The Architectural Agency of the Swiss Women’s Movement, 1870–1930: New Perspectives on the Development and Design of the Built Environment

The research project “The Architectural Agency of the Swiss Women’s Movement, 1870–1930: New Perspectives on the Development and Design of the Built Environment” breaks new ground by writing, for the first time, an architectural history of the Swiss women’s movement since the second half of the 19th century. Using a case-study-driven approach, it reconstructs how, why, and with what intentions women’s associations navigated and shaped the built environment, and which architectural projects emerged from this that enabled, hindered, or altered their social or political goals. As a research team (PI, postdoc, PhD candidate), we examine and test which written, architectural, and visual sources can be utilized to build such architectural historiography.

The project builds upon Anglo-American and German feminist architectural historiography since the 1980s (e.g. Hayden 1981; Spain 2001; Terlinden/Oertzen 2006), which for the first time focused on women as collective agents of the built environment beyond institutionalized architectural education. It comprehensively expands this line of research through the concept of “architectural agency” and analyzes the contribution of the Swiss women’s movement as part of a more inclusive, multifocal architectural history.

The women’s associations and their members examined by the research team generally did not aspire to be architects, preservationists, or urban planners. Their concerns were centered on philanthropy, their own social status and personal fulfillment, political rights, education, morality, or hygiene. Yet meeting halls, hospital buildings, and parks became powerful vehicles for their collective volunteer efforts, for example, in girls’ education and social welfare. In doing so, they found themselves confronted with the purchase, renovation, or new construction of properties, the discussion of spatial programs, the furnishing and use of interiors, or the maintenance of public green spaces. Even as architectural amateurs, they operated with a broad spectrum of competencies, roles, and knowledge across a wide variety of architectural processes and networks—a phenomenon we conceptualize as “architectural agency” and systematically analyze in this project.

The period of investigation spans from the first (inter)national founding of women’s associations in Switzerland in the 1870s, on the one hand, to the first Swiss Exhibition of Women’s Work (SAFFA) initiated by them in 1928, on the other. Under the direction of Lux Guyer, the first independently practicing female architect in Switzerland, the SAFFA became not only a showcase of women’s work but also an exhibition of architecture and housing. In a sense, these amateur architects thus passed the baton to a new professional group, women architects (Lang 1992). Building on this historical intersection, the research project examines the “architectural agency” of women's movements in Switzerland as one (among several possible) precursor to the professionalization of women in architecture.

PI

Prof. Dr. Laura Hindelang

Research Group

Dr. Nina Hüppi, Postdoc, operative lead
M.A. Ines Gadermaier, PhD Candidate
Anna Lea Gerber, student assistant
Pauline Koch, student assistant

Project partner

Gosteli Archive. History of women's movements in Switzerland

Duration of the project

September 2026 to August 2030

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation, grant no. 10007704