MAKING SPACES - PETUNIA COMMENTS - MAKING SPACES

2017 : RECALCULATING

1/1/2017

A YEAR FOCUSING ON »practice«, »research», »teaching« and »strategy«.

MAKING SPACES started in 2015. For almost two years it brought together protagonists and examined their practices. It provides a framework to present and develop ideas through workshops, talks, interventions and exhibitions.
MAKING SPACES wants to keep inspiring a young generation for whom the mutual support between women should be self-evident. Specific recommendations for actions to reinforce the position of women in spatial practices will thus be collected, published and distributed beyond the network of MAKING SPACES.

In 2017 MAKING SPACES' discussion-dinners address the questions of
»practice«, »research», »teaching« and »strategy«. Each dinner will articulate itself around four inspiring spatial practitioners within these fields.

BYE FOR NOW!

1/11/2016

The Making Spaces blog takes a pause for the time being. Meanwhile, the women behind the project are thinking up the next big steps to take. Keep an ear out in the coming months...

PRACTICE: BIRTE ENDREJAT, 'IT'S ALL YOURS.'

20/7/2016

Installation view: Birte Endrejat at TACHO Kreuzberg, July 2016

Gliding through the streets on my bike, Christof Zwiener's artist-run project space Tacho KREUZBERG came as a surprise, even with Google maps as my guide. Nestled within a playground Am Wassertorplatz, this tranquil location hosts an exhibition by Birte Endrejat entitled 'It's all Yours.'.

practice: netting the work

18/7/2016

What are the links between performance and the everyday human flows ? Gomenes is a project set up by Netting the Work's Eva Giannakopoulou and Rilène Markopoulou that took place last April 2016 in the framework of the Athen Biennale. Let's discover another attempt to examine gender stereotypes.

Practice: Sandra Hoj in Copenhagen

1/6/2016

On a recent visit to Copenhagen, Making Spaces caught up with blogger Sandra Hoj to hear about her pragmatic, ever critical approach to issues of urbanism in a city that is widely regarded as being the most liveable in the world.

Assistens Cemetery, home to many urban trees (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen - home to many urban trees (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

OPINION: AUSTRALIA’S CONTRIBUTION TO VENICE MUCH MORE THAN WHIMSY

30/5/2016

Fresh back from Venice, Miriam Stoney reflects on her highlight of the Architecture Biennale (curated by three women!) and why it is so much more than just a place to dip your feet.

More than a novelty, the Australian Pavilion demonstrates how the pool brings people together

EVENT: NIGHT SHIFT // Public space: FIGHTS & FICTIons

24/5/2016

DJ Sets curated by Creamcake (Photo: Facebook - Akademie der Künste)

Making Spaces c/o Niche Berlin on the Düttmann bar (Photo: Facebook - Akademie der Künste)

On Friday 20th May, Making Spaces (under the experienced wing of Niche Berlin) teamed up with Creamcake to curate the NIGHT SHIFT at the beautiful Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg. As part of the 36-hour Factory of Thought, we presented 8 hours of heady beats and tantalising tipples to launch the blog in a big way.

thank you to everyone who came to the successful launch of making spaces !

21/5/2016

Pictures will be online soon

practice : Anna Puigjaner Wins 2016 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize

21/5/2016

THANKS TO the prize she will study the typology of collective housing, with investigations from historical precedents in the former Soviet Union to solar kitchens of India and kitchenless dwellings in Korea and Japan.

OPINION: LOOK FURTHER! A PLEA FOR AVOIDING 'ALL MALE PANELS'

19/5/2016

Art historian and co-founder of Niche Berlin Stefanie Gerke is sadly accustomed to seeing discursive events headed by solely men. In this thinkpiece she makes the case against all male panels. It could make a big difference to the way we think about many things.

All Male Panels tumblr shows gender inequality in conferences and other such discursive events

First International Smart Cities in Smart Regions 2016 Conference May 10 - 12, 2016 in the Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland (Image: http://allmalepanels.tumblr.com/)

Practice: BEYOND THE FRONT

19/5/2016

Niche Berlin co-founder and Making Spaces initiator Nele Heinevetter looks to the programme of the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale to find inspiring architectural practice by women.

Talking of inspirational women: we’d like to introduce Luba Michailova und Victoria Ivanova. Successful businesswomen and founder of Izolyatsia Foundation, human rights-lawyer and brilliant art theorist, they bring new perspectives to Eastern Ukraine and this year's Venice Biennale.

Photo: Danielle Rosales and Robin Coenen, installation image for Architecture Ukraine, IZOLYATSIA, Kyiv/Mariupol, 2015. Photo by Valerii Miloserdov

Architecture Ukraine, poster image, IZOLYATSIA, 2015. Rendering by Dima Sergeev

EVENTS: NIGHT SHIFT WITH CREAMCAKE & MAKING SPACES C/O NICHE BERLIN

18/5/2016

EXPECT 10 WHOLE HOURS OF HEADY BEATS AND TANTALISING TIPPLES – DANCING IS IMPERATIVE.

Practice: Laurel PTAK

18/5/2016

London-hailing, Berlin-based writer and editor Fiona Shipwright presents the work of Laurel Ptak, shedding light on the contemporary realities of digital space - and in turn, illuminating the ideological and functional frameworks that structure initiatives like Making Spaces.

Laurel Ptak's Wages for Facebook questions the model for the digital economy

Screenshot of the Wages for Facebook page

"Maybe we need to start recognising that the information architecture and code used in constructing a website are equally like architecture in physical space — on some level it embodies ideologies and controls our behaviour.”

OPINION: "What time is it on the clock of the world?"

17/5/2016

Last week TU Berlin Urban Design student and graduate of Metropolitan Culture Andrea Protschky joined Stadtkuratorin for the International Festival on Feminism and Public Space. She responds to the different viewpoints that were presented with her own realisations.

In hysterical times like these, we need to challenge our presumptions. At the Festival on Feminism and Public Space from May 4th-7th in Hamburg, international artists, performers, theoreticians and activists questioned current public narratives of migration, gender roles and material reproduction conditions. As part of the project Stadtkuratorin, the event took place at the art university HFBK and the dance and performance platform Kampnagel.

PRACTICE: Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo

13/5/2016

Art historian and L'Espace Féminin co-initiator Christina Landbrecht shares her thoughts on a remarkable - yet obscure - woman architect.

Noto Syracuse, Sicily (Photo credit © Armin Linke, 2012)

Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo is a perfect example of how long it may take for an interesting female architect to get some media attention. So far there are two books about her work and some articles in magazines such as Baumeister or Architectural Design. The reception of her work started around 2006 after she had already been working for 40 years in Sicily, where she was born in 1952. She lives, as she admits, a remote life, which makes it even hard for anyone to simply reach her by phone.

PRACTICE: WHAT ABOUT GRAFTON?

3/5/2016

I, for one, have never thought seriously enough about Grafton Architects. I first became aware of their work when I visited the Sensing Spaces exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, back in 2014. This exhibition was an enthralling series of site-specific installations by various architectural firms, each exploring a different aspect of architectonic space. The monumental wooden structures by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton recreated the incremental differences of sun- and moonlight in space. The bold, brutish shapes made a stark impression, but the effects of the light were subtle and softly appealing. One senses this subtlety in their built projects time and time again.

Women architects of Grafton win LSE Commission

Grafton Architects' winning design for LSE's Paul Marshall Building (Image source: Twitter @LSEalumni)

OPINION: "NOT JUST AN ARCHITECT, BUT THE architect"

19/4/2016

This article in the New York Times documents a variety of viewpoints of women working in architecture. It's so important to hear from the people who truly experience gender in their workplace, to come to understand what prejudices exist in spatial practices.

PRACTICE: 0,2 %

16/4/2016

"First, the good news: The number of black women licensed to practice architecture in the United States has quadrupled over the past 15 years. The bad news? That number is still only 196." A thought provoking article in Architect Magazin highlights the disparity in numbers of the most marginalised sections of American society. The issues faced by women in architecture should be seen in intersection with the issues faced by people of colour and those who are generally less privileged. As a professional field required a great deal of education and networking, architecture is inherently exclusive. White women are thus significantly better represented in the field than women of other ethnicities - as the statistics show us quite clearly.

OPINION: to gender or not to gender

16/4/2016

A great article by Debbie Cameron in her blog "language: a feminist guide" reflecting upon the death of Zaha Hadid and the use of the word "female" in this matter. We have also come up against this lexical problem in L'Espace Féminin. Our personal approach has been to stick with "woman/women" in spite of the grammatical clumsiness of the phrasing. With this, we wish commit to a social frame of reference, and not a biological one.

OPINION: IF the space does not exist, just make it

29/3/2016

We stumbled upon an initiative that we feel has many echoes with our own: Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thons.

OPINION: Where has the debate come to thus far? (Long read)

29/3/2016

L'Espace Féminin is one of many groups seeking to redress the gender imbalance in the professional world of architecture and other spatial practices. Miriam Stoney reflects on these similar initiatives, with a concern for how our project ought to develop in the future.

OPINION: WHY DO WOMEN REALLY LEAVE ARCHITECTURE?

18/3/2016

A fresh gender debate is afoot and what’s more it’s wearing pink and saying ‘girl’ without blinking.

OPINION: La ville faite par et pour les hommes, Yves Raibaud

1/3/2016

Although literary characterisations of the city are often female, urban space is predominantly masculine. Those who govern, manage and regulate public space are mostly men. This domination manifests itself in the freedom that men enjoy in contrast to the consignment of women to domestic roles. The fear that women experience at night due to ‘masculine incivilities’ further demonstrates that women do not have the same ‘spatial citizenship’ as men. This book is interested in the ways cities are thought of and appropriated according to one’s gender. It also puts forward examples of better practices to foster more equal, inclusive public spaces.

Practice: dpr-barcelona

29/2/2016

An architectural research practice based in Barcelona, working in publishing, criticism and curating. We take dpr-barcelona as an example of the breadth of architectural practice that goes beyond the preconceived conventions of the field. Ethel Baraona Pohl, "critic, writer and curator [but she prefers Professional Amateur]" - alongside César Reyes Nájera - is building discourse.

OPINION: On brains and cities

15/2/2016

Questioning the possibility of a difference between the brains of men and women, scientists contribute to a long-running debate on the innate or acquired neurological differences between sexes and genders. The question applies to cities in much the same way, where men generally have more influence on decisions affecting urban development. Leisure spaces, for examples, are mostly shaped with boys in mind, while surveys show that girls of a certain age do not engage with cultural activities or sports. This podcast presents a nuanced discussion of these issues.

LISTEN TO IT HERE
(in French)