City of Ladies is a cross-disciplinary research project, which aims to introduce and promote the work of medieval author Christine de Pizan to an architectural audience for the first time. In her celebrated text, The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405, Christine describes the construction of an imaginary city, a female utopia built and inhabited by women. Her work has been seen as a proto-feminist manifesto, conflating the act of building with collecting stories of notable female figures from fiction and history and erecting a thesis against misogyny. Our research builds upon existing scholarship on the relationship between image and text in Christine’s work. It proposes an innovative, design-led analysis of the architectural and urban allegory in her text and a spatial remodelling of the accompanying illuminations. Performing history and theory through design, the research aims to establish Christine as the first speculative female architect and to project the powerful message of her allegorical city into the future.
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Email: info@cityofladies.com
Email: @cityofladies_arch
Penelope Haralambidou is Professor of Architecture and Spatial Culture and Director of Communications at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her practice-led research employs architectural drawing, model-making and digital film to analyse ideas and work not only in architecture, but also visual representation, the politics of vision, art, and cinema. In her research and teaching she promotes the use of digital film and immersive environments to re-think architectural design through time. Her work has been published and exhibited internationally and she is the author of Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire (London: Routledge, 2013).
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John Cruwys is a designer engaged in a variety of disciplines centred around architecture and digital animation. In addition to his research role with Prof Penelope Haralambidou he also works at the Bartlett School of Architecture as a guest tutor, as well as with the school’s exhibitions team to deliver state-of-the-art virtual student shows. His work aims to address our understanding of digital materiality and craft. He was a founding member of Soft Bodies, a studio exploring how the virtual can influence the relationship between our bodies, objects, and environment. His projects have been published and exhibited internationally, including at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and MU Arthouse, Eindhoven.
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