Minding Her Business - by Alborz Dianat & Kathleen James-Chakraborty (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Women have influenced the development of modern architecture and design through a wide variety of entrepreneurial activities. This book highlights their contributions to the construction industry, editorial production, and real estate development, as well as the cultivation of social spaces and delivery of philanthropic interventions. With a global focus, the contributors provide case studies ranging from eighteenth-century Britain and early twentieth-century Istanbul to postwar Finland, mid-century America, and post-independence Kenya, demonstrating the breadth of roles women have created for themselves, whether by challenging patriarchal systems and the capitalist marketplace or by working effectively within them. Recognising all these roles supplements the increasing attention being paid to women architects and enables us to understand the full scope of the impact that women have long had in shaping the built world around us.

Review Quotes

This edited book challenges the gendered narratives that perpetuate the belief that women have never been key agents in prosperous businesses associated with the construction industry, editorial production, design products, and social-humanitarian entrepreneurship. - Lucía C. Pérez Moreno, University of Zaragoza

About the Author

Alborz Dianat is a researcher at University College Dublin and executive editor of Architectural History, the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is professor of art history at University College Dublin.