Kate Macintosh highlights ROSEMARY STJERNSTEDT
Kates ‘forgotten woman’ who she wanted to highlight was Rosemary Stjernstedt (née Owen-Smith) (1912-1998).
Rosemary was an important public sector architect, working firstly designing furniture and then moving to join the London County Council. She designed and built the Alton Estate in Roehampton, which houses 13,000 people and is one of the biggest social housing estates surviving today.
She went on to lead the design for Central Hill, in South London. The Central Hill estate was discussed by Kate in the first episode of 29%. The estate has 374 homes in a mixture of terraced housing and apartments, all arranged on the steep slopes of the hill. In recent years, the estate has been rejected for listing and the current Lambeth council plan to demolish the estate, there’s a campaign online you can join to save this incredibly important estate.
Later she worked with Pat Tindale (another amazing woman we don’t know enough about) researching layouts for timber framed housing. She was the first woman to earn at ‘Grade 1 level’ at Londons County Council.
Image: RIBA Archive
Farshid Moussavi highlights RENEE GAILHOUSTET
Farshids ‘forgotten woman’ who she wanted to highlight was Renée Gailhoustet (1929-2023).
Renée was a French social housing architect and winner of the 2022 Royal Academy Architecture Prize. She was well known for the design of Le Liégat, Ivry-sur-Seine, (1972) where she lived until she passed away this year. The scheme held 80 duplex social housing units and featured ‘interior streets’.
Farshid mentions on her episode of 29% Renée’s incredible Les Etoiles d’Ivry-sur-Seine. (1969-1975) The housing estate holds 40 social dwellings, among offices and stores, held together using a triangular structure which has a brutalist quality and a futuristic feel. As the public and private of this building intermingle, greenery spills over it’s edges, allowing a little more joy to the city.
Renée Gailhoustet always lived in the buildings she designed, first she lived in the Raspail tower for 14 years before moving to Liégat.
Image: Valerie Sadoun
Elsie Owusu highlights LADI KWALI
Elsies ‘forgotten woman’ is my favourite of the series - Ladi Kwali OON, MBE (1925-1984)
Ladi Kwali was a Nigerian potter and ceramicist. Her traditional cultural environment moved her to produced pottery pieces that were influenced by the Gbagyi tradition and featured personal idioms. Her work was threaded with mathematical undertones, with continuous use of symmetry.
She would shape and scrape the insides of the pots with the shell of a snail, a hard seed pod or a calabash rind and her outer patterns were created by rolling small roulettes of twisted string or notched wood. She began to exhibit her work across the world and hold workshops to educate others in traditional pot making. Her pots soon became known as art pieces and her works are held in collection globally, including in Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Aberystwyth University Ceramics Gallery.
As Elsie mentions in her episode, Ladi Kwali was the only woman to be featured on the Nigerian note.
Image: WA Ismay, courtesy York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery)
Angela Brady highIights INA BOYLE
Angela’s ‘forgotten woman’ was many women.
Firstly she notes the composer Ina Boyle (pictured) who was largely uncelebrated due to her gender.
She also spoke of the under-celebrated work of Eileen Grey and Charlotte Perriand.
Angela explained how routine the exclusion of women is, using the example of the TV series ‘The Brits Who Built the Modern World’, on the BBC (see below). The image for the series featured Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, Michael Hopkins and Terry Farrell, but the original image featured Patti Hopkins - she was airbrushed out.
Image left: WA Ismay, courtesy York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery)
Images below: BBC
Parlour highlight ACTIVISM
In this episode, we didn’t manage to ask Parlour (Naomi Stead and Justine Clark) about who they would like to celebrate as a forgotten woman as we were so deeply talking about all things activism.
So here I highlight the Parlour guides instead. Next time your studio/office is faffing about, or poorly managing part-time working/parenting responsibilities/career breaks/mental health/equal pay/long hours and everything they should be getting in check- point them in the direction of the Parlour Guides. (linked)
Jos Boys highlights MAGGIE DAVIS
Jos’ ‘forgotten woman’ who she wanted to highlight was Maggie Davis.
Maggie Davis, who was a big part of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and was campaigning for disability rights at the start of the Independent Living Movement and was very central to the movement and the design of Grove Road, Ashfield. This was purpose-built housing designed by wheelchair users.
Her activism was a result of being told she and her husband would not be able to live together and they could only be housed separately in an institution. With her determination to live independently, she overturned the prejudices against disabled people and established a cooperative that would look to buy land, commission architects and design their housing scheme. This became the Grove Road scheme.
Image: RIBA Collections