From Bias to Balance: Reforming Archives and Exhibiting Women Architects

In Antwerp, a few people are fervently typing on a computer, crafting new articles to complement the vast realm of Wikipedia knowledge with profiles of Belgian women in design. In Rotterdam, others are operating recording devices in a rush to preserve the oral histories of the feminist network Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen (Women Build Houses). In Zurich, yet another group is busy parsing through articles, travelogues, domestic manuals, and pamphlets authored by women featuring commentaries and descriptions of buildings and cities. Respectively, “Wiki Women Design” developed by the Flemish Architecture Institute, “Collecting Otherwise” organized by the Nieuwe Instituut, and “Women Writing Architecture, 1700-1900” from ETH Zurich, are but a few of the recent initiatives attempting to unearth and document women’s contributions to architecture. Combined, however, these reveal how the path between “women’s architectural production and related curatorial practices” has been fraught with challenges, gaps, and absences.
Effectively, while there is much to criticize about “the reliance on personal histories” or the “over-emphasis on houses, educational spaces, and interiors” in recent exhibitions about women architects, the narrowness of these approaches must be understood as the result of the—increasingly visible—limitations and shortcomings of the architectural archive. By considering the historical context and prevailing biases, it becomes clear how the marginalized representation of women in architectural archives has perpetuated a skewed narrative and limited opportunities for their work to be fully recognized. Inevitably, this skewed focus has directly influenced the curatorial approaches to the work of women architects, often reinforcing both stereotypes and gender-based categorizations. Only by adopting a transformative approach to architectural archives and exhibitions, one that critically examines and challenges the inherent limitations of current practices, can we move from bias to balance. Only by broadening the archive will it ever be possible to adequately value, celebrate, recognize, and exhibit the work of women architects.