Week 6 // 'Doing it, (un) doing it, (over) doing it Yourself' // Occupying Architecture // Jane Rendell

In this session we were given the option for which text to read, either Beatriz Colomina's 'The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism' from Sexuality and Space (1992) or Jane Rendell's chapter in Occupying Architecture (1998) 'doing it, (un) doing it, (over) doing it yourself- Rhetorics of Architectural Abuse'. As attractive as the first title appeared, I chose Jane Rendells text which in its entirety covers how architecture can be made by those other than architects.  

A mention is made in the paragraph 'I between doing it and undoing it' where Jane states "the architectural profession encourages us to think of architecture exactly in these terms – as something only architects do", ultimately there lies something deeper, the fact that according to Luce Irigaray , 'any theory of the subject' has always been masculine'. Jane Rendell herself is an advocate for "French Feminist Theory that posits critical thinking as creative process" No surprise then that you get a sense of an 'architect' as predominantly male and the non-architects as female. Evidently in society there is such a thing as 'Female Architects' yet male architects are just known as architects. 

Jane here has a clever way of constantly relating architecture and feminism.  

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