ABOUT

Initiated with the financial support by the Hesse Ministry of Science and Art, this website explores the role and position of women in shaping and using the built environment in state-socialist contexts in different parts of the world during the twentieth century. Our goal is to bring to light neglected legacies of women-architects, -construction engineers, -landscape architects, -interior designers, -book illustrators, -theather stage set designers, -educators, and more to challenge the effects of a double seconding–the perception of women as “the second sex,” professionally inferior to men, and of state-socialist countries as “the second world,” in which no genuine architectural creativity was tolerated–inflicted by western architectural historiography, for a long time dominated by the patriarchal ideal of the heroic master. We invite collaboration of everyone willing to use this platform for sharing documents, images, links, essays, or any other form of visual or textual material.

Our project is support by an advisory board, which consists of eight international scholars who are specialized in feminist approaches to architectural history as well as in various parts of the former “second world”.

Advisory Board:

  • Klara Brůhová, Czech Technical University, Prague 
  • Harald Engler, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Erkner
  • Helena Huber-Doudová, National Gallery, Prague
  • Anne Hultzsch, ETH Zurich, Zurich
  • Mary Pepchinski, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden
  • Mariann Simon, Szent István University, Budapest
  • Tijana Vujosevic, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Milena Zindovic, Women in Architecture Regional Forum, Belgrade

 

Contributors:

  • Alma Hudović Kljuno, regional section editor and author (Yugoslavia/Bosnia Herzegovina, Yugoslavia/Croatia and Yugoslavia/Slovenia)
  • Ljudmila Đukić, regional section editor and author (Yugoslavia/Serbia, Yugoslavia/Montenegro, Yugoslavia/Macedonia and Yugoslavia/Kosovo)
  • Oxana Gourinovitch, regional section editor and author (Belarus)
  • Dilrabo Tosheva, regional section editor and author (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan)
  • Kaja Schelker, regional section editor and author (Poland)
  • Nikolay Erofeev
  • Boris Chukhovich
  • Antonia Heesen
  • Antonina Shepeleva
  • Abdul Huseynov
  • Michael Brinley
  • Ekaterina Ruskevich
  • Aliaksandr Shuba
 

Team:

  • Alla Vronskaya, project head
  • Benjamin Eckel, project researcher
  • Constanze Kummer, project researcher
  • Elina Amann, former student assistant
  • Renata Detka, former student assistant
  • Alexandra Ulner, former student assistant
  • Solbey Blanco, former student assistant
  • Kaining Jin, former student assistant


Image credits

We assume the images we’re using are in public domain. If we mistakenly use an image under copyright then please contact us at info@womenbuildingsocialism.org or here.

Logo

The logo for our website is based on the painting “Architecture” by Sereeter Dagvadorj (Mongolia, 1984). We are very grateful to Sereeter Dagvadorj for the permission to use the image.

Women Building Socialism: Female Architects of the Socialist World is a project of the Hessian ministry of science and the arts and the University of Kassel. The project is supported by a grant from the Hessian ministry of science and the arts.