A major new exhibition about women architects, planners and designers in Denmark has just opened at the Danish Architecture Centre.
The title - Kvinder skaber rum or Women Create Space - was inspired by an extended essay by Virginia Woolf - "A Room of One's Own" - that was published in 1929. It was based on two public lectures where Woolf discussed free expression and stated that women have to be financially independent if they are to create anything of importance.
In the exhibition - where text is in both Danish and in English - an English title for the exhibition is given simply as Women in Architecture which seems to be much less nuanced than Kvinder skaber rum.
My Danish is poor but I believe rum, as used here, means both room specifically but also space and surely that should be understood as both the tangible space of an actual room but also space in the way we talk about giving people space to grow or space to develop.
So, designing and bringing to reality a room or a series of rooms is a basic and, some would say, the most obvious part of the work of any architect but here 'rum' as space implies that women have also had to create a physical space for themselves as architects - often by establishing their own independent studios.
The first section of the exhibition focuses on seven Danish architects whose work covers the period from 1925 to the end of the century and, generally, concentrates on one specific work or, at most, a few projects for each architect rather than attempting to explore a complete career. These major architects and designers are Ragna Grubb; Hanna Kjærholm; Ula Tafdrup; Grethe Meyer, Karen Clemmenson; Susanne Ussing and Anne Marie Rubin.
There are important interviews with current architects and, for a wider international context, installations by Tatiano Bilbao,, Siv Stangland and Débora Mesa.
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