Architekturvermittlung / Architecture and its Representations (AR20036)

Competitions offered architects an expansive field to experiment with, develop, and deepen their design ideas. They further paved the way to a more grounded position in the profession, enabling architects to become jurors, to receive further private commissions, and to maintain their reputations. Even though competitions have contributed greatly to the profession of architecture at large, whether design authorship was distributed equally from a gender perspective requires critical scrutiny. First, this seminar brings attention to a highly overlooked approach that critically engages with the gender dimension of competitions and reveals competitions’ potential as a highly effective site of inquiry for developing a feminist critique of the profession of architecture. Second, the seminar aims to foreground the following questions throughout the semester:

- How do competitions provide new alternatives to explore feminist research and shed new light on the writing of feminist architectural historiography across diverse geographies?
- How did the complex hierarchical structures of competitions produce their own gender barriers?
- How did women encounter, respond to, and find ways to cope with male domination, overlook, and neglect across competitions?
- How was design authorship shared between women and men across competitions?
- Which creative methods, such as critical mapping, can be developed to make gender barriers and male power visible across architectural competitions?

Accordingly, the aim of the seminar is to engage students in exploring how competitions can be examined as critical fields that expose the production of male power, and what new methods can be developed to examine the gender gaps across competitions. Working across the period from 1940 to 1990, the course also offers a comprehensive reading of the difficulties and limitations women encountered across the Global South and the Global North.


Course: Seminar
Lecturer: Öncü Özalp
Study level: Bachelor
Participants: maximum 15
Kick-off: 16. Oktober 2026
Meetings: Fridays, 09:45 – 11:15, Seminarraum 0340B
Exam: 15.02.2027 / presentations, posters, and essays
Credits: 3 ECTS
Cost of Excursion: The seminar does not include an excursion.
Remarks: Students are expected to submit a letter of motivation for enrolling in the seminar.
Language: English