This essay explores different theoretical positions in the work of feminist architectural writing in the English language from the 1970s to today. This involves examining how feminist architectural theory’s relation to history and practice has shifted over time, reconfiguring their relation. In the first section I discuss how feminist architectural writing of the 1970s–80s drew on feminist political theories of equality and difference to provide a conceptual underpinning for understanding how sexism operates in the building industry and architectural profession, and on women’s roles as makers and users of the built environment. The second section engages with feminist architectural theory in the 1990s, which was explicitly interdisciplinary, adopting and adapting feminist concepts from disciplines outside architecture, and producing a critical understanding of the gendering of representations. In the final section I investigate how, in the last decade, feminist architectural theory has been more generative and activist, and re-rooted in practice, where theory is often positioned both as subject matter but also a mode of practice in its own right.

‘Feminist Architectural Figurations,’ Elie Hadid (ed), The Contested Territory of Architectural Theory, (Routledge, 2022).