WIA Berlin - Women in Architecture Berlin
The largest celebration of women architects is currently underway in Berlin. It includes almost a hundred events in various locations: exhibitions, film screenings, architectural tours, symposiums, lectures, workshops, audio walks and activities in the city space. The aim of the event is not only to introduce fascinating realizations by female designers, but above all to manifest equality in the construction industry.
Originally, the event was planned mainly online, but later, thanks to the reduction of restrictions, it was possible to make more space available. It is worth noting that among the initiators were the Berlin Chamber of Architects and the local equivalent of the SARP, the Berliner Architektinnen Planerinnen Netzwerk, or N-Ails for short, and thirty other supporting organizations.
Thanks to the digital formula, we can watch many of these events without having to travel to Germany. Videos, as well as broadcasts of the meetings, are available on the WIA BERLIN 2021 YouTube channel , where we can enable automatic translation into Polish. The event, does not focus exclusively on female architects, a large section was dedicated to female technical faculty designers and landscape designers.
One of the practices of the festival is the poster action
photo: Anna Kotowska
poster action
One of the practices of the festival is also a poster action. Selected realizations of contemporary offices headed by women were placed on advertising poles. Imagine what it would look like in Poland, how many female architects could we name without thinking? Probably no more than ten, which only proves how much such an action could help the visibility of female architects in the Polish environment. Thanks to the campaign and the manifesto of the Women Architects' Ball, we feel even more strongly the need to evoke interesting figures and discuss design for women, by women and with women.
"Queens of Structure" exhibition on the grounds of Berlin Technical University
photo: Anna Kotowska
Queens of Structure
We can start our tour with the outdoor exhibition "Queensof Structure" in the open area of the Berlin Technical University. Walking down the concrete ramp, we pass photographs of modern female civil engineers and the history of pioneering women in the field of structure since 1811. On the plaza itself and on the surrounding patio walls, large format boards depicting one selected engineering project each have been placed.
Thus, we have twelve boards depicting one by one the projects headed by, among others: Roma Agrawal, designer of the foundation system of The Shard skyscraper in London, Prof.Dr. Agnes Weilandt responsible for the structural design of the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne (proj. SANAA), Sarah Springman, professor, Ph. of structural mechanics and geotechnics from the University of Cambridge, lecturer and rector at ETH Zurich, an expert in geotechnics, author of the Fiji Dam project, or Anne Burghartz, one of whose tasks was to develop the packaging system for the Arc de Triomphe of artists Christo and Jeanne Claude in Paris.
The exhibition at the UT Berlin
photo: Anna Kotowska
In the field of glulam construction, on the other hand, it is worth exploring the project of Ulrike Elbers, who was active in the Arup team on the residential tower project. Each of the boards has an additional QR code, which, when loaded, takes us to an interview with the designers, who talk about their professional experiences and the stereotypes they had to face during their work. In addition to the exhibition, there was a debate with the participation of four female designers. More information can be found on the Queens of Structure website. The exhibition can be visited until August 27 this year.
Architektinnen.BDA
The exhibition "Architektinnen.BDA", in turn, presents 45 contemporary female architects. Located in the first floor of a historic building, the gallery has become a venue for presenting photographs of selected projects. Each was presented as a foam print and placed against the white walls of the gallery. Some of the projects can also be found in various parts of the city, on advertising poles. The exhibition can be visited without prior registration.
The exhibition "Architektinnen.BDA"
Photo: Anna Kotowska
FRAU ARCHITEKT*IN
Another interesting item on the festival map is the temporary BHROX bauhaus reuse pavilion, located in the middle of a busy traffic circle. There we can see the exhibition FRAU ARCHITECT*IN, which includes films and manifestos. In terms of the content covered there, it's probably the strongest of the entire festival, touching on often overlooked aspects in urban design, feminism and space accessibility.
There we will see the exhibition Fem * MAP Berlin 2049 by a team of students from the Department of Urban Planning at CUD TU Berlin, which presents a feminist perspective of today's Berlin, showing examples of what a non-sexist city could look like.
"FRAU ARCHITECT*IN" exhibition.
photo: Anna Kotowska
The individual chapters, shown in the form of manifestos, are divided into 9 parts: Introduction, Memory, Representation and Politics, Queer Feminist Empowering Spaces, Caring Neighborhoods, City by Night (Nightscapes), Gender-Sensitive Housing, Feminist Perspectives on Moving Berlin, Security, and Spaces of Exclusion. You can see a map of the project here.
In turn, the video presented there, which is a presentation of the research project "fem * CITY Berlin - Feminist city of transformed fragments", points out the areas we need to change to make the city women-friendly. It will be a space: an accessible one, one in which all types of work will be recognized, in which areas such as healthcare and sports will get extra support and be inclusive, we will include nature's participation in design, and we will open up to overlooked issues and women's stories. Each of these became the basis for experimental design activities for selected areas of the city.
"Fem * MAP Berlin 2049" exhibition.
Photo: Anna Kotowska
archival diplomas
Another element is the presentation of the diploma works of female students from 1951-1974. Thanks to the ongoing archiving and subsequent digitalization of the collection, a material containing selected works in the form of mock-ups and charts was created. The full resources have also been made available online on the architekturmuseum-berlin website. At the exhibition, we can also see the 2017 film "FRAU ARCHITECT - 100 Years of Women in the Architectural Profession," the story of nine female architects born between 1930 and 1995, who talk about their career path in a male-dominated world, and the interview series Women Architects - Oral History, which we can also view online. And this is just a small part of the festival's rich program.
Women Architects' Ball
In Poland, on the other hand, we can already follow with no small amount of enthusiasm the activities of a platform for exchange and knowledge called BAL of Women Architects. The topic of designing with the needs of overlooked groups is booming. More and more of us are able to boldly tell personal stories of everyday discrimination, starting from a job interview to a visit to a construction site or while working in a design office. Patriarchy, no matter the context, relegates the needs of minorities, or weaker, fragile, sensitive individuals to the margins, and when these individuals do speak up, fight for equality, they are often overlooked, ridiculed or are forced to change their behavior, often against their will.
How can we change this? Certainly by showing their strength as a group of many talented female designers. This became the main goal of the festival, which went beyond the walls of the online and gallery space. Another success of the event was the involvement of universities and major institutions dealing with architecture and urban planning, which further emphasized its importance.
I hope that being on the wave of admiration of discovering more and more new, hitherto unknown female architects, we will soon create similar events in our cities.
