Women in Danish Architecture – Project Launch and Presentations

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Welcome to the inaugural seminar of the research project Women in Danish Architecture 1925-1975 – A new history of gender and practice.

This new research project investigates the contributions of women to Danish architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. We focus on the period from 1925 to 1975, during which the first generations of women entered the design professions in Denmark. We reveal hitherto untold stories of the diverse roles these women played in architectural practice and the ways in which they contributed to a more comprehensive architectural history.

In doing so, we promote an understanding that architectural practice is driven by collaborations involving diverse actors rather than sparked by creative leaders. By suggesting ways to write more just histories of twentieth century Danish architecture, we bring forth silenced, alternative realities as well as forms of practice and collaboration behind the built world as we know it.

Programme
Welcome by
  • Claus Beier, Head of Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen
  • Stine Lea Jacobi, Head of Program, Realdania
  • Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner, University of Copenhagen, project leaders, Women in Danish Architecture

Presentations by our international project partners

  • Barbara Penner, UCL London: The Pilgrimage to Copenhagen: Female Housers and Danish Architecture
  • Meike Schalk, KTH Stockholm: The group BiG - Living in community
  • Despina Stratigakos, University at Buffalo: Writing Women into Design History: Erasures and Interventions

We would like to thank Realdania, The Independent Research Fund Denmark, The National Building Foundation, The Danish Arts Foundation, Dreyers Fond, Karin & Georg Boyes Fond, and the University of Copenhagen for generously supporting our work.

The research project Women in Danish Architecture is based at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management. It is co-led by Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner and carried out in collaboration with architecture historian Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, graphic designer Liv Løvetand, communications officer Mathilde Merolli and project assistant Frida Irving Søltoft.