Enfilade

From the conference website:

WoArch 2024: Women as Builders, Designers, and Critics of the Built Environment before 1800
Online and in-person, Palazzo Taverna, Rome, 25–27 January 2024

Organized by Shelley Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, and Francesca Riccardo

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, 25–27 January 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.

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 and 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.

For program details and speakers’ abstracts, please visit our webpage. For other queries, please write to Shelley Roff, shelley.roff@utsa.edu.

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9.00  Introduction by Shelley E. Roff, Consuelo Lollobrigida, and Francesca Riccardo

9.20  Session 1: A Passion for Design
Moderator: Francesca Riccardo
• Alba Carballeira (Private Foundation, Spain), Building Knowledge: Princesse des Ursins’ Gesamtkunstwerk for Philip the V
• Rebecca Shields (Virginia Commonwealth University), Frances Stewart, the Duchess of Lennox and Richmond, and Richmond House
• Consuelo Lollobrigida (University of Arkansas Rome Center), The Influence of Borromini in Bricci’s Architectural Apprenticeship and Background
• Laura Hindelang (University of Bern), Female Architectural Agency Pre-1900: Conceptualizing Cross-Cultural Perspectives
• Izabela Kopania (Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences), Dutch-British Style for Cottage Architecture: Magdalena Morska’s Aesthetic Vision of Zarzecze Village

12.30  Archive Oratorio dei Filippini

14.20  Lunch

16.00  Session 2: Women Building the City
Moderator: María Elena Díez Jorge
• Mariana de Moura (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil), Women and Construction Know-How: Critical Fabulations from Self-Produced Sites
• Barry Stiefel (College of Charleston), To Carry Forty Pounds of Clay: Enslaved Black Women and Children Building Trades Workers in Early America
• Elizabeth Biggs (Trinity College Dublin) and Kirsty Wright (Historic Royal Palaces), Women Shaping the Palace of Westminster, ca. 1290–1700
• Nicoletta Marconi (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata), Unsuspected Presences: Women Workers on 16th–18th Century Roman Building Sites
• Gül Kale (Carleton University, Canada), Women as Shapers of Spatial Practices in Ottoman Istanbul

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9.00  Session 3: Critical Agents of Transformation
Moderator: Alba Carballeira
• Julie Beckers (University of Leuven), Rebuilding for Observance: Architectural Changes to Santa Maria di Monteluce in Perugia post Reform, ca. 1448–1485
• Sol Pérez Martinez (ETH Zürich), Nuns Reporting the City: Convents, Urban Life, and Female Experiences of 1700s Chile
• Elena Rieger (ETH Zürich), Urban Living: Emilie von Berlepsch and the Late 18th-Century City
• Christina Contandriopoulos and Étienne Morasse-Choquette (Université du Québec à Montréal), “Woman Writing on the Art and Architecture in 18th-Century Paris
• Anne Hultzsch (ETH Zürich), Conversations at the Tea Table: Eliza Haywood and the Sites of Criticism

11.50  San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Galleria Spada, Palazzo Falconieri

13.45  Lunch

15.30  Session 4: The Politics of Gender in Building
Moderator: Consuelo Lollobrigida
• María Elena Díez Jorge (Universidad de Granada), The Prestige of Women through Architecture in 16th-Century Spain
• Ceren Göğüş (İstanbul Kültür University), Self-Representation of Ottoman Women through Public Projects
• Jaroslaw Pietrzak (University of the National Education Commission, Krakow), Polish Abbesses as Restorers of Churches and Monasteries in the 18th Century in the Light of Monastery Chronicles
• Konrad Niemira, (Museum of Literature / Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
• Sigrid de Jong (ETH Zürich), Women as Agents of Change: Female Interventions in Parisian Architecture

18.10  Keynote Address
• Anuradha Chatterjee (Dean of the School of Design and Innovation, RV University, India), Remembering (and Forgetting) Ahilya Bai Holkar’s Architectural Legacy

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9.30  Roundtable
Moderator: Shelley Roff
• Shelley Roff (University of Texas at San Antonio), Introduction: Matronage in a New Light
• Margaret Woodhull (University of Colorado, Denver), Women and Public Buildings around the Ancient Mediterranean: Some Thoughts on What and Why They Built
• Jyoti Pandey Sharma (School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi), Invisible Patrons and Stewardship of the Faith: The Begami Masjids (Mosques built by Mughal Ladies) of the Mughal Badshahi Shahar (Imperial City) Shahjanahabad
• Alper Metin (Università di Bologna ), Women Shaping the Ottoman Capital, from Saliha to Nakşıdil Sultan, 1730–1817
• Hannah Mawdsley and Eleanor Harding (National Trust, UK), Unpicking the Evidence of Elizabeth Murray’s Role in the Expansion of Ham House
• Mercedes Simal López (Universidad de Jaén), Elizabeth Farnese, Builder of the Majesty of Philip V
• Priscilla Sonnier (University College Dublin), ‘Noble Minded Sister’: Grizelda Steevens and Dublin’s Steevens’ Hospital, 1717–1733
• Danielle Willkens (Georgia Institute of Technology), Paper Patrons: Women of the Transatlantic Design Network

10.50  Discussion

11.30  Closing Remarks