Becoming a Gender Equity Democracy: Women and Architecture Practice in Spain and Portugal (1960s–1980s)

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752). This special issue belongs to the section "Applied Arts".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (6 December 2019) | Viewed by 36333

Special Issue Editors

School of Engineering and Architecture, Zaragoza University, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
Interests: historiography of modern architecture; Spanish late-modern and postmodern architecture; feminist practices in architecture; gender studies in architecture; architecture journals and magazines
1. Interdisciplinary Center of Gender Studies, University of Lisbon, 1300-663 Lisbon, Portugal
2. Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal
Interests: history of architecture; Portuguese architecture; gender studies; architecture and cities; dwelling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The fourth feminist wave in which we are living is witnessing the emergence of new research on the history of women who have worked in traditionally male professions. This volume of Arts seeks to constrast the investigations developed by Spanish and Portuguese research centers regarding the history of women in architecture. The aim of this Special Issue is presenting different studies that deal with how women began to practice architecture in Spain and Portugal. Both countries share not only the Iberian Peninsula, but also a political situation that postponed the advent of democracy several decades in comparison with other European countries. They also shared lengthy totalitarian regimes that took their toll on women’s rights, as well as on their possibilities to practice technical professions.

This call for papers seeks for manuscripts that analyze architectural designs of female authorship—designed either individually or in mixed-gender teams—but which do so from a cultural and sociopolitical perspective that allows framing them within the progress of democratic values that allowed women to choose and freely develop the architect profession. This Special Issue welcomes works that relate to those legislative, political, cultural and social changes in Spain and Portugal from the 1960s to the 1980s that have led to women assuming leading roles in the many areas of architectural practice, be it construction, urban planning, urban design, landscape design, restoration, or interior design. Further, this issue of Arts seeks for texts that explore whether female authorship has influenced those designs in any way, be it because they apply a gender-based perspective, or/and because they feature innovations that differ from those of their male colleagues.

Dr. Lucia C. Pérez-Moreno
Dr. Patrícia Santos Pedrosa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • women in architecture
  • Spanish architecture
  • Portuguese architecture
  • architecture historiography
  • gender equity
  • democracy

Published Papers (10 papers)

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Editorial

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12 pages, 278 KiB  
Editorial
Women Architects on the Road to an Egalitarian Profession—The Portuguese and Spanish Cases
by Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno and Patrícia Santos Pedrosa
Arts 2020, 9(1), 40; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9010040 - 23 Mar 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3553
Abstract
The 1970s was a key decade in the path towards democracy in the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal and Spain suffered deep social, cultural and political changes, with Salazar’s and Franco’s Totalitarian Regimes ending in 1974 and 1975 respectively. In both countries, located side-by-side in [...] Read more.
The 1970s was a key decade in the path towards democracy in the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal and Spain suffered deep social, cultural and political changes, with Salazar’s and Franco’s Totalitarian Regimes ending in 1974 and 1975 respectively. In both countries, located side-by-side in the Western end of Southern Europe, democracy was finally established, marking a turning point in the liberties of all Iberian citizens, but especially in regard to women’s life and work. As the Editorial of the Special Issue ‘Becoming a Gender Equity Democracy: Women and Architecture Practice in Spain and Portugal’, this text aims to briefly present this panorama to appreciate the particularities of Portugal and Spain in relation with the delay incorporation of women to the architecture profession. It explains the gender stereotypes of Salazar’s and Franco’s Regime in order to understand the discrimination against women that they produced and how it maintained women far from the architecture profession. Therefore, it provides useful data on the incorporation of women into architectural studies in order to understand the feminization of this gendered profession in both countries. This Special Issue aims to create an opportunity for researchers and scholars to present discussions and ongoing research on how democracy affected women that wanted to practice architecture as well as architectural analysis of women architects. Full article

Research

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18 pages, 4192 KiB  
Article
Women Architects in Portugal: Working in Colonial Africa before the Carnation Revolution (1950–1974)
by Ana Vaz Milheiro and Filipa Fiúza
Arts 2020, 9(3), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9030086 - 31 Jul 2020
Viewed by 3291
Abstract
How did women architects shape a modern world in the late period of Portuguese colonial Africa, just before the Carnation Revolution? The specific role of women in Portugal working in colonial African architectural culture has now started to be addressed by Portuguese and [...] Read more.
How did women architects shape a modern world in the late period of Portuguese colonial Africa, just before the Carnation Revolution? The specific role of women in Portugal working in colonial African architectural culture has now started to be addressed by Portuguese and Lusophone-African historiography. During the 1950s, the presence of women in the metropolitan schools of architecture was reduced. Of those who could graduate, few actually worked as architects. Most were absorbed by the commonly feminine roles, resulting from marriage and from the ideal of family promoted by the Estado Novo dictatorship. To the ones that risked prosecution for working outside the family, the option of jobs associated with the feminine universe, such as teaching, was privileged. Among those who were emancipated from this pattern, the majority worked in familiar partnerships, regarded as an extension of marriage. The women architects that follow the husbands in their African emigration often ended up having the opportunities to work in their professional field partly due to the lack of qualified technicians, and to the high demand of commissions. This paper not only seeks to outline a perspective on these women, but also tries to understand the context of their work by presenting two case-studies in the late in the late period of Portuguese Colonisation: Maria Carlota Quintanilha and Maria Emilia Caria. Full article
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15 pages, 2392 KiB  
Article
The Contribution of the Architect Pascuala Campos to the Implementation of a Gender Perspective in the Galician Context
by Ainoa Fernández Cruces, Goreti Sousa, Paulo Guerreiro and Mariana Correia
Arts 2020, 9(3), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9030076 - 09 Jul 2020
Viewed by 2662
Abstract
The incorporation of women in society, as active professionals, was probably one of the most important parameters of modernity in the last century. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, women who entered the world of architecture were, generally, assigned to the design [...] Read more.
The incorporation of women in society, as active professionals, was probably one of the most important parameters of modernity in the last century. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, women who entered the world of architecture were, generally, assigned to the design of domestic interiors. Thus, they were always in the background, which contributed to the concealment of the female gender perspective in architecture and an incomplete vision of its history. The general purpose of this article is to address the implicit problematic of the female contribution to architecture, through a theoretical reflection that aims at recognizing the relevant impact of Pascuala Campos’s work to the discipline in Galicia, Spain. The Spanish social and architectonic contexts, as well as the biography of Pascuala Campos, are analyzed to better understand her theoretical and architectonic production. The analysis combines data from different sources, mainly documental research, interviews, and architectonic surveys. The basic principles stressed in the theoretical production of Pascuala Campos are thus identified and served as analytic categories for the survey of the Combarro Urban Intervention. These results allowed the identification of concepts and projected guidelines interpreted as gender perspective-oriented. Full article
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11 pages, 1630 KiB  
Article
Rethinking Collective Housing: A Case Study of Spatial Flexibility and Adaptability in Arturo Soria (Madrid, 1975)
by Virginia De Jorge Huertas
Arts 2020, 9(3), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9030074 - 06 Jul 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3987
Abstract
This article presents an analysis of a collective housing project designed by the architects Emilia Bisquert Santiago, Carmen González Lobo, Jose Miguel de Prada Poole and Ricardo Aroca in the Arturo Soria neighbourhood in Madrid in 1975. This project is noteworthy for its [...] Read more.
This article presents an analysis of a collective housing project designed by the architects Emilia Bisquert Santiago, Carmen González Lobo, Jose Miguel de Prada Poole and Ricardo Aroca in the Arturo Soria neighbourhood in Madrid in 1975. This project is noteworthy for its architects’ preference for designing flexible and adaptable spaces, both in the interior distribution of the homes spaces and in the common spaces of the building itself. Their main aim was to eliminate the rigid spatial segregation that was a dominant feature of Spanish housing estates promoted by the OSH (House Building Union) during the Franco Regime (1939–1975). To understand this idea, this research proposes a comparison between a Housing Estate promoted by the OSH in 1956 and the Arturo Soria building designed in 1975. The article explains and analyses the different architectural strategies that the architects proposed to achieve that flexibility and adaptability: a permanent structural ‘infrastructure,’ an intermediate architectural system adaptable over time, and finally, a range of possible configurations for the individual dwelling. Another important issue is the relationship between the construction system and alternative development of both horizontal and vertical living space. Explaining this relationship could help shape the habitability of future homes, the development of a sense of community, the possibility of designing for tenancies of different lengths and needs and the management of constant changes to a collective society. Full article
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19 pages, 8624 KiB  
Article
Women and the Making of the University of Alicante Campus: Critical Reappraisals of Modern Architecture (1982–1999)
by María-Elia Gutiérrez-Mozo, José Parra-Martínez and Ana Gilsanz-Díaz
Arts 2020, 9(2), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9020057 - 30 Apr 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3567
Abstract
A stroll around the University of Alicante campus is like a journey through the history of Spanish architecture of the last 40 years, as many of its buildings exemplify the best production of the period. This legacy also tells a story about the [...] Read more.
A stroll around the University of Alicante campus is like a journey through the history of Spanish architecture of the last 40 years, as many of its buildings exemplify the best production of the period. This legacy also tells a story about the role played by female architects within the profession. In fact, a gender reading reveals that only two women, Pilar Vázquez Carrasco, the architect of the Faculty of Sciences (FS, 1982) and the Social Club I (1987), and Dolores Alonso Vera, responsible for the Higher Polytechnic School IV (HPS, 1999), have designed structures on the campus over almost four decades and out of a total of more than 50 buildings. The FS is an example of structural sincerity whose brick and concrete materials and externalisation of services provide Brutalist echoes. The HPS IV is a design exercise consisting of a series of elegant, inviting volumes and open spaces intertwined with the campus garden. This essay focuses on the comparative analysis of these two award-winning works to unveil those contributions that female authorship has brought to their solutions by relating them to comparable buildings in space, time and type, but designed by male architects. Full article
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16 pages, 6984 KiB  
Article
Women Architects in the Transition: Comparative Analysis of ‘Palomeras’ Dwellings, Madrid (Spain)
by Angel Cordero Ampuero
Arts 2020, 9(2), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9020048 - 14 Apr 2020
Viewed by 2403
Abstract
This study examines the contribution of women architects to Palomeras operation projects in the context of the Spanish transition and the Madrid housing emergency in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Works were selected according to their professional impacts; 11 projects were analyzed [...] Read more.
This study examines the contribution of women architects to Palomeras operation projects in the context of the Spanish transition and the Madrid housing emergency in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Works were selected according to their professional impacts; 11 projects were analyzed by redrawing and studying the main types of dwelling. The current reading interpretation—according to a gender perspective—focuses on reproduction of tasks in main spaces at home: in-depth testing of the scope of kitchen surface and glazing ratios, as well as direct lighting, views and minimum distance of housekeeping paths. Furthermore, the comparative and qualitative analysis was based on meaningful data, which yield subtle but expressive results about the consequences of gender-inclusive architect teams. Thus, it is possible to approach and discuss the role played by some women architects of the Madrid School after second-wave feminism, in a key time for gender change in architectural practice in Spain. Full article
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18 pages, 2915 KiB  
Article
Galician Female Architects—A Critical Approach to Inequality in the Architectural Profession (1931–1986)
by María Novas-Ferradás, María Carreiro-Otero and Cándido López-González
Arts 2020, 9(1), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9010033 - 04 Mar 2020
Viewed by 5972
Abstract
The remoteness of Galicia, a cultural and linguistic bridge between Portugal and Spain, did not prevent it from playing a significant role in the history of female architects in the Iberian Peninsula. Nine Galician pioneers have carved the path since the first generation [...] Read more.
The remoteness of Galicia, a cultural and linguistic bridge between Portugal and Spain, did not prevent it from playing a significant role in the history of female architects in the Iberian Peninsula. Nine Galician pioneers have carved the path since the first generation of Spanish female architects outlined the precedents during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). They were also present in an initial period, even if housewifization theories were intensively fueled by the dictatorship (1939–1975); likewise during the continuity period in the transition to democracy (1975–1982), and the second wave of feminism. However, it would not be until progressive democratic institutionalization (1982–1986) that more women gained access to architectural studies in university (consolidation period); but what is the legacy of these pioneers? Are Galician female architects ‘in transition’ yet? Based on data primarily collected by research group MAGA and released publications, this piece explores how, despite their achievements, their recognition is still superficial. And even if the number of undergraduate students reached quantitative equality, female practitioners continue to leave architecture and these numbers are increasing. Towards a critical approach to inequality in the profession, this article researches the history—and stories—of Galician female architects to examine how far we are from effective equality in the Galician architectural world. Full article
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11 pages, 265 KiB  
Article
Filling History, Consolidating the Origins. The First Female Architects of the Barcelona School of Architecture (1964–1975)
by Zaida Muxí and Daniela Arias Laurino
Arts 2020, 9(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9010029 - 25 Feb 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2393
Abstract
After Francisco Franco’s death, the process of democratisation of public institutions was a key factor in the evolution of the architectural profession in Spain. The approval of the creation of neighbourhood associations, the first municipal governments, and the modernisation of Spanish universities are [...] Read more.
After Francisco Franco’s death, the process of democratisation of public institutions was a key factor in the evolution of the architectural profession in Spain. The approval of the creation of neighbourhood associations, the first municipal governments, and the modernisation of Spanish universities are some examples of this. Moreover, feminist and environmental activism from some parts of Spanish society was relevant for socio-political change that affected women in particular. The last decade of Franco’s Regime coincided with the first generation of women that graduated from the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB). From 1964 to 1975, 73 female students graduated as architects—the first one was Margarita Brender Rubira (1919–2000) who validated her degree obtained in Romania in 1962. Some of these women became pioneers in different fields of the architectural profession, such as Roser Amador in architectural design, Alrun Jimeno in building technologies, Anna Bofill in urban design and planning, Rosa Barba in landscape architecture or Pascuala Campos in architectural design, and teaching with gender perspective. This article presents the contributions of these women to the architecture profession in relation to these socio-political advances. It also seeks—through the life stories, personal experiences, and personal visions on professional practice—to highlight those ‘other stories’ that have been left out of the hegemonic historiography of Spanish architecture. Full article
11 pages, 2088 KiB  
Article
Women Architects outside the Spanish Borders: Patriarchal Models at International Congresses (1939–1975)
by Josenia Hervás and Silvia Blanco-Agüeira
Arts 2020, 9(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9010026 - 20 Feb 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3934
Abstract
In the complex political scene surrounding the death of Francisco Franco, Spanish female architects were crossing borders to try and understand what was happening abroad. This article provides unpublished data on the various experiences of female graduates in Spain when they shared their [...] Read more.
In the complex political scene surrounding the death of Francisco Franco, Spanish female architects were crossing borders to try and understand what was happening abroad. This article provides unpublished data on the various experiences of female graduates in Spain when they shared their enthusiasm, concerns and energy with colleagues from other countries at international conferences that took place before the arrival of democracy. For almost four decades, between 1939 and 1975, Spanish female architects were limited by the patriarchal system’s own barriers and by the political barriers imposed by Franco’s regime. This paper aims to organise and articulate women’s memories, proving the implicit acceptance of patriarchal ideas and models at the start of the 20th century, the timidity of the congress resolutions in the sixties and the later awakening provided by UIFA (Union Internationale des Femmes Architectes) congresses. Finally, it is worth examining the metamorphosis that occurred in free western societies in the 20th century, with respect to the role played by women as a user and as a professional, through the attentive gaze of women architects from a nondemocratic country. Full article
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Other

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3 pages, 431 KiB  
Book Review
Diverse Perspectives. A Review of Women Architects: Mode(s) of (R)existing. Reflections Based on a Cycle of Talks
by Patricia Orfila Barros dos Reis
Arts 2020, 9(1), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9010030 - 26 Feb 2020
Viewed by 2423
Abstract
The book Women Architects: Mode(s) of (R)existing. Reflections Based on a Cycle of Talks (2018, edited by Patrícia Santos Pedrosa, Joana Pestana Lages, and Lia Gil Antunes, Lisbon, Women in Architecture Association, 100p), published as a bilingual collection (Portuguese and English), is structured [...] Read more.
The book Women Architects: Mode(s) of (R)existing. Reflections Based on a Cycle of Talks (2018, edited by Patrícia Santos Pedrosa, Joana Pestana Lages, and Lia Gil Antunes, Lisbon, Women in Architecture Association, 100p), published as a bilingual collection (Portuguese and English), is structured around thirteen narratives by women architects, from a cycle of talks which took place from September 2017 to March 2018 in Lisbon. The book presents a concise record of the event’s purpose, which was to initiate a debate that takes into account both the gender perspective and women architects’ invisibility, as well as their multiple implications in the creation of Portuguese architecture, cities and territories within a traditionally male profession. Full article
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