Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900
Through a forest of postcards next to an oversized bookshelf and historical prints, books, and objects, this exhibition showcases the results of a 5-year research project, funded by the European Research Council at ETH Zurich. “Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900” (short WoWA) explores how female authors in the 18th and 19th centuries have contributed to architecture through writing. The project begins with the hypothesis that writing is a spatial practice, presenting, therefore, one of the processes that constitute architecture as both discourse and built manifestation that is made, experienced, used, and critiqued.
Each postcard introduces a woman and her writing with an image, a quote, and a short text explaining the role she played at the time and the potential of her writing for architectural history. We ask: what would be missing without her? And what if we had always included her among the sources we read as architectural historians? Building our own archive, we present a large-scale installation, a bookcase displaying the annotated texts from the “Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900” workshops including post-its and highlights documenting the (un)learning required to expand historiographies. Printed matter, books and journals written by women, as well as historical illustrations and objects demonstrate that women have always been there, as active agents of the built environment. We invite visitors to take a postcard home and ponder: What did she have to say? Who else have we missed?
The exhibition accompanies the new book Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900: Expanding Histories, edited by Anne Hultzsch and Sol Pérez Martínez (gta Verlag, 2025).
Curated by Anne Hultzsch in collaboration with Elena Rieger and Sol Pérez Martínez. Graphic design, research, and exhibition installation by Rémi Madrona and Audrey Man. This exhibition is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 949525).
Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900 at gta exhibitions, ETH Zurich. Graphic design: Audrey Man and Rémi Madrona.
