From India to Chile and Britain to Senegal women have influenced architecture for centuries by
exerting power over space through their writing. By exploring a wide variety of sources from
diaries and travelogues to inventories and political pamphlets this publication expands
histories of architecture to include these women. The contributing authors reveal female
spatial agencies using rare written sources novel methodologies and in-depth re-readings of
canonical histories. Housewives princesses novelists travellers nurses - writing as clients
users or critics - are all relevant voices for understanding the past of the built
environment. Examining specific spaces such as churches homes gardens boulevards kitchens
or shacks this book proposes a novel take on feminist historiographies.
