SAHGB Annual Lecture 2020 Gender, Methodology and Architectural History: Narrating a Journey
We are delighted to present the postponed 2020 Annual Lecture, delivered by Dr Lynne Walker on 'Gender, Methodology and Architectural History: Narrating a Journey'.
For those who have missed in person events, a limited number of places (first come, first served) will be at Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ, for which there is a nominal charge of £10 (members); £15 non-members.
Registrations to attend the lecture in person at the Friends Meeting House have now closed.
It will also be streamed on Zoom, for free and you can register using the form by the end of the page.
While not discounting the importance of adding women as agents of architectural production—from Lady Wilbraham to Zaha Hadid—in the SAHGB Annual Lecture 2020 Lynne Walker argues that the perspective of gender informed by feminist theory and critical writing offers substantial opportunities and benefits to reframe, rethink and reinvigorate the discipline. More widely, gender as method provides tools that can open up fresh ways to access and indeed expand and deepen the analysis and interpretation of both Architecture and history.
Lynne Walker begins the Annual Lecture 2020 with a review of the SAHGB’s journal, Architectural History from 1958 to 2020, comparing its first 15 years (1958-1973) to the last (2005-2020) in order to take the temperature of the Society from the perspective of gender.
How has gender been represented in architectural history’s foremost professional journal in Britain? Who has been writing history? What have contributors been writing about? How did they approach their topics? Was there change over time?
With these results as a guide to the profession’s scope and representations, Lynne argues that approaching Architectural History from the perspective of gender informed by feminist theory and critical writing offers substantial opportunities and benefits to reframe, rethink, and reinvigorate the discipline. Adding women as agents of architectural production is an important undertaking, but more widely, gender as method provides tools that can open up fresh ways to access and indeed expand and deepen the analysis and interpretation of both Architecture and History. Woven through the methodological argument are a diverse and creative group of women in architecture from the heiress Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham to Zaha Hadid; from nineteenth-century pioneers of the profession, sisters Ethel and Bessie Charles, to inter-war modernists, Norah Aiton and Betty Scott. They will be considered through issues of gender from the seventeenth century to the present day, around themes which include authorship and agency; amateurism and professionalism; values and meaning.
The talk highlights the ‘patron builder’ (or in Peter Thornton’s phrase the ‘client-architect’), the key figure before women’s entry into the profession, and the central role of architectural education in providing access to design and professional practice for women. Finally, through these new approaches, an appeal is made for a redefinition of architectural work itself. To value and recognise within Architectural History work by designers as well as architects, by architectural writers, teachers, curators, theorists, and users—who are often women—to create a richer but more balanced field of study.
Lynne Walker is a Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. She has published widely on gender, space and architecture, having curated and edited the first historical assessment of architecture in Britain designed by women, Women Architects: Their Work (1984) at the RIBA. In 2017 with Elizabeth Darling, she curated AA XX 100, a book, exhibition, international conference, and related events which marked the centenary of women at the Architectural Association (1917-2017).
For the foreseeable future the SAHGB Seminars will be virtual events via Zoom. We will circulate joining instructions via email the morning of the scheduled event. Please complete the form below to register. If you would like to attend the lecture in person at the Friends Meeting House please purchase a ticket by clicking here .
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