From working as either individuals or collectives to questioning gender roles, from rethinking the scales, choreography and forms of labour within domestic space, to designing for the blurriness between this and other spaces of care in the private and public realms – there are a multitude of inclusive ways to practice as a feminist architect. This conversation invites practitioners to collectively discuss different forms of feminist practice and the impact it has on both the profession of architecture and the making of our built environment.
Edit collective will share projects that address and critique forms of domestic labour – from the Gross Domestic Product, a hoover which must be operated by three people working simultaneously that was developed for the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale, to D.A.M.P. (Drying And Moisture Performance), a metaphor to question Britain’s dysfunctional relationship with laundry.
Georges Massoud will talk about how feminism as a queer, collective working practice informs their work at Material Cultures as well as through the platform and support network PoA, and how this form of practice is one that practitioners across the gender spectrum can embrace.
Rayan Elnayal will discuss the feminist and collective work of Space Black that recentres the often marginalised voices at the intersection of architecture, engineering and design, including the House of Youth project at the Design Museum where they were the design leads for the Ardagh Young Creatives earlier this year.
Sarah Wigglesworth will present her Stock Orchard Street dining table sequence drawings that reveal the choreography of women’s different roles across domestic spaces, and discuss how these observations have shaped her architectural career at the intersection of feminist and sustainable practice.
Together, we will discuss these different approaches to feminist practice before opening it up to a wider discussion about whether this can be collectively defined, as well as how everyone should and can engage with practice in this way to dissolve the problematic patriarchal systems that govern so much of the built environment and how it is made.
RAYAN ELNAYAL is a Co-Founder and Director of Space Black, a team of Black women architectural designers and engineers building a practice that resists the traditional model that excluded them. Their work explores alternative spatial futures for marginalised communities through: Concept Design, Culture and Education.
MARIANNA JANOWICZ and ALICE MEYER are part of Edit, a feminist design collective, focusing on the enduring biases and hierarchies embedded into the environments that surround us. Edit’s approach uses design as a tool to support more equal interactions, both during the design process and as an outcome of the finished project.
GEORGE MASSOUD is an architect, educator and cultural worker. He is a Director of Material Cultures, a design and research practice based in London. George wants to build futures in solidarity with the various ecologies that shape our built environment. This underlying philosophy is explored in the spaces he occupies as a practitioner: in the studio, in the classroom, and in the community.
SARAH WIGGLESWORTH is director of her London-based architectural practice which she founded in 1994. Crossing between theory, research, writing and building, her office works mainly in the public sector and focuses on exploring ecological building solutions, for which it has won many awards. Sarah was granted the title Royal Designer for Industry in 2012 and awarded an MBE in 2003.
This event is part of the Portraits of Practice event series that accompanies the exhibition on show in the AA Gallery titled Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long. The series takes the themes and topics explored within the exhibition as its starting point to discuss the gendering of spaces and objects within architecture and its related disciplines.
