Documenting, Analyzing, and Celebrating Women’s Contributions to the Built Environment in Spain and Illinois
During this event, presenters discussed two recent initiatives that document, analyze, and celebrate women’s contributions to the built environment in Spain and Illinois. Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno discussed “Women in Spanish Postmodern Architecture Culture, 1965-2000,” a project that aims to critically analyze the work done by woman architects who practiced architecture in the last third of the twentieth century and to contextualize it in the historiography of Spanish architectural culture. Lisa DiChiera, director of advocacy for Landmarks Illinois, discussed “Women Who Built Illinois,” a database that includes information on more than 100 female architects, engineers, developers, designers, builders, landscape architects, and interior designers and clients and their projects between 1879 and 1979.
About the Research Initiatives
“Women Who Built Illinois” is a first-of-its-kind database that includes information on more than 100 female architects, engineers, developers, designers, builders, landscape architects, and interior designers and clients and their projects between 1879 and 1979. The database is the result of an in-depth survey of women in architecture and design-related fields that Landmarks Illinois launched in 2020—a year that marked the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, upholding a US citizen’s right to vote regardless of sex. The database calls attention to the women who helped to create places that today are cherished by cities and communities across Illinois, many of which remain unprotected without proper landmark designation.
www.landmarks.org/womenwhobuiltillinois
“Women in Spanish Postmodern Architecture Culture, 1965-2000” is a project that aims to critically analyze the work done by woman architects who practiced architecture in the last third of the twentieth century and to contextualize it in the historiography of Spanish architectural culture. In Spain, the historic period that we know as the modern movement (1925-1965) is marked by the lack of women involved in architectural practice, a traditionally male profession at the time, as it still is today. One of the most relevant developments in the profession during the 1970s was the gradual inclusion of women in university architecture studies and their full entry into professional practice. The key turning point for this inclusion was the end of the Franco Regime and the political, social, legislative, and cultural changes brought about by the transition to democracy, which hugely affected the lives of all women. In the years marked by the second and third feminist wave, Spanish woman architects began to practice architecture at a time of heated debate about the crisis of modernity and the beginning and consolidation of postmodern culture.
www.muwo.unizar.es/en/home
