In the post-World War II period in the Netherlands, a women’s organization set the agenda for improving the quality of social housing projects. Beginning in 1946, the Vrouwen Adviescommissie (Women Advisory Committee, VAC) in Rotterdam established a pathway in the 1950s for women’s interventions at a municipal level through bureaucratic procedures, particularly by engaging in intensive advisory activities. Consciously or not, those voluntary consultants were also making politics and defining space: their expertise influenced housing and urban design. However, their early role as organizers ...

In the 1950s, married women in the Netherlands were assimilated into the fixed ideal of heteronormative family and traditional family housing standards which were the norm; single women were not. Single women represented not only a separate category in post-Second World War society but also a stigmatised one. What was a woman without a man? Women were simply not expected to live alone. In the mid-twentieth century, however, high-rise residential projects were designed to enable women to live independently. Over a period of more than thirty years, Dutch women’s organisations and pioneering w...

La historiografía de la arquitectura occidental tiene pendiente una revisión de su enfoque y cómo afecta a nuestras formas de vida. Este ensayo invita a la reflexión sobre la disciplina de la arquitectura desde el entendimiento de que se trata de un ámbito patriarcal que es origen de desigualdades efectivas. La construcción de los espacios tiene un sentido cultural: su diseño se limita, jerarquiza y valora desde las estructuras de poder y puede perpetuar sistemas de dominación. La incorporación de la perspectiva de género en los estudios e investigaciones de arquitectura es una cuestión de ...

Women in Architecture is the first publication in the series Documents and Histories, which highlights missing voices in architecture. This first publication is a many-faceted exploration of multivocality in architecture. Catja Edens reflects on the diverse roles of women in architecture. Lara Schrijver’s essay strives for a shift from rivalry to cooperation within the design practice. Indira van ‘t Klooster develops a vocabulary that offers handles for new analyses. Setareh Noorani focuses on the developments and potential of alternative ways of archiving. And Carolina Quiroga writes about...