WoArch 2024: Women as Builders, Designers, and Critics of the Built Environment Before 1800.

We are pleased to announce the first edition of the conference series WoArch (Women in Architecture) as an international symposium entitled, “Women as Builders, Designers, and Critics of the Built Environment Before 1800,” which will take place in Rome, on January 25 to 27, 2024. Organized by the University of Arkansas Rome Center in collaboration with the School of Architecture + Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio, this symposium is also supported by the Women in Architecture Affiliate Group of the Society of Architectural Historians. The event will be hosted in person at the Rome Center in Palazzo Taverna, Rome, and will be live-streamed on the Rome Center YouTube channels. To view the speakers’ presentations online, please visit our webpage at WoArch 2024 – (aiwac.eu)

Symposium description:
For almost 30 years, the literature investigating women and the built environment before the modern era has focused on women’s patronage of architecture. This symposium is designed to open a discussion about what is missing from this conversation yet can be found in the historical record: the roles that women of various social classes played in shaping architecture, landscapes, and cities in diverse parts of the world and the cultural and political implications of their activities. In part, the symposium calls for a re-interpretation of patronizing activities by women and, from another point of view, it directs the spotlight toward women engaging in socio-political urban reform, creating networks of design influence, managing, and participating in construction and serving as the designer of the built environment across a broad geographic scope before modern industrialization.

Conference organizers: Shelley E. Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, Francesca Riccardo

WOMEN AS BUILDERS AND DESIGNERS
January 25, 2024

INTRODUCTION
9:00 – 9:20
Chair and co-chairs: Shelley E. Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, Francesca Riccardo

SESSION 1: A Passion for Design
9:20 – 12:10

Moderator: Francesca Riccardo

9.20 – 9.40
Alba Carballeira, “Building Knowledge: Princesse des Ursins’ Gesamtkunstwerk for Philip the V.”
Private Foundation, Spain

9.40 – 10.00
Rebecca Shields, “Frances Stewart, the Duchess of Lennox and Richmond, and Richmond House.”
Virginia Commonwealth University

10.00 – 10.20
Consuelo Lollobrigida, “The Influence of Borromini in Bricci’s Architectural Apprenticeship and Background.”
University of Arkansas Rome Center

10.20 – 10.50
Coffee break

10.50 – 11.10
Laura Hindelang, “Female Architectural Agency Pre-1900: Conceptualizing Cross-Cultural Perspectives.”
University of Bern

11.10 – 11.30
Izabela Kopania, “Dutch-British Style for Cottage Architecture: Magdalena Morska’s Aesthetic Vision of Zarzecze Village.”
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences

11.30 – 12.10
Discussion

12.30 – 14.00 Archive Oratorio dei Filippini
14.20-15.45 lunch

SESSION 2: Women Building the City
16:00 – 19:10

Moderator: María Elena Díez Jorge

16.00 – 16.20
Mariana de Moura, “Women and Construction Know-How: Critical Fabulations from Self-Produced Sites.”
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil

16.20 – 16.40
Barry Stiefel, “To Carry Forty Pounds of Clay: Enslaved Black Women and Children Building Trades Workers in Early America.”
College of Charleston

16.40 – 17.00
Elizabeth Biggs and Kirsty Wright, “Women Shaping the Palace of Westminster, c.1290-1700.” Trinity College Dublin and Historic Royal Palaces

17.00 – 17.30
Coffee break

17.30 – 17.50
Nicoletta Marconi, “Unsuspected Presences: Women Workers on 16th - 18th Century Roman Building Sites.”
Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata

17.50 – 18.10
Gül Kale, “Women as Shapers of Spatial Practices in Ottoman Istanbul.”
Carleton University, Canada

18:10 – 18.40
Discussion
18.40 – 19.10

CONNECTING SPHERES OF INFLUENCE
January 26, 2024

SESSION 3: Critical Agents of Transformation
9:00 – 11:10

Moderator: Alba Carballeira

9.00 – 9.20
Julie Beckers, “Rebuilding for Observance: Architectural changes to Santa Maria di Monteluce in Perugia post Reform, c. 1448-1485.”
University of Leuven

9.20 – 9.40
Sol Pérez Martinez, “Nuns Reporting the City: Convents, Urban Life, and Female Experiences of 1700s Chile.”
ETH Zürich

9.40 – 10.00
Elena Rieger, “Urban Living: Emilie von Berlepsch and the Late Eighteenth-Century City.”
ETH Zürich

10.00 – 10.30
Coffee break

10.30 – 10.50
Christina Contandriopoulos and Étienne Morasse-Choquette, “Woman Writing on the Art and Architecture in Eighteenth-Century Paris.”
Université du Québec à Montréal

10.50 – 11.10
Anne Hultzsch, “Conversations at the Tea Table: Eliza Haywood and the Sites of Criticism.”
ETH Zürich

11.10 – 11.30
Discussion

11.50 – 13.45 San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Galleria Spada, Palazzo Falconieri…
13.45-15.00 lunch

SESSION 4: The Politics of Gender in Building
15:30 – 18:10

Moderator: Consuelo Lollobrigida

15.30 – 15.50
María Elena Díez Jorge, “The Prestige of Women through Architecture in Sixteenth-Century Spain.”
Universidad de Granada

15.50 – 16.10
Ceren Göğüş, “Self-Representation of Ottoman Women through Public Projects.”
İstanbul Kültür University

16.10 – 16.30
Jaroslaw Pietrzak, “Polish abbess as restorers of churches and monasteries in the Eighteenth Century in the light of monastery chronicles.”
University of the National Education Commission, Krakow

16.30 – 16.50
Coffee break

16.50 – 17.10
Konrad Niemira, “Architecture, Literature and Sexual Agency in Helena Radziwłł’s Arkadia Landscape Garden.”
Museum of Literature / Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw

17.10 – 17.30
Sigrid de Jong, “Women as Agents of Change: Female Interventions in Parisian Architecture.”
ETH Zürich

17:30 – 18.10
Discussion

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
18:10 – 18:40
Dr. Anuradha Chatterjee, "Remembering (and Forgetting) Ahilya Bai Holkar’s Architectural Legacy."
Dean of the School of Design and Innovation, RV University, India

MATRONAGE IN A NEW LIGHT
January 27, 2024

ROUNDTABLE
9:30 – 11:50

Moderator: Shelley E. Roff

9.30 – 9.40
Shelley E. Roff, “Introduction: Matronage in a New Light.”
University of Texas at San Antonio

PRESENTATIONS

9.40 – 9.50
Margaret Woodhull, “Women and Public Buildings Around the Ancient Mediterranean: Some Thoughts on What and Why They Built.”
University of Colorado, Denver

9.50 – 10.00
Jyoti Pandey Sharma, “Invisible Patrons and Stewardship of the Faith: The Begami Masjids (Mosques built by Mughal Ladies) of the Mughal Badshahi Shahar (Imperial City) Shahjanahabad.”
School of Planning and Architecture Delhi

10.00 – 10.10
Alper Metin, “Women Shaping the Ottoman Capital, from Saliha to Nakşıdil Sultan (1730-1817).”
Università di Bologna

10.10 – 10.20
Hannah Mawdsley and Eleanor Harding, “Unpicking the evidence of Elizabeth Murray’s role in the expansion of Ham House.”
National Trust, UK

10.20 – 10.30
Mercedes Simal López, “Elizabeth Farnese, Builder of the Majesty of Philip V.”
Universidad de Jaén

10.30 – 10.40
Priscilla Sonnier, “‘Noble Minded Sister’: Grizelda Steevens and Dublin’s Steevens' Hospital (1717-1733).”
University College Dublin

10:40 – 10:50
Danielle Willkens, “Paper Patrons: Women of the Transatlantic Design Network.”
Georgia Institute of Technology

DEBATE
10.50 – 11.30

CLOSING
11:30 – 11:50
Chair and co-chairs: Shelley E. Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, Francesca Riccardo