How can we create more equitable cities in the future if our knowledge of twentieth-century architecture emphasizes a few ‘great’ architects and their architectural design? The lecture shows how architecture comes into being through creative collaborations that cut across genders and professional disciplines. By highlighting the diverse contributions of Danish women architects across the 20th century – from kitchens and buildings to landscape architecture and urban planning - it reveals the hidden contributions that have shaped buildings, cities and landscapes of the Danish welfare states.
Biographies
Svava Riesto is Associate Professor at Copenhagen University, where she leads the Research Group for Landscape Architecture and Urban History. Her writings examine relationships between urban landscapes and power, values and social change, focusing on the buildings, cites and landscapes of the 20th century welfare states. Her books include Untold Stories. On Women, Gender and Architecture in Denmark (with Jannie R. Bendsen and Henriette Steiner, Strandberg Publishing, 2023), the monograph Biography of an Industrial Landscape. Carlsberg’s urban spaces retold (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) and the co-edited Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places (NAi publishers, 2020, with Klaske Havik, Kris Pint and Henriette Steiner).
Henriette Steiner is an Associate Professor and Head of Section at the University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD in history and philosophy of architecture from the University of Cambridge, UK, and works with issues of diversity and justice in architecture and urban history often through feminist writing collectives. Recent books include Tower to Tower. Gigantism in Architecture and Digital Culture (with Kristin Veel, MIT Press, 2020) and Touch in the Time of Corona. Reflections on Love, Care, and Vulnerability in the Pandemic (with Kristin Veel, De Gruyter, 2021; Danish translation 2023) and Untold Stories: On Women, Gender and Architecture in Denmark (with Jannie Bendsen and Svava Riesto, Strandberg Publishing, 2023 (English and Danish editions)).
