of building: Beatrice Buchenel GR, Barbara Schneider BS, Regula Lüscher Gmür ZH, Katharina Müller SH.

Even in the cases where an interior space could become public – as in the case of an auditorium whose stage is set as an interior – women became professionally involved in that space’s design only fairly recently, with very few exceptions. A discussion about the space into which the spectator cannot enter and its atmosphere illustrates the contrast between the artificial public interior space of the stage set and the sheltered private space of domestic interiors. Lectures by female stage designers: Ricarda Beilharz, Muriel Gerstner, Anna Viebrock, Christa Wenger.

Women such as Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand and Lilly Reich, by contrast, achieved early recognition for their furnishing of spaces already designed by others. Down to the present day, the ability to create an atmosphere of wellbeing within one’s (pre-existing) own four walls has been conceded to the woman. Women who have had houses built for them, such as Truus Schröder and Edith Farnsworth, as well as the wives of architects, have often – as non-professionals – contributed to the generation of architecture by means of their thoughts on domesticity. The advent of women into the architectural profession began as architecture began to lose its status-enhancing function, at the moment when social housing became a subject of architectural consideration and no longer just the prestigious home. Speakers: Nelly Keller, Liliana Brosi.