Launch of online archive

Feminist Spatial Practices—a global collective of architects, artists, designers, and scholars—has launched a new interactive online archive that celebrates the diverse ways that people practice feminism in the built environment. The web platform offers a searchable visualization and index of 600+ global feminist practices in art, design, architecture, and activism from the past and present. The experimental design of the platform enables visitors to discover relationships between practices, publications, exhibitions, and protest movements across time, with themes such as “experimental pedagogies,” “alternative materialities,” and “spaces for non-conforming bodies.” The entries for the archive have been collectively produced with input from community members around the world. 

The archive is designed to continually expand and is now accepting suggestions through the submissions page. Anyone is encouraged to add suggestions, which are vetted by an internal working group. ‘Spatial practices’ are considered broadly to include any creative work engaging with the built environment (art, design, performance, architecture, planning, writing, researching, curating, etc.). ‘Feminist’ here indicates practices that actively engage with themes of gender, sexuality, and social equity, including practitioners of any background or gender identification.

The design of the interactive archive was a collaboration between Feminist Spatial Practices, graphic designers Omnivore Inc, and web designers and developers Rahul Subhash Shinde and Lukas Eigler-Harding. The innovative visual interface of the website invites visitors to explore the entries either through the interactive Tapestry visualization or through the list-format of the Index, both of which offer options to filter and sort by time, theme, and medium. The Tapestry visualization offers multiple scales of navigation, with overlapping shapes and patterns that mix digital and analogue references, including weaving patterns from Annie Albers’ text On Weaving (1965).     

Bringing attention to the diverse range of past and present feminist spatial practices around the world, this project expands ways of knowing and ways of making in the built environment. The Feminist Spatial Practices archive also serves as a tool for fostering a community of thinkers, advocates, and makers who can connect to support each other and share knowledge.

About Feminist Spatial Practices
Feminist Spatial Practices highlights and promotes practices in art, design, architecture, and activism that work towards intersectional gender equity in the built environment through creative work and critical scholarship. The collective organizes programming and projects through collaborative working groups. The working group that shaped the web platform was co-chaired by Abriannah Aiken, Bryony Roberts, and Ryan Brooke Thomas and included active members Bilge Bal, Layna Chen, Cynthia Deng, Elif Erez, and Kari Roynesdal. The entries of the archive were researched by a working group co-chaired by Abriannah Aiken, Layna Chen, and Santiago Alvarez, with active member Elizabeth Cox. The project was further supported by working groups focused on funding, creative outreach, community programming, process, and special projects, led by members Virginia Melnyk, Ridhi Chopra, Amiti Singh, Defne Saysel, Renske Maria van Dam, Lindsay Harkema, Ruo Jia, and Katie Rotman. 

For more information on upcoming programming, see the events calendar or instagram. Interested in joining the Feminist Spatial Practices community? Please fill out the form here.

Supporters
The project is supported by the re:arc institute and the Cowles Charitable Trust, along with many individual donors. The project is made possible through fiscal sponsorship from the Architectural League of New York. 

This project grew from an earlier research and visualization project that was commissioned by the Jencks Foundation and e-flux for the Chronograms of Architecture project and was published on e-flux Architecture.