The Journal of Architecture

Her buildings, our buildings | Doreen Bernath & Deljana Iossifova

A number of articles gathered in this issue share, quite prominently, their position to address the issue of under-representation of women architects in architecture, which connect with other articles that explore strategies of reinterpretation and revision to counter the tendency of lack of recognition in architectural history and building study. Altogether they have decidedly moved away from the remedial effort to restore and account for missing figures on the pedestals; instead, they believe in the importance to reconsider approaches and frameworks, and to draw from and construct unexpected relations between situations, subjects, and spaces. To understand buildings and projects past and present, there remains a need for diversification of evidence, embracing what is nuanced, inhibited, contested, ephemeral, or dormant, as well as frameworks of analysis and reconceptualisation. This is to shift from the dominance of certain ‘facts’ to what may be a more unstable realisation of ‘truths’, the architectures that are hidden in plain sight, repressed and contingent. Beyond adjusting visibility and articulation of previously neglected protagonists and contributions, it becomes our urgent task, prompted by the endeavours demonstrated in this issue, to rethink processes in the field at large as that which is shared and contingent; architecture is as much a matter of her buildings as our buildings. CONTINUE READING