Female knowledge and care of the city

Abstract

The text presents the work of Vanda, a group based in the Milan Polytechnic where it was founded by three professors and a researcher of the Faculty of Architecture. Vanda has been researching about “theories and women’s work in architecture”. The group started its activities with a seminar entitled “Dare to think the city female.” During a decade (I990-2000) the team developed many research directions involving students and researchers, working also with local municipalities in time oriented policies.The history of architecture has long been taught only as great masters history. Only recently the historians highlighted the late nineteenth century work of the so-called Anglo-Saxon Mothers work of architecture. In this way new figures emerged like the “architettrici” of the fascist period, the decorators and the futurist in the thirties, up to the figures of the great professionals like Margarete Shutte Lihotsky or Charlotte Perriand.Vanda reconstructed the history of living according women point of view, and addressed important study topics as the care and time in the city. The latter, after producing the new Regulatory Plan of hours to improve public times of shops, tram, schools, relapsed space in a system of small architectural devices called the everyday micro-architecture.