The research proposes a dialectical re-reading of the Romanian Communist housing as a gendered control mechanism. Therefore, the thesis concentrates on Berceni neighbourhood between 1977 and 1989 as a case study for a larger urban phenomenon under the late Romanian Communist Regime (1965-1989). In this context, the research juxtaposes the Marxist ideologies on women's emancipation (proliferated throughout the Eastern Block) with the experiences of female inhabitants in Berceni. This contextualisation is crucial, given that response to women's issues was state-enforced and disseminated top-down. In aiding with a broader political and economic agenda, state policy dictated that women should be liberated from home duties (the private sphere) and be transposed into productive members of the society (the public sphere). Given that decision making was assigned to a predominantly male political elite, the state disregarded the family resources necessary to fulfil tasks historically associated with womanhood. Therefore, Socialist Women became just as tied to domesticity as their predecessors. What changed was that they were now forcefully assigned a dual character: an aseptic asexual public persona of state worker along the already existing sexualised domestic one. In understanding the link between women and domesticity, the research confronts the implications of state propaganda on the Lived Experience identified in the stories of some of the women inhabitants of 1977-89 Berceni. Among other points, the paper highlights women's isolation, over-working and distrust as some of the aftermaths of this clash between ideology and context.

In the 1990s in the field of philanthropy by design there is a rise of two intertwined desires. First, a desire by architects to manifest their socio-political commitment in the problem-solving potential of architecture. Second, a desire by the humanitarian field to manifest its abstract ideal into architectural action by establishing new international rules. Besides attracting the efforts of leading architects like Shigeru Ban, this results in the implementation of humanitarian architecture practitioners in the constitution of official guidelines by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Resulting in the institutionalisation of standards that guarantee improved quality in the practice of refugee shelter design. This implies the recognition for a need for official measures to dignify the user and guarantee essential comfort beyond basic survivalism. Through the case study of 1994 UNHR Shigeru Ban’s Paper Emergency Shelters for Rwanda, the thesis explores how the UNHR guidelines that resulted from the 1993 UNHR First International Workshop on Improved Shelter Response and Environment for Refugees (FIWISRER) begun to increase performative standards of refugee shelter design specifically in the context of post-civil war Rwanda. It concludes with a reflection on the limitations of this practice and how it has evolved since the Workshop.

This thesis focuses on the Women’s Studies section at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft, active from 1978 to 1998. The initial goal of the section was to contribute to the elimination of women's oppression by expanding the knowledge of this social reality. The emergence of the second feminist wave in 1960 in the Netherlands motivated women to establish female study groups, to link societal changes to the academic content. In 1977, architecture students in Delft followed this trend and organized female consultations at the Faculty of Architecture. They started sharing personal experiences concerning the women’s movement linked to their position within the faculty and the architectural profession in general. Despite internal disagreement from the faculty’s dean, the consultations ultimately led to the official course of Women’s Studies in 1978. The goal of the course shifted during the first years from the “oppression of women in the built environment” into a more scientific field of the “construction of gender differences”. In 1986, staff members started questioning the future of the section. They believed that two scenarios were possible for the development of Women’s Studies: the section could continue as a separate study field or integrate with existing research areas. Unfortunately, for the future of feminist studies at the Faculty of Architecture neither of these scenarios became reality. The section lost its support, and therefore the needed money flow, and got disbanded in 1998. The aim of this research is to link recent questions concerning the position of women in architecture to the achievements of the Women’s Studies section 40 years ago. The current activism is linked to the persistent gender gap in architectural practice, which shows that the topics covered by the Women’s Studies course are still relevant today. In the current women’s movement, the subject goes beyond the oppression of women and into intersectionality, in which the societal discrimination of multiple social groups comes to light. To bring about actual change, listening to and talking with the students is not enough. They need the right resources to take that next step in the women’s movement to eliminate inequality and exclusion in universities.

The present volume MORE: Expanding Architecture from a Gender-Based Perspective. III International Conference on Gender and Architecture Proceedings collects the papers, lectures, video-essays and workshops presented during a three-day-session (26th to 28th January 2017) which took place at the School of Architecture of the Università degli Studi di Firenze (UniFi, Italy) and Figline e Incisa Valdarno. #MOREcongress provided a meeting space for communication between professionals, researchers, educators and activists from an interdisciplinary approach. After two conferences held in Spain (ArquitectAs, Universidad de Sevilla, 2014) and Portugal (Matrices, Universidade Lusófona de Lisboa, 2015), the 3rd meeting was held in Italy to make visible and reinforce the work in South-European countries. The III International Conference investigates the application of feminist strategies to architecture and provides plural and integrated spaces for debate.@en

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the origin, history, and the architectural setting of the Begijnhof in Amsterdam throughout significant periods of change, the Middle Ages, the Reformation and the contemporary era. The combination of these aspects depicts the architectural setting of the Begijnhof that support the needs of the female inhabitants, the Beguinages. This research has been conducted by literature study and a case study of the Begijnhof in building plans (archival research). The results show the architectural settings of the Begijnhof are translated for the needs: independence, safety, religion, work and reputation. These aspects influence and enhance each other. The architectural settings are translations of these needs, most of them are outside the domestic sphere, in the courtyard and its attributes. When designing for the Beguinages, it turns out it is important to design holistically, socially oriented and slow paced.