Guest Bloggers V | Svava Riesto & Henriette Steiner (DK)

Expanding spaces of welfare through gender perspectives

Gender issues are increasingly prevalent in political movements for justice and equal rights, raising broader questions about discrimination, economic structures, democracy, climate change, and more. Applying gender perspectives to the material legacy of the welfare state, specifically on ‘spaces of welfare’, we can open up new areas of study and offer alternative visions for example to utopian ideals of universal welfare or simplistic and essentialist assumptions about the positive effects of design on undifferentiated notions such as 'the general public’.

These are among the many topics that will be covered in the PhD course Landscape, Architecture and Genderthe first of its kind in Denmark. The course is hosted by the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management and will be co-convened by Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner in October and November 2020.

In this course, we examine the ways in which gender is being explored in fields related to architecture, landscape and urban studies – including design, history, practice, activism, and education as well as social and societal concerns. These investigations can be related to critical studies of the material legacy of the welfare state. One example is research into the countless women whose contributions to the physical materialisation of the welfare state in the fields of planning, design, writing, and craftsmanship have been overlooked. Such research expands the historiographic tradition of 20th century architecture, which is still predominantly engaged in the creation of male hero figures.

Applying gender perspectives on spaces of welfare involves the study the role of women, LGBTQ communities and other marginalised groups as users, co-producers and agents in architecture and designed landscapes in the welfare state, is also a theme that will be addressed during the workshop element of the course. Moreover, we are committed to investigating the ways in which queer and feminist thinking transgress binary concepts and destabilise anthropocentric perspectives, perspectives that cling to the modernist legacy of the architecture of the welfare state and which still prevail in discussions about spaces of welfare. Often, these discussions sideline urgent contemporary concerns associated with the climate and biodiversity crises.

The course brings together scholars in architecture, landscape, urban studies and related disciplines, scholars who focus on a wide array of spatial perspectives which link to issues of gender, including gender studies and feminist criticism. Nevertheless, the course does not promote a singular feminist perspective, but acknowledges that when examining specific problems and questions, multiple lineages of feminist, queer and critical thinking may be relevant.

The PhD course is an offspring of the new research project titled Women in Danish Architecture which will host related, public events on architecture, landscape and gender. Events will be posted on the project webpage

International guest teachers for the PhD-course are: Barbara Penner, Architectural Humanities, University College London, UK; Meike Schalk, Urban Studies and Urban Theory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Despina Stratigakos, Architecture and Gender Studies, University at Buffalo, USA; Heidi Svenningsen Kajita, Architecture, Landscape and Planning, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

We kindly invite you to join us.

Sincerely,

Henriette Steiner and Svava Riesto

Henriette Steiner is Associate Professor at the Section for Landscape Architecture and Planning at the University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge, UK, and was Research Associate in the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich in Switzerland for five years. In 2018, she was visiting Associate Professor at the Department for Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for six months. Steiner's research investigates the cultural role and meaning of architecture, cities and landscapes and has been published widely in international books and journals. Her most recent book is Tower to Tower: Gigantism in Architectural and Digital Culture (co-written with Kristin Veel, MIT Press, 2020). She leads the research project Women in Danish Architecture jointly with Svava Riesto

Svava Riesto is Associate Professor at the Section of Landscape Architecture and Planning at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests lie in questions concerning the history, heritage and urban renewal of urban landscapes. Svava has worked several years as an art historian in design firms and she combines her academic practice with design criticism, collaborative heritage making and site-based planning projects. She has published widely in international books and journals and her most recent book is Biography of an Industrial Landscape: Carlsberg’s Urban Spaces Retold (Amsterdam University Press 2018). She leads the research project Women in Danish Architecture in partnership with Henriette Steiner and is heading the work on heritage in the European project PuSH – Public Space in Social Housing.