Architecture & Feminist Critical Theory

Three decades of intellectual work on architectural theory and feminist discourse.

Hilde Heynen is a Belgian architectural theorist whose work bridges neo-Marxist critical theory and current feminist discourse, applying these perspectives to architectural culture. This volume collects her most significant texts from three decades of intellectual work, centred on three feature concepts: mimesis, dwelling, and displacement. It offers readers incisive reflections on architects’ roles in shaping societies and the alliance between ideology, societal structures of injustice, political economy, housing and the built environment.

Within a fierce post-critical debate among scholars who have begun to question the relevance of architectural theory to the discipline in the early twenty-first century, Heynen’s position remains constant throughout her writings in defence of architectural theory as a social and transformative practice. This collection is essential reading for new generations of architects and cultural theorists interested in modernity, gender and criticality.

Preface
Acknowledgements

Introduction. Hilde Heynen in Context, by Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno

Section 1. Architecture & Critical Theory
Background Notes
Chapter 1. Worthy of Question: Heidegger’s Role in Architectural Theory
Chapter 2. Functionalism and its Shadow
Chapter 3. Space as Receptor, Instrument or Stage : Notes on the Interaction between Spatial and Social Constellations
Chapter 4. Meaning and Effect: Revisiting Semiotics in Architecture

Section 2. Critical Theory & Projects
Background Notes
Chapter 5. In New Babylon, One Cannot Dwell: On Dealing with Poetry and Commonplace
Chapter 6. Scenes of Ambivalence : Concluding Remarks on Architectural Patterns of Displacement
Chapter 7. Signs, Images and Life: Researching the Mimetical Mode of Architecture
Chapter 8. A Critical Position for Architecture?

Section 3. Projects & Political Economy
Background Notes
Chapter 9. “What Belongs to Architecture?” Avant-garde Ideas in the Modern Movement
Chapter 10. The Exodus Machine
Chapter 11. The Intertwinement of Modernism and Colonialism: A Theoretical Perspective
Chapter 12. Lutopia: An Ideal City in an Ideal World

Section 4. Political Economy & Housing
Background Notes
Chapter 13. The Irreducibility of Dwelling
Chapter 14. Belgium and the Netherlands : Two Different Ways of Coping with the Housing Crisis 1945-1970
Chapter 15. Continuity or Discontinuity? Narratives on Modern Architecture in East and West Germany during the Cold War
Chapter 16. About the Displacement of Home

Section 5. Housing & Feminist Theory
Background Notes
Chapter 17. Mimesis, Dwelling and Architecture : Adorno’s Relevance for a Feminist Theory of Architecture
Chapter 18. Places of the Everyday: Women Critics in Architecture
Chapter 19. Modernity and Domesticity: Tensions and Contradictions
Chapter 20. Uncanny and In-Between: The Garage in Rural and Suburban Belgian Flanders
Chapter 21. Anticipating the Future: Three Lines of Development

Section 6. Feminist Theory & Architecture
Background Notes
Chapter 22. ‘Matrix of Man.’ Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s Neglected Histories
Chapter 23. Genius, Gender and Architecture: The Star System as Exemplified in the Pritzker Prize
Chapter 24. Where Have all the Women Gone? Women’s Visibility in Architectural Culture in Flanders
Chapter 25. A Feminist in Disguise? Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s Histories of Architecture and the Environment
Chapter 26. Narrating Women Architects’ History: Paradigms, Dilemmas, and Challenges

Coda. The Displacement of Criticality , by Hilde Heynen

List of Figures
List of Original Publications in Chronological Order
Short Curriculum of the Authors

Hilde Heynen

Hilde Heynen is professor emerita of architectural theory at KU Leuven.

Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno

Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno is a professor of architectural history focusing on women, gender studies and feminist theory at the University of Zaragoza. She served as a visiting professor at KU Leuven from 2022 to 2024.

André Loeckx

Lieven De Cauter

Els De Vos

Els De Vos, ingenieur-architect en ruimtelijke planner, is hoofd van de opleiding interieurarchitectuur aan de Universiteit Antwerpen. Haar onderzoek situeert zich op de snijlijn van (interieur)architectuur, wooncultuur, gender en publieke ruimte.

Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno