Women and Gender in Architecture and Urban Design

 The Interest Group aims at critically exploring women’s contributions to architecture and urban planning throughout history, focusing also on gender as constructed in architectural and planning theory and practice. Although over the course of history, social circumstances have often excluded women from the profession of architect or planner, there are nevertheless many traces of their involvement in the field, if not as practitioners, then as clients, patrons, writers, activists or users.

The goal of this Interest Group is to open up new thematic and methodological horizons for architectural and urban-planning research, as well as to discuss a potential ‘other’ theory of design and planning. It intends to impart new productive inspiration to current discussions of the city in both theory and praxis, to offer a new critical platform, and to lead to innovative paradigms. In this sense, an interdisciplinary approach proves indispensable. An examination of the city from a cultural-historical, historical, sociological, and cultural-studies dimension is to be incorporated alongside approaches that have a more strict architectural and urban planning focus.