Writing women into the history of architecture requires rethinking both archival practices and historiographical approaches. In this seminar Olga Touloumi will depart from her experience collecting and cataloguing the works of architect and crocheter Christine Benglia-Bevington (1936–2020) to discuss feminist praxis in the archive. Using weaving as a historical method, she will address the common threads but also the points of divergence that form the heterogeneous and gnarly tapestry of the experiences of women in architecture. The seminar will highlight works from the collections of Eva Hollo Vecsei, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, three women who, similarly to Benglia-Bevington, migrated to, made a home, and built a practice in North America.

This event is free and open to the public, no reservation required.

Olga Touloumi is a feminist writer, educator, and architectural historian, who focuses on media and political form in architecture. She is currently researching informal archives, feminist methodologies, and the stories we can tell through one’s life. She is the author of Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interiors (University of Minnesota Press, 2024); and co-editor of Athens in Flux (Architectural Histories, 2024); Computer Architectures (Routledge, 2020), and Sound Modernities (Journal of Architecture, 2018). Touloumi is the co-founder of the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (FAAC) and teaches at Bard College.