INTARC going to MUJER Y ARQUITECTURA (25 años de las jornadas NOW) February 2019
25 years ago this workshop marked a turning point in the lives of a handful of women architects who, driven by chance, life or the hard road they had taken as professionals, made a commitment to meet once a week in Malaga. They called themselves the NOW girls, and it was a pleasure to hear them at the Pompidou Museum in Malaga tell how this was the first time that someone was putting the accent on the “genre” of urbanism, that accent that is fixed on not only men and women but old people and children and tourists… and makes a whole variety use of the urban space and how them and everyone who commits with architecture, does it to give solutions -or at least try- to all that heterogeneous range of users.
“User”… strange figure that at that time (25 years ago) still without ‘figure’ in the plans. Never did a human being appear in them because it disturbed, even more unthinkable, to find an elder or a child. At that time it was proposed to train the women architects “as if they were not enoguh trained”, and what was achieved was to bring to light of the group, a set of common dilemmas that with special intensity was lived in silence in isolation. They understood then, and it is now evident, the power of the women group. Together they took out their reflections without the screening of the male partner, understanding that everyone should take charge of his life and of his commitment to the coming generations, but when would be the time to do so?
25 years later we still have the same dilemmas, (it will be that they are part of our being). Certainly we have made some progress, we are beginning to see, although the percentages speak for themselves. As architects of recognized prestige we appear in 10-15%, as colleges in Malaga we remain in 25%. When an architect has an important assignment it’s because it goes hand in hand with a man. At least the training is identical, we gain in sensitivity and lose in experience, ‘complementary’…
Life taught us to look differently and today more than ever we need new ways of looking to face the present and especially the future.