This essay is an introduction to my research on feminist spaces and feminist spatial practices. It is a part of this wider website called fem.collection, or, a feminist collection of spaces and spatial practices. It's self-publication composed by different tabs, insights, hyperlinks and references. They are here presented as a collection, or a gathering, in the hope to display a wide range of projects, voices, theories that I have come across that influenced my understanding of feminist spaces and spatial practices.
This essay is an introduction to my research on feminist spaces and feminist spatial practices. It is a part of this wider website called fem.collection, or, a feminist collection of spaces and spatial practices. It's self-publication composed by different tabs, insights, hyperlinks and references. They are here presented as a collection, or a gathering, in the hope to display a wide range of projects, voices, theories that I have come across that influenced my understanding of feminist spaces and spatial practices.
“Women have always been seen as a problem for the modern city. That’s because, by their very existence, women living their lives in cities have challenged societal expectations about gender roles. Cities have almost always been designed by men prioritizing men’s needs as defined by the traditional male-female binary.” - Leslie Kern, Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World
This research first took root in the frustration I felt as a spatial practitioner. I looked around me and saw no representation, no awareness of gender, and no introspection of the men involved. Throughout my education, I was surrounded by a large majority of fellow students identifying as women, and we shared a great sense of community. However, as soon as we looked at the lack of diversity * within the teaching staff, the management, and the many architects and designers we had to consider inspiration, we became a bit disillusioned that this student body of mostly women would lead to positions of leadership or teachership. For me, this was the start of the reflection on where women and non-binary people fell within spatial practices. Architecture is the physical reproduction of social understanding and patriarchal systems of oppression in built form, it can never be neutral, but at its best, it could be a practice in service of its population. The urgency I feel in researching and proving that spaces for women exist, doesn’t come from a specific crisis or data point, but more so from the anger, I have felt rising through the years as I watch around me and see that we are continually oppressed in every space, and that architecture doesn’t fall outside of that reality. Anger is a revolutionary act, especially feminist anger. It defies the norm that women are supposed to be caring, kind, and most of all, silent. Anger is a tool that has communicative merits, and it has epistemic value *. Today, if marginalized communities are excluded from every part of creating what surrounds us, how much can the built environment supply us with what we want, or represent the needs of a typical diverse modern society? Historically and contemporarily, spatial practices and architecture have been predominantly shaped by patriarchal viewpoints, theories, and men-made references *. This means that we are all educated in a one-dimensional patriarchal subjective architecture, and we all keep reproducing the same spatial relations that benefit patriarchal systems of oppression in place. There is a real urgent need for diversity of perspective, and we need to question what social systems are the architects and designers perpetuating, what tools are they using, and how feminist critique can impact this design process.
*Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger.” Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 3, 1981, pp. 7-10
*Arieff, Allison. “Where Are All the Female Architects?” The New York Times, 15 December 2018
*Utkum Ikiz, Serra. “The 6 women Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates since 1979.” Parametric Architecture, 8 March 2023
I call myself a spatial practitioner, and there is a need to specify what that means. What does it mean to have a feminist spatial practice or a feminist spatial form? Those terms are heavily influenced by both Michel de Certeau and Jane Rendell in their respective works The Practice of Everyday Life * and Art and Architecture: A Place Between *. De Certeau introduced the term spatial practice, as referring to the actions and behaviors of users within a space. According to him, spatial practice holds more importance than the built form, as these practices shape and define more than the form of a given space. The practices can be but are not limited to physical circulation, but also the cultural and social meanings attached to space. Even if he prioritizes practices over form, he also mentions that both should be reciprocal and in turn, influence each other. He recognizes that how individuals engage with and navigate space can impact the forms and structures of that space. There is a clear hierarchy of use over form, but a relationship between the two nonetheless. Rendell, however, coined the term, critical spatial practice. For Rendell, that originally referred to a discipline between art and architecture, but that now also includes any discipline that seeks to question social and political issues within or using the built space (see feminist geographers, designers, activists, philosophers et cetera).
I find myself at a crossroads between the two uses and choose to use two different terms, feminist spaces and feminist spatial practices. The two are intrinsically linked, and informing each other. I envision feminist spaces as the act of appropriating an existing form to manipulate its nature, shape, or purpose. This initiative can be started due to wishes of emancipation, separationism, but also sustainability, or lack of resources. Like de Certeau, I believe this act influences the then broader (but in opposition to him, not more important) meaning of spatial practice. Spatial practice is, how I choose to use it, very similar to Rendell’s definition, it’s the interdisciplinary approach of questioning operations of systemic oppression. I use feminist rather than critical because I wish to keep bell hook’s definition of feminism: “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” * (hooks, 1984). Using feminist spatial practices instead of critical, evoques for me more specificity towards the counterhegemonic acts against patriarchy and the application of feminist theory to spatiality. At this time, I must mention my obvious situation of privilege. I write about intersectional feminism while being in a position of being able, white, cisgender, and heterosexual and having only experienced life in northern Europe. My knowledge and how I acquire knowledge are inevitably biased, and I can only speak through my partial experience * and vision. I have no interest in claiming this text, or this website is objective or universally true.
*de Certeau, Michel, et al. The Practice of Everyday Life. Gallimard, 1980
*hooks, bell. Feminist Theory - from margin to center. South End Press, 1984
*Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture: A Place Between. Bloomsbury Academic, 2006
*Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 1988, pp. 575–99
Read more about feminist anger here
Read more about feminist anger here
Trying to define a space as feminist is not a realistic achievement, it cannot have a singular definition, and it doesn’t hold a static universal truth. There is no recurring feminist architectural archetype, and I have to reiterate that “feminist does not necessitate the project to be female-focused, nor be gender specific. [...] feminist methodologies are nuanced and multivalent. They approach problems from varied points of view.” * (Brown, 2011, p.5) Historically, there have been many attempts to create both feminist spaces and feminist spatial practices, and many have written at length about it. I wish to direct the reader’s attention to the library tab which comprises the many names and works I came in contact with that informed, influenced, and directed both my practice and this research. The website also contains the database that I compiled and still is in the process of compiling. The database follows the two axes given at the beginning of this introduction, one part will be dedicated to feminist spaces; the appropriation of existing spaces by either modifying them to adapt to the needs of the group or using the structure as a jumping board to add to it. It’s appropriating space as your own within the boundaries of the patriarchally built environment. The second axis will present feminist spatial practices, or how I mentioned earlier, the practice of building otherwise. These practices range from many different types of actions, from community organizing, to workshops or individual manifestos.
The goal of this information gathering is never to define a particular checklist that has to be fulfilled to be a feminist space or feminist spatial practice, rather the intention is to explore the different possibilities with their flaws and failings and analyze the different possibilities. I intentionally call this act a collection, I stray from the term archive, for multiple reasons but mostly to separate myself from the patriarchal, colonialist implications of an archive *.I wish to look into what has been done as much as what is being done today, to honor the legacies and voices of those who came before me but learn from them as well. This website is a repository of my research, a tool for myself but for others as well through a participatory interface. I invite all the readers to write a comment, recommend a source or criticize what you find here.
*Brown, Lori A. Feminist Practices - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture. Ashaget, 2011
*Bertschi Denise; Lafontaine Carboni, Julien; Bathla, Nitin. Unearthing Traces. EPFL Press, 2023
Read more about situated perspectives here
“Women have always been seen as a problem for the modern city. That’s because, by their very existence, women living their lives in cities have challenged societal expectations about gender roles. Cities have almost always been designed by men prioritizing men’s needs as defined by the traditional male-female binary.” - Leslie Kern, Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World
This research first took root in the frustration I felt as a spatial practitioner. I looked around me and saw no representation, no awareness of gender, and no introspection of the men involved. Throughout my education, I was surrounded by a large majority of fellow students identifying as women, and we shared a great sense of community. However, as soon as we looked at the lack of diversity * within the teaching staff, the management, and the many architects and designers we had to consider inspiration, we became a bit disillusioned that this student body of mostly women would lead to positions of leadership or teachership. For me, this was the start of the reflection on where women and non-binary people fell within spatial practices. Architecture is the physical reproduction of social understanding and patriarchal systems of oppression in built form, it can never be neutral, but at its best, it could be a practice in service of its population.
The urgency I feel in researching and proving that spaces for women exist, doesn’t come from a specific crisis or data point, but more so from the anger, I have felt rising through the years as I watch around me and see that we are continually oppressed in every space, and that architecture doesn’t fall outside of that reality. Anger is a revolutionary act, especially feminist anger. It defies the norm that women are supposed to be caring, kind, and most of all, silent. Anger is a tool that has communicative merits, and it has epistemic value *. Today, if marginalized communities are excluded from every part of creating what surrounds us, how much can the built environment supply us with what we want, or represent the needs of a typical diverse modern society? Historically and contemporarily, spatial practices and architecture have been predominantly shaped by patriarchal viewpoints, theories, and men-made references *. This means that we are all educated in a one-dimensional patriarchal subjective architecture, and we all keep reproducing the same spatial relations that benefit patriarchal systems of oppression in place. There is a real urgent need for diversity of perspective, and we need to question what social systems are the architects and designers perpetuating, what tools are they using, and how feminist critique can impact this design process.
*Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger.” Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 3, 1981, pp. 7-10
*Arieff, Allison. “Where Are All the Female Architects?” The New York Times, 15 December 2018
*Utkum Ikiz, Serra. “The 6 women Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates since 1979.” Parametric Architecture, 8 March 2023
I call myself a spatial practitioner, and there is a need to specify what that means. What does it mean to have a feminist spatial practice or a feminist spatial form? Those terms are heavily influenced by both Michel de Certeau and Jane Rendell in their respective works The Practice of Everyday Life * and Art and Architecture: A Place Between *. De Certeau introduced the term spatial practice, as referring to the actions and behaviors of users within a space. According to him, spatial practice holds more importance than the built form, as these practices shape and define more than the form of a given space. The practices can be but are not limited to physical circulation, but also the cultural and social meanings attached to space. Even if he prioritizes practices over form, he also mentions that both should be reciprocal and in turn, influence each other. He recognizes that how individuals engage with and navigate space can impact the forms and structures of that space. There is a clear hierarchy of use over form, but a relationship between the two nonetheless. Rendell, however, coined the term, critical spatial practice. For Rendell, that originally referred to a discipline between art and architecture, but that now also includes any discipline that seeks to question social and political issues within or using the built space (see feminist geographers, designers, activists, philosophers et cetera).
I find myself at a crossroads between the two uses and choose to use two different terms, feminist spaces and feminist spatial practices. The two are intrinsically linked, and informing each other. I envision feminist spaces as the act of appropriating an existing form to manipulate its nature, shape, or purpose. This initiative can be started due to wishes of emancipation, separationism, but also sustainability, or lack of resources. Like de Certeau, I believe this act influences the then broader (but in opposition to him, not more important) meaning of spatial practice. Spatial practice is, how I choose to use it, very similar to Rendell’s definition, it’s the interdisciplinary approach of questioning operations of systemic oppression. I use feminist rather than critical because I wish to keep bell hook’s definition of feminism: “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” * (hooks, 1984). Using feminist spatial practices instead of critical, evoques for me more specificity towards the counterhegemonic acts against patriarchy and the application of feminist theory to spatiality. At this time, I must mention my obvious situation of privilege. I write about intersectional feminism while being in a position of being able, white, cisgender, and heterosexual and having only experienced life in northern Europe. My knowledge and how I acquire knowledge are inevitably biased, and I can only speak through my partial experience * and vision. I have no interest in claiming this text, or this website is objective or universally true.
*de Certeau, Michel, et al. The Practice of Everyday Life. Gallimard, 1980
*hooks, bell. Feminist Theory - from margin to center. South End Press, 1984
*Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture: A Place Between. Bloomsbury Academic, 2006
*Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 1988, pp. 575–99
Read more about feminist anger here
Trying to define a space as feminist is not a realistic achievement, it cannot have a singular definition, and it doesn’t hold a static universal truth. There is no recurring feminist architectural archetype, and I have to reiterate that “feminist does not necessitate the project to be female-focused, nor be gender specific. [...] feminist methodologies are nuanced and multivalent. They approach problems from varied points of view.” * (Brown, 2011, p.5) Historically, there have been many attempts to create both feminist spaces and feminist spatial practices, and many have written at length about it. I wish to direct the reader’s attention to the library tab which comprises the many names and works I came in contact with that informed, influenced, and directed both my practice and this research. The website also contains the database that I compiled and still is in the process of compiling. The database follows the two axes given at the beginning of this introduction, one part will be dedicated to feminist spaces; the appropriation of existing spaces by either modifying them to adapt to the needs of the group or using the structure as a jumping board to add to it. It’s appropriating space as your own within the boundaries of the patriarchally built environment. The second axis will present feminist spatial practices, or how I mentioned earlier, the practice of building otherwise. These practices range from many different types of actions, from community organizing, to workshops or individual manifestos.
The goal of this information gathering is never to define a particular checklist that has to be fulfilled to be a feminist space or feminist spatial practice, rather the intention is to explore the different possibilities with their flaws and failings and analyze the different possibilities. I intentionally call this act a collection, I stray from the term archive, for multiple reasons but mostly to separate myself from the patriarchal, colonialist implications of an archive *.I wish to look into what has been done as much as what is being done today, to honor the legacies and voices of those who came before me but learn from them as well. This website is a repository of my research, a tool for myself but for others as well through a participatory interface. I invite all the readers to write a comment, recommend a source or criticize what you find here.
*Brown, Lori A. Feminist Practices - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture. Ashaget, 2011
*Bertschi Denise; Lafontaine Carboni, Julien; Bathla, Nitin. Unearthing Traces. EPFL Press, 2023
Read more about situated perspectives here
This website was created with the interface Framer.
The two fonts used are Yatra One and Amiamie Regular and were found on
If we observe the city today and historically, we can start to understand how built form is oppressive. Whether it’s residential, public infrastructure, or urban planning, it’s failing the needs of at least half the population *. In private homes, the architecture has always catered to this nuclear family ideal, with the woman at home to care for the children and the space *. There is unpaid care labor expected of women, and yet historically, careers that developed out of this sequestration, like textile design or interior architecture, have a long history of being deemed lesser than (because more feminine oriented) the “noble” discipline of architecture. Most residential neighborhoods are underserviced in terms of public transport, yet studies show that women use public transport more often and make multiple daily stops *. Women are expected to child rearing and continue the tradition of being the main caretaker of children, and yet residential areas have an enormous lack of nurseries or communal solutions for child care. The home itself also has a long history of systemic oppression, in its shape. Rooms have a defined purpose and therefore, a defined hierarchy. The private and residential spaces cater mostly to single-family households and end up hiding labor, care work by women, and violence against them. As it is where women have the greatest risk of suffering physical or emotional abuse. This is where women have been the most exploited and mistreated, and yet we keep building these boxes to no end, with no support system available. Even if the residence is within a more urban fabric, and in the city, we see the pattern repeated. Living in an apartment building doesn’t offer much more community than in the suburbs, and the struggles remain.
In public spaces as well, the woman is unwelcome. There is daily cat-calling, and overall violence made possible in the street, “sexual harassment reminds women every day that they are not meant to be in certain spaces.” * (Koskela, 1999). This results in a feeling of inadequacy, and danger when out. Ill-lit roads, alleys, certain streets, and parks are avoided by women, even if it means taking a longer route. Women’s fear in public places is not irrational * but well fed to us by a history of underreported assaults, and at the same time, an over-glorification of sexual crimes in the media, in news coverage, and fiction as well. The media is fearmongering women, and over-saturating the narrative that the city or the streets are unsafe for women. This fear keeps women from moving freely, it constrains movement, but choices and opportunities as well. This all amounts to the continuation of the trope that women need a heterosexual partner for protection. As Kern said: “This all works to prop up a heteropatriarchal capitalist system in which women are tied to the private space of the home and responsible for domestic labour within the institution of the nuclear family. It’s a system that benefits men as a group and upholds the status quo very effectively.” *
If we observe the city today and historically, we can start to understand how built form is oppressive. Whether it’s residential, public infrastructure, or urban planning, it’s failing the needs of at least half the population *. In private homes, the architecture has always catered to this nuclear family ideal, with the woman at home to care for the children and the space *. There is unpaid care labor expected of women, and yet historically, careers that developed out of this sequestration, like textile design or interior architecture, have a long history of being deemed lesser than (because more feminine oriented) the “noble” discipline of architecture. Most residential neighborhoods are underserviced in terms of public transport, yet studies show that women use public transport more often and make multiple daily stops *. Women are expected to child rearing and continue the tradition of being the main caretaker of children, and yet residential areas have an enormous lack of nurseries or communal solutions for child care. The home itself also has a long history of systemic oppression, in its shape. Rooms have a defined purpose and therefore, a defined hierarchy. The private and residential spaces cater mostly to single-family households and end up hiding labor, care work by women, and violence against them. As it is where women have the greatest risk of suffering physical or emotional abuse. This is where women have been the most exploited and mistreated, and yet we keep building these boxes to no end, with no support system available. Even if the residence is within a more urban fabric, and in the city, we see the pattern repeated. Living in an apartment building doesn’t offer much more community than in the suburbs, and the struggles remain.
In public spaces as well, the woman is unwelcome. There is daily cat-calling, and overall violence made possible in the street, “sexual harassment reminds women every day that they are not meant to be in certain spaces.” * (Koskela, 1999). This results in a feeling of inadequacy, and danger when out. Ill-lit roads, alleys, certain streets, and parks are avoided by women, even if it means taking a longer route. Women’s fear in public places is not irrational * but well fed to us by a history of underreported assaults, and at the same time, an over-glorification of sexual crimes in the media, in news coverage, and fiction as well. The media is fearmongering women, and over-saturating the narrative that the city or the streets are unsafe for women. This fear keeps women from moving freely, it constrains movement, but choices and opportunities as well. This all amounts to the continuation of the trope that women need a heterosexual partner for protection. As Kern said: “This all works to prop up a heteropatriarchal capitalist system in which women are tied to the private space of the home and responsible for domestic labour within the institution of the nuclear family. It’s a system that benefits men as a group and upholds the status quo very effectively.” *
*Pojani, Dorina, et al. “Sexism and the city: how urban planning has failed women.” Engineering For Change, 10 June 2018
*Pojani, Dorina, et al. “Sexism and the city: how urban planning has failed women.” Engineering For Change, 10 June 2018
*Aureli, Pier Vittorio, and Maria Shéhérazade Giudici. “Familiar Horror: Toward a Critique Of Domestic Space.” Log, vol. 38, 2016
*Aureli, Pier Vittorio, and Maria Shéhérazade Giudici. “Familiar Horror: Toward a Critique Of Domestic Space.” Log, vol. 38, 2016
*"Transportation: Reconceptualizing Data Collection.” Gendered Innovations
*"Transportation: Reconceptualizing Data Collection.” Gendered Innovations
*Koskela, Hille. "Gendered Exclusions: Women's Fear of Violence and Changing Relations to Space." Geografiska Annaler, vol. 81, 1999
*Koskela, Hille. "Gendered Exclusions: Women's Fear of Violence and Changing Relations to Space." Geografiska Annaler, vol. 81, 1999
*Kern, Leslie. Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Verso Books, 2020 (See chapter: City of Fear)
*Kern, Leslie. Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Verso Books, 2020 (See chapter: City of Fear)
*Kern, Leslie. Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Verso Books, 2020
*Kern, Leslie. Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Verso Books, 2020
This website was created with the interface Framer.
The two fonts used are Yatra One and Amiamie Regular and were found on Libre Fonts by Womxn and Typothèque Bye Bye Binary.
Read more of the essay here
Read more of the essay here