Collective Memory of Diverse Women Architects:
Its (Historical Documentation) Practice and Methods
Online Panel
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As we have been going through a global pandemic with deep-seated inequalities in architecture, inclusion in the field has become more urgent than ever before; in particular, for women architects from underrepresented groups such as minorities or immigrants. With deep concern about this situation’s historical roots, our online panel aims to motivate relevant institutions, programs, and people to take concrete actions toward historical documentation practice, methods, and policies that will be more inclusive of diverse women architects, rather than spotlighting the accomplishments of prominent individuals.
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We look forward to a conversation informed by the deep expertise of our panelists and enlivened by dialogue across generations and disciplines. Our panel brings together two pioneering architecture historians with three archivists doing critical work in documenting the works and lives of women in architecture. We aim to open a fresh dialogue between architectural history and the field of the archive for the sake of building a collective and inclusive memory as well as for a future architecture world that empowers a sense of belonging and connections among current and future generations of diverse women architects, and their recognition by society.
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With your help, this dialogue will continue even more broadly and deeply online after the event.
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Our Panel Aims:
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• to draw attention to huge gap in historical documentation practice on women architects from underrepresented groups such as minority, immigrant, etc.;
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• to bring into focus problems with inclusion of those women architects in (critical) architecture history, and architectural archives by experts’ critical comments;
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• to raise awareness of each other’s work (by architecture historians and architecture archivists) for more inclusive architecture history and archives/collections on women architects from underrepresented groups such as minority, immigrant, etc.;
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• to know experts’ suggestions (in architecture history and architecture archives) for collaborative action by institutions, programs and (research) centers in their respective fields in order to develop (more) inclusive historical documentation practice and methods on women architects from underrepresented groups such as minority, immigrant, etc., rather than spotlighting the accomplishments of prominent individuals;
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• to motivate relevant institutions, programs and people for this collaborative action.
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On May 7, we discussed the following panel questions with architecture historians and archivists in architecture:
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Question 1: According to your experience in your field (a. architecture history or b. archive in architecture), what are a. essential and b. current problem(s) with inclusion of diverse women architects?
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Question 2: How can we raise awareness of each other’s work (architecture historians and archivists in architecture history) for more inclusive architecture history and archives/collections, in relation to diverse women architects?
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Question 3: What can be done for collaborative action by institutions, programs and (research) centers in your fields (a. architecture history or b. archive in architecture) in order to develop (more) inclusive historical documentation practice and methods on diverse women architects?
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Panelists:
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Mary Norman Woods, Professor Emerita at Cornell University, Department of Architecture
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 Mary Norman Woods, Professor Emerita at Cornell, has written: Women Architects in India: Histories of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi (2018/2016); Beyond the Architect's Eye: Photographs of the American Built Environment (2013/2009); and From Craft to Profession: Practice of Architecture in 19th-Century America (1999). In 1991 she became the first woman tenured in Cornell's Department of Architecture, where she was also the inaugural Michael McCarthy Chair of Architectural Theory. Current projects include: a documentary film about Indian single-screen cinemas with Vani Subramanian; an exhibition on Mumbai's architecture of the night with Chirodeep Chaudhuri; and a book on postindustrial landscapes in India and the U.S.
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Heather Isbell Schumacher, Archivist, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, Architectural Archives
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 Heather Isbell Schumacher is the Archivist of the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. She oversees the stewardship of and access to more than 400 design-related collections. Heather received her master’s degree in public history from Temple University in 2010. Previously she served as Curator of Images at the Delaware Historical Society where she managed to photograph and audiovisual collections and produced collections-based content for a variety of regional media outlets. Heather believes that archives cannot and should not be neutral spaces, but rather tools for liberation.
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Jessica Quagliaroli, Architecture Records Archivist at the Yale University Library, Manuscripts, and Archives
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 Jessica Quagliaroli is the Architecture Records Archivist at Yale University. She previously worked as an archivist at the Architect of the Capitol. Her current position focuses on the arrangement and description of architectural archival collections, outreach and special collections instruction to Yale School of Architecture faculty and students, and research and reference services to faculty, students, and researchers outside of the Yale community. She is an active member of the Design Records Section of the Society of American Archivists.
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Maristella Casciato, the Senior Curator of the Architecture Collections at the Getty Research Institute in California
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 Maristella Casciato (architect and architectural historian) is Senior Curator, Head of Architecture Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute (2016-to present). Former professor at the University of Bologna/Architecture, she has been Mellon Senior Fellow at the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal (2010) prior to being appointed Associate Director of Research at the same institute (2012-2015). In 1999 she activated the voices of a group of practicing architects, historians, journalists, and photographers founding “La Casa di Eva”, whose researches have been published in Controspazio. She has been a guest curator at the MAXXI Architettura (Rome) since the opening of the museum.
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Moderator:
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Meral Ekincioglu, Ph.D. , former visiting and research scholar at the MIT-HTC; Columbia University, GSAPP, Ph.D. Program; Harvard University, History of Art and Architecture, Ph.D. Program.
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 Meral Ekincioglu is a scholar in postwar architecture history who conducted her advanced research project on women and gender with a focus on intersectional feminism and intertwined history of architecture at MIT. At Harvard and Columbia Universities, she studied theory, history of the architecture profession, and modernization of architectural design practice for her Ph.D. dissertation research, with an emphasis on the relationship between design architect and client in postwar Turkish architecture and obtained her Ph.D. at Istanbul Technical University. She presented her academic studies at MIT, Harvard, SAH International Conference (2018), MESA Annual Meeting (2020), and SAA Research Forum-2020, among others.
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About Women Who Design
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 Women Who Design aims to present thought-provoking feminist work, using narrative, exploration and collaboration to transform how we see our own lives and how the practice of architecture is understooding forward.

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