More than half the picture

Abstract

Historically, the work of white Western male architects has dominated architectural history education. In recent decades a large body of scholarship has attempted to critically question this, highlighting and subverting mainstream disciplinary values, which are informed by gendered, racial, classist, and colonial biases. This chapter explores the process of addressing the methodologically and epistemologically gendered blind spots that reinforce structural inequality in the academy. We reflect on our experiences developing two interlinked Architectural History courses on the MSc Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences between 2019 and 2021 at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The chapter explores the challenge of introducing traditionally marginalised forms of architectural knowledge – such as ones coming from feminist theory – within an existing institutional framework, while also interrogating the essential acts of collaboration between students, researchers, and teachers that take place in the process.