Women's Work: London celebrates female architects

(Image credit: Part W)

published 8 March 2023

'Women's Work: London', a printed map celebrating the contributions of women in our built environment, has just launched, 'highlighting significant and groundbreaking buildings in the capital where women have played a key role in their creation'. The project, led by action group Part W, a collective for design and architecture activism around gender equality in the field, was supported by a crowdfunding campaign – and the result has just landed, right in time for International Women's Day.

Part W founders Portrait — The founders of Part W, Yemí Àlàdérun, Zoë Berman and Alice Brownfield

'Women's Work: London'

The map, designed by EDIT, addresses the imbalance of gender representation in architecture, as the work of women has 'so often been missed off digital and printed maps, and left out of archives', say its creators, led by Part W founders Yemí Àlàdérun, Zoë Berman and Alice Brownfield. 'Women's Work: London' now includes 30 schemes across the capital, selected from 150 submissions gathered through an open call launched a year ago. The entries were whittled down to the final selection by a panel of expert external judges, including Stephanie Edwards, Adam Nathaniel-Furman, Deborah Broomfield and Laura Mark.

London Bridge Tower (The Shard) — The Shard

The buildings include Boatemah Walk and Warwick House by Anne Thorne Architects on Angell Town Estate (SW9), the former named after local resident Dora Boatemah MBE; the London Aquatics Centre in Olympic Park, Stratford, by Zaha Hadid DBE; the Museum of the Home in E2, commissioned by Sonia Solicari, Museum of the Home director, and led by project architect Naila Yousuf of Wright & Wright Architects, co-founded by Clare Wright MBE; and The Shard in London Bridge, on which engineer Roma Agrawal MBE worked for six years.

London Aquatics Centre, built for the 2012 Olympic Games — London Aquatics Centre

'Women’s Work: London highlights lesser-known stories of women’s significant contribution to the city around us, sparking conversations about who is (and is not) involved in the production of our built environment and challenging the notion that buildings are the result of a single author,' says Alice Brownfield, chair of Part W.

part-w.com

editcollective.uk

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).