Jos Boys ‒ Archizoom ‐ EPFL

FEMINISM IN ARCHITECTURE, THEN AND NOW

Monday 21 March 2022, 6.30 p.m.
Archizoom, SG building, EPFL
Lecture also visible online. Zoom ID: 646 5060 5823.

On the occasion of the exhibition Do Not Carry Your Flag Too Low, Actions from Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative curated by Tiago P. Borges, Teresa Cheung and Silvia Groaz, Jos Boys, co-founding member of Matrix, will deliver a lecture on feminism in architecture, sharing her experience with us and comparing it to nowadays.

This talk will explore alternative modes of design and research practice, focusing on the work of Matrix in 1980s London – probably one of the first explicitly feminist architectural collectives. Jos Boys will discuss feminist, anti-racist and anti-ableist actions across the built environment since that period to think about what has changed and where gaps and opportunities for radical design education and practice currently lie.

Home page of the Matrix Open feminist architecture archive (MOfaa), a work in progress to offer open access resources.

iew of the Matrix exhibition at the Barbican Centre London in 2021, entitled ‘How We live Now: re-imagining spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative. Co-curated by Jon Ashbury and Jos Boys. Photo: Jos Boys

1980s cartoon by Janis Goodman entitled ‘A is for Architect’. Courtesy of Matrix Open.

Jos Boys was originally trained in architecture, she was one of the co-founders of Matrix feminist architecture and research collective in the 1980s and one of the authors of Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment. Since then she has been a journalist, researcher, consultant, educator and photographer; and has published several books. In 2008 she co-founded The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, with Zoe Partington, which brings disabled artists into architectural education and practice to co-develop anti-ableist approaches. Her research and practice explores how everyday social, spatial and material practices come to frame what is ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary’, and to work with others on design interventions that question our assumptions about who gets valued and who doesn’t (in society, in the design of built space and in architecture as a discipline).

Currently Jos is Director of the Learning Environments Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Centre (LEEDIC) at The Bartlett, University College London UK; and Programme Lead for the MSc Learning Environments.