Women Writing Chains: Mapping Citations Between Women in Architecture Past, Present and Future

This paper examines how women in architecture refer to previous generations of women in their writing, preventing their erasure and constructing chains of references as a form of a historical sorority. It argues that studying the citational practices of women in architecture presents a path to more inclusive architectural histories. As Sarah Ahmed explains ‘citation is feminist memory’ acknowledging ‘those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured’.1 Through reference analysis, scholars can unearth sources and help construct an intellectual network of women in architecture rather than a collection of solo heroic figures. In this paper, I use Susana Torre’s 1981 article ‘Space as Matrix’ as the starting point for a network of relations of women in architecture, analysing its past, present and future.2 This paper will trial a form of visualising these connections for writing new architectural histories, thus sharing a new method for feminist research and the starting point for a close study of the ties of Torre’s work with other women in architecture. Thus, this paper proposes to make visible women in architecture not as single authors but as groups of women connected by their citational practices, an intellectual network composed of women writing chains.