Subject Semester HS21 (Fachsemester) in the Field of History and Theory in Architecture gta(Delbeke)

Abstract

The theme of this History Research Studio is ‘Female Agency in Architecture before 1850’. The Studio aims at exploring the crucial role women played in the birth, life and afterlife of buildings in the early modern period. We will study female patronage, authorship, and criticism in architecture.

Objective

Students are invited to identify and investigate their own specific case studies that pertain to this theme. The Studio will teach students to be both historically and critically competent. By combining different historiographical approaches, students will develop the skills to articulate their research questions, carry out appropriate primary and secondary study and write a complete paper. The structure of the studio will follow an input-exchange-output model. All members of the chair will provide input, to both the theme and method, as well as examples and references of research. There is also room for students to read and discuss together with the material prepared for them (short texts, summaries and reading lists) and the materials they found. Weekly group meetings and individual supervision by the chair members will help students in academic research and writing. Exchanges with the researchers at the chair are also beneficial to further develop their research themes and teaching.

Content

Focussing on ‘Female Agency in Architecture before 1850’ this studio examines the emergence of the role of women in architecture and architectural theory, in a period of great economic, social and cultural change: 1450-1850. Women acquired a major role in architectural patronage in eighteenth-century France and England, when they came to independently design and commission innovative mansions and dwellings. They stand in a tradition of major female builders in early-modern (sixteenth- and seventeenth-century) Italy and in Ottoman Turkey. The relationship between architect and patron surfaces in different types of buildings commanded by women: stately residences (hôtels urbains) and emerging types as pavilions and petites mansions. These women excited their influence in the various aspects of the design process. Female patrons used their expertise in determining the layouts of their dwellings and in arranging spaces that reflected as much their daily lives as special occasions. They tell us about women’s lifestyles, their use of specific spaces, and the expression such spaces should have, as well as about their social and economic situations. While many of these patrons were women of fortune, from aristocracy, the period also sees a changing female clientele emerge with collectors, artists, dancers, actresses, writers and mistresses (the Petit Trianon for Madame de Pompadour for example). Furthermore, in this period women would increasingly express their ideas in pamphlets and articles in journals, in salons, in letter writing, in literature, or in travel accounts. They were thus voicing their ideas on architecture in both spoken and written form, and in drawing up plans for new buildings, when acting as a patron. Both as a patron and as a user of buildings women acted as a critical voice of how to design architecture from the point of view of the user of architectural spaces, be it in a domestic or a more public setting. This Master Studio invites students to adopt female agency as a primary investigative territory to critically examine the ways in which architecture is produced, conceptualised and historicised in a particular cultural and historical context. It was in a wide array of media that constituted architectural debate that the female voice was heard and influenced the larger debate. By examining the female perspective this Studio aims to open up the corpus and historiography of thinking about buildings. While we understand the necessity of a canonical history the Studio actively searches and tests approaches and methods of enquiry that challenge that canon and propose a different history. By examining the professional, artistic, authorial and cultural role of women in architecture the courses and meetings of the semester will offer an opportunity to look afresh at architectural history and theory of the early modern period.

Resources