Women Writing Architecture: Communal Bibliography
An Auto Interview by Helen Thomas, Editor, womenwritingarchitecture.org
What is Women Writing Architecture?
Live since the end of June 2021, womenwritingarchitecture.org is an online, open-source annotated bibliography of writing by women about architecture.
Initially designed to serve as a resource for academics and teachers when creating booklists and searching for critics, for example, the intention was to make it easier to stretch and test ‘the canon’ of architecture and its history. As it says on the About page of the website, this is a communal space, an entangled matrix, for “gathering, publishing and sharing annotated lists of texts; for encouragement, for finding new writers; and for insight into what is happening in the vivid realm where women speak up for themselves.”
Landing page of womenwritingarchitecture.org, 1 March 2023
Each of the three terms in the name – women writing architecture – are under question as we ask: “what is architecture when written about by women?’ ‘who defines themself as a woman?” (after Paul B. Preciado) and even, ‘what is writing in our super-social-mediated age?’
At first glance, the landing page of the website is both simple – a list of texts (which we call Citations) framed by two columns: the blue one on the left called Collections, the green one on the right named Annotations – and sometimes confusing. Time must be taken, and patience wielded, to see all the parts: to use the filters or embark on a search; to tentatively click the first + and compile a personal collection (then email it to people); to visit the Forum and find out what we have been producing; to discover and browse through all the people and organisations who have already contributed to this communal venture; to participate, even.
Partial view of the People & Organisations list on womenwritingarchitecture.org
Everyone is invited to participate, even men. Or especially men are encouraged to join in celebrating women writing architecture.
Front cover of a Glossator in the Forum: Space as Matrix Constellation by Geraldine Tedder
How does it work?
This is quite a difficult question to answer because we think, from conversations we’ve had with people, that it works differently and has different meanings for everyone. Since the cache is used to store each participant’s personal collections and in order to keep user engagement as easy as possible. The information we have about our visitors is minimal. So, we don’t really know what is being used, when or how, just how many people visit us and roughly where they are.
This question could be answered in another way, however, if I explain how the bibliography is amassed. Each citation in the list is connected to at least one Annotation or Collection. An Annotation is an individual’s response to a citation, a text, that encompasses their thoughts, opinions and research. It can be anything from a couple of sentences about why this text is important, perhaps as what Sarah Ahmed calls a ‘companion text’, to an extensive, illustrated piece of work around the citation that we could develop through an editorial process together. A Collection is a group of citations drawn from syllabi, events, bookshops, personal interest, and many other inspirations. This method of addition means that the system works best when suggested texts are the work of others, rather than by the author themselves. In this way, the value of a text is created by the number of times it is meaningful to someone, chosen as part of a collection or collections or annotated once or many times. This approach is inspired by the ‘Long Spoons’ or ‘Long Chopsticks’ allegory, which takes the dining table as an analogy for humanity.
A third way of answering this question is to show Yagmur Kültür’s response to the site, which she has kindly shared with us. It is still a work in progress.
‘A List-Like Arrangement’ © Yagmur Kültür:
How did Women Writing Architecture come about?
Although the ambition for exploiting the potential of the internet to create an entangled creative realm had existed in my imagination for several years, it was not until the autumn of 2020 that the project really began. In joining forces with Sarah Handelman, then a colleague at Drawing Matter, the imaginary started to take on a formal reality in the shape of a design brief. By December, we were ready to hand this over to Lizzie Malcolm of Rectangle , who define themselves as designers of non-linear narratives.
In the six months between commissioning Rectangle and going live, we worked with an Advisory Board to contact as many people as possible to invite them to contribute to what was at that point still an abstract idea. We were lucky to be supported by Mary McLeod and Amale Andraos, who connected us to people like Mary Norman Woods, Annmarie Adams, Despina Stratigakos and other revered historians and teachers who made the generous early contributions that form the backbone of our list. Our advisors also helped us to reflect on how to move outside our own realities – from our European location into the southern hemisphere and looking eastwards, as well as engage essential perspectives including those of decolonisation and transgender experience, for example. This essential work, carried out at present by myself and Emilie Appercé as editors assisted by Jaehee Shin, is ongoing and incomplete, providing us with perhaps our biggest challenge.
Can I take part?
Yes, everyone is invited to participate simply by emailing us at editors@womenwritingarchitecture.org and initiating a dialogue – with suggestions for citations, perhaps, an idea that we haven’t thought of yet, or a proposal for a collaboration.
We have various initiatives that invite participation and suggestion – the A Book I Love podcast series, for example, or the Glossator collection. It is also possible to send us citations (which can be already on the list or not yet there), either with an annotation or as part of a collection via our Participate page. We also produce a newsletter every now and then that can be signed-up for.
Feature Link Image: Can Writing Be Activism? Workshop / ETH Parity Group Talks. 8 March 2023 © Paul Grieguszies Schäfer
