Minding Her Business

The impact of women’s contributions to modern architecture and the built environment.

Women have influenced the development of modern architecture and design through a wide variety of entrepreneurial activities. This book highlights their contributions to the construction industry, editorial production, and real estate development, as well as the cultivation of social spaces and delivery of philanthropic interventions. With a global focus, the contributors provide case studies ranging from eighteenth-century Britain and early twentieth-century Istanbul to postwar Finland, mid-century America, and post-independence Kenya, demonstrating the breadth of roles women have created for themselves, whether by challenging patriarchal systems and the capitalist marketplace or by working effectively within them. Recognition of these roles supplements the increasing attention being paid to women architects and enables us to understand the full scope of the impact that women have long had in shaping the built world around us.

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction
Alborz Dianat and Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Part 1. Materials and Construction

Chapter 1. Written in Stone: Eleanor Coade and the Building World of Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
Dana Arnold

Chapter 2. A Woman on the Margins: The Trailblazing Career of Mary Louise Schmidt and the Making of Los Angeles in the Twentieth Century
Andrea Thabet and Jenna Snow

Chapter 3. Myriam Ratinoff: A Concrete Architectural Practice in 1960s Chile
Gabriela García de Cortázar Galleguillos

Part 2. Domesticity in Journalism and Real Estate Development

Chapter 4. Beauty in Revolution: Late Ottoman Feminists and the Everyday Aesthetics of Home Crafts in 1920s Women’s Magazines
Damla Göre

Chapter 5. Editors and Entrepreneurs: Women’s Writing on Architecture and Design in Britain, 1918–39
Alex Banister

Chapter 6. ‘A Live Career for Women’: Building Homes for the Working Class in Interwar Britain
Alexandra Quantrill

Chapter 7. Not Her Mother’s Suburb: Women in American Real Estate and Their Promotion of Modern Architecture in the Mid- Twentieth Century
Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy

Part 3. Nurturing Spaces for New Ideas

Chapter 8. Maire Gullichsen and Norrmark Handicraft: Matron of Finnish Design and Champion of Postwar Craftsmanship
Sini Rinne-Kanto

Chapter 9. Barbara Hill and the Most Intimate Coffee House in Perth , Western Australia, 1956–1960
Andrew Murray

Chapter 10. Lena’s Bookshop: Uncomfortable Knowledge, Modern Architecture, and the Building of a Southeast Asian Space, 1976–2004
Eunice Seng

Part 4. Social Entrepreneur ship

Chapter 11. The Invisible Hand: Female Bureaucrats and the Architecture of Foreign Aid in Post-Independence Kenya
Maryia Rusak

Chapter 12. Architectural Adjacency: Sheltered Housing Architectures and the Place-based Practices of Sister Stanislaus Kennedy (RSC) in 1960s–1990s Ireland
Ellen Rowley and Haylee Derrickson

Chapter 13. Representing Black Women? Black Philanthropy, Architectural Design, and the Cosby Academic Center at Spelman College, 1988–1996
E. James West

Bibliography
About the authors
Index

Alborz Dianat

Alborz Dianat is a researcher at University College Dublin and executive editor of 'Architectural History', the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is Professor of Art History at University College Dublin.

Dana Arnold

Jenna Snow

Andrea Thabet

Gabriela García de Cortázar Galleguillos

Damla Göre

Alexandra Banister

Alexandra Quantrill

Mary Anne Hunting

Kevin D. Murphy

Sini Rinne-Kanto

Andrew Murray

Eunice Seng

Maryia Rusak

Ellen Rowley

Haylee Derrickson

E. James West