Gender And Architecture

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2000 by Timothy Brittain-Catlin

Edited by Louise Durning and Richard Wrigley. Chichester: John Wiley. 2000. [pound]50

The subject of gender in architectural analysis is probably perceived as a largely American interest, thanks to Beatriz Colomina's Sexuality and Space of 1992; this British collection has, interestingly, been given a totally American appearance, set in a kind of Bodonified condensed Caslon with massive ears on the gs. The publisher thereby appears to admit it's not a natural subject for the British, and indeed the results are disappointing: there is almost nothing here that seems interesting or imaginative. And that's a shame, because there are totally British elements -- such as the activities of Margaret Beaufort in fifteenth-century Cambridge, described here by Louise Durning -- which could in more inspired hands have given this collection real flavour.

Some essays have too much of a remote character to them; Tanis Hincheliffe admits that her study of woman clients in eighteenth-century France is based on secondary sources. Jane Rendell's analysis of 'rambling' in Regency London seems thin when compared with Dickens' astonishing description (in Oliver Twist) of Nancy's flight across London, from the male East to the female West, which unfortunately for Rendell I happened to read immediately beforehand and which says so much more about much the same subject. It's possible that Esther da Costa Meyer does have something interesting to say about women and agoraphobia, but her heavy style is a deterrent. Helen Hills talks about 'contested fields of discursive formations': does anyone have any idea what this means? Read Joel Sanders' Stud: it acknowledge this subject's gay roots, and it' much funnier.