The latest instalment of our series of AR Reading Lists: seven carefully chosen pieces from our archive, free for registered users
‘What was previously theorised as a becoming,’ writes gender theorist Jack Halberstam in the AR in 2019, ‘now appears as a project of dismantling and remaking, a sculpting of flesh and molecular form – using the tools of surgery and hormones, for sure, but also deploying the concept of transgender as a kind of wrecking ball that can knock and batter at the fortress of binary gender.’
Like a house, gender is built and unbuilt. Our understanding of gender identities is fluid and changing. Last year, the Women in Architecture awards were renamed the W Awards, reflecting the evolution in how we think about identity, gender and the myriad intersectional challenges that marginalised groups face in the profession. Through this small change, we make room for multiple identities and conversations.
The W Awards are now open for entries: put forward talented women or nominate yourself here. Entry is free, and open until 27 November. The W Awards celebrate exceptional design by people who are systemically undervalued by the society in which we live: from the design of the world’s most significant new buildings to contributions to wider architectural culture, from lifetimes of achievement to the work of women with bright futures ahead. Find out more about the W Awards here.
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Body unbuilding: on cuts, stitching and anarchitecture, Jack Halberstam, AR March 2019
‘Over the past few decades, conceptions of gender have changed irrevocably, from binary to multiple; from a centring of physical embodiment to the spatialising of identities; from definitive to fractal’
Flights of fancy: masculinity in airspace, Cassandre Greenberg, AR March 2020
‘Like a spectre that haunts the aisles, the air hostess and her domesticated cabin, the male captain at the helm, persist in the cultural imaginary’
Queer Gothic: architecture, gender and desire, Ayla Lepine, AR January 2015
‘Queer space is about space claimed defiantly, proudly even, for that which is deemed to be deviant’
The serve, Rosa Johan Uddoh, AR March 2018
‘There were Venus and Serena, creating a feminist space of possibility 23m by 8m long’
Farshid Moussavi on women in architecture, AR May 2012
‘If the idea of a female gender is to become fuel for innovation, the presence of women in architecture has to be liberated from the dialectic of women architects versus men architects’
Reputations: Minnette de Silva, Shiromi Pinto, AR July/August, 2019
‘For all de Silva’s pioneering thinking and much-vaunted elegance, her reputation for being a “difficult woman” never left her’
The Invisible Women: How female architects were erased from history, Eva Álvarez and Carlos Gómez, AR March 2017
‘Prominent women who worked in the shadow of their colleagues, partners or husbands are not recognised in existing publications’
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