Past Symposia

2022 Symposium

Within every woman’s body of work, there are known or identifiable breakthroughs: singular or multiple instances exist that have influenced the designer’s creative and professional path, and that may have advanced the disciplines in some manner, or expanded women’s standing in the profession.  Furthering last year’s theme, “1×1: The Potential of the Singular,” this year’s IAWA symposium invites researchers and practitioners to contribute papers or creative presentations that identify instances in the career of a woman designer that have been or should be recognized as a breakthrough: a relevant revelatory moment.

The call particularly seeks to uncover and give visibility to the material artifacts produced by women in practice or academia that have prompted this point(s) of inflection in their lives, careers, or in the projects or studies they have conducted. Such material artifacts – a sketch, drawing, note or scribble, study model, personal letter, collage, rendering, screen print, photograph, outline or synopsis of written work, academic project prompt – serve as physical markers. They record relevant advances and innovations that may have impacted their creator’s personal path, at a personal or at broader scales. Material artifacts illustrate how the designer may have influenced the histories of the disciplines, or altered the perception and development of the built environment. Furthermore, material artifacts may serve as evidence of the types of limitations – whether personal or imposed by the profession, academia or society – that women have transcended. 

Highlighting the myriad forms in which women have and continue to break through in architecture and related design fields, the call invites presenters to contextualize the stories revealed by the chosen material artifacts. The call also invites speculations about instances and artifacts that may not yet be identified as breakthroughs but could, from a present perspective, be confirmed or proposed as such. The call seeks to foster the discovery of individual precious artifacts that hold stories yet unknown. The call also seeks to draw attention to the collective impact that women have had on architecture, by framing singular artifacts in their aggregation.