Feminist Thinking as an Opportunity to Revitalize Architecture. Conversation with Izaskun Chinchilla

The award-winning Spanish architect and educator Izaskun Chinchilla exemplifies the focus of this special issue of Zarch about Women, feminist practices, and alternative practitioners in architecture. On December 28, 2021, co-editors Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno and Ann E. Komara interviewed Chinchilla. The following essay presents that conversation, edited for clarity and flow, highlighting their discussion of key thematic topics in this issue.
 

This was really tough because I was not getting any support from the competition organization. I needed to make a very big association with José María Ezquiaga -the biggest urban planning office in Spain, and also with two big engineering companies. So I made another presentation to the mayor. They made comments on my makeup. They said, "... when you were visiting the site, we realized you were posing questions that were not what we were really expecting. This place has to be commercial. It has to be taken farther by somebody that has clients and experience. This is not really for you, so we are asking you to be reasonable and excuse yourself from this project".
After that, they formulated another competition. It was not an open competition -you needed to present with special experience. I organized a big team, and entered again. They were asking for very complex bank support. It was kind of impossible for us to participate. In the end, they were not able to award the commission to the people that they wanted, so it wasn't done.
Similar experiences happened in the first four or five years of my practice; I started to realize that even if I won some competition it was going to be very difficult for me to actually sign contracts to do the commissions. I had a lot of winning competition entrances; in the first ten years after graduating I won 18 second prizes. Every time I was picking up the phone and it was a second prize. It was like you were feeling good, thinking well, "I'm about to do it", but somehow you were feeling "this is impossible, no". clear I was doing something different, but I was expecting that difference was going to be accepted in a more natural way -perhaps because in school I knew male practitioners who were, well I wouldn't say Utopian, but definitely 'out of the box'. Their thinking was kind of a nice thing in that environment. For instance, nobody remembers about Paco Alonso anymore, but he was considered a hero in the architecture school: "Paco, he's a 'real' architect." He was not finishing buildings, but this was because he was really, really sincere and held these high aspirations; he was not doing the commercial thing, and was not selling himself to the market. There was this heroic perspective for this kind of architect.
After graduating, a second competition opened in December.
It was a gigantic project -the Europan Competition. The site was about 22 hectares of territory, including 2,000 houses, with 8 hectares of parks and green areas, and a total of 32 including industry, residential and urban. It was clear it was going to be done. I was like WOW. I won the first prize. If I had been able to do this project my career would have been solved for twenty years. I went to Santiago de Compostela to meet the mayor, and soon I realized they didn't want me to do the project. The organizers told me very directly that they preferred the second prize. The organizers said, "yes, this is a competition, but we don't really like the jury selection so we are going to do the second project". And I said, "If you do that I'm going to start legal actions." Do you think this is only connected with your gender, or was it also your age?
I think there are more reasons, in addition to the gender challenges. The architectural work I was trying to push at the time was a compromise with ecology, and also had a social aspect. This agenda was true for either public or private administration work. But it was perceived as something that was creating extra complexity. The social aspects were definitely a difficulty. There was a lack of sensibility towards psychology and social concerns that made it difficult to progress and build my projects.
I won three or four second prizes, one after the other. I remember, for example, getting the second prize in the EMV (Empresa Municipal de la Vivienda), the Public Housing Company of Madrid; they told me, "[...] most architects tell us that they want to do a very nice façade, and then we find a way of jumping over regulations and doing tricky things with a very complex façade. You are asking for things like allowing people to choose their house and collaborate with the designer. That's something that is really a mess for us.
We are never going to go in that direction." So somehow you had feminist values already in your proposals -although perhaps you didn't define it that way in that moment. They contrasted somehow with the kind of architecture that male politicians and technicians wanted to push.
I think there were definitely several issues. First, competitions were still blind and anonymous, but the difficulties arose because the ideas that were considered in that moment in architecture were all about space, shape and form. I was bringing ideas incorporating ecology and sociology and they was not on the table. The evaluation was "this is interesting, but it is not the first prize" because it will create too much complexity. But actually there was a second issue when they realized you were a very young woman, and then it was absolutely impossible to get anything --a commission was clearly, clearly impossible.
Another problem came after I was practicing for around seven or eight years: people started to recognize the way I was drawing. In entering some competitions, for example, I had been trying to avoid particular architects because whenever they saw a drawing and they thought it was mine they said, "no -you know this is a Utopian girl who is doing crazy things. You shouldn't be really taking this serious". And that was really, really -for me it was illegal. Because if it was an anonymous competition nobody should be saying you are a woman, or you are 28 or you are whatever --no. It's an anonymous competition so we need to play fair. But that was a constant thing. So then, some years into my practice we tried to draw differently in the office, to pretend we had a different style. We tried many things.
Well this is quite impressive. I (Lucía) a student when you were practicing in the first years, and I knew your work; the way you drew was amazing for me. I used to think: "How this young woman can draw in a completely different way, terrific." However, the fact that your drawing was different makes you a visible point in an anonymous competition, and that could be problem.
The interesting part for me is that your way of drawing is different from the 'abstract' and 'neutral' typical one: you draw with color, you draw people using your building, you draw active and particular moments in the architecture. So the way you draw is not a 'modern' way of understanding a space.
Do you consider that the fact that you do not come from a privileged family previously related in architecture, is important to the development of your career?
Yes, I think so. I am 46 at the moment, and sometimes somebody says, "yeah, you know -you are not building so many things", or "you are only building little things". And you reflect, and compare yourself with colleagues who were studying with you at the same time in university. A couple of these colleagues at the moment are clearly building more than I am, but honestly it's only a few people. One is associated   This has a strong reflection in the area of history and theory because Barbara Penner, Jane Rendell, and Tania Sengupta are in history and theory, not in the design area.
This correlation created an opportunity of bringing a focus to the design units that would be well supported by the history and theory department. It was the sense at the Bartlett that students don't spread over too many areas -they do design, and the history theory module supports this. For instance, students in the 4 th year do an essay, and in the 5 th year they do a thesis. We try to work together, in the same direction. So for me it was very strategic to be able to have these amazing women with strong feminist investigations and ideas, and scholarship already published in books and articles, and to collaborate with them to support students interested in this way of thinking and designing.
One year we made 'women in architecture' as a theme. We have made 'the caring city' as a theme; this year we made it 'vulnerability'. In some years, we had more than 80% women students in the unit. So yes, it was this confluence. We were able to have more students, more support from the history and theory department. They start doing briefs, and exploring these kinds of topics that were actually impossible to bring to Madrid University ten years ago.
This is very interesting because in the Spanish system to try to do something like that, join efforts from the history and theory and the design department, is very difficult.
It's an important issue that maybe in the Anglo-Saxon academia it's easier to find these connections. suddenly when it was done, people started to think, "you know this girl has a baby, but she is managing. She's actually doing things." It opened a lot of things because we were able to end that successfully.
After this I had a very, very fertile six years. I did the PhD dissertation, and the professorship. We completed the restoration of Garcimuñoz Castle, a big project that we had been working on for thirteen years. We had co-working projects; eight or ten projects were completed in six years amazing thinker, and we said, okay -let's send a message: "Being a woman is an opportunity". It can be key to solving three of the major crisis that has been affecting architecture in the last forty years, which architects have not been able to resolve. First, the disconnection with society. Society feels we are not really useful, not really practical, not really aware, not really connected. Then we have the ecological crisis.
From the 70s, we have been asked to reposition architecture against climate change, and in many instances this is still not happening. There is also the perception that architects are part of financial crises and situations that are not good. For instance, in Spain architecture and architects were perceived as promotors, and part of the speculation activities. Women were not there to affirm the social awareness and the social purpose of architecture. So, we said, "okay, architects are not good at dealing with this; they are not even good at general communication with society ... and most of them are men." We felt there is something in the female background that better positions women to solve the crises that have been affecting architecture. We honestly think that we have good philosophical, historical, cultural missions to say, "Yes, we are starting to get there". Eco-feminist theory says the expectation of women and the expectation of the environment have been running as parallel lines. Women have not been entrenched in the systems of exploitation and depletion of all the resources; we are more conscious of the capacity for preserving, saving, and respecting resources in a different way.
Women also have a better connection with activities that Great -50% of them need to go to women. You want to publish about architecture? 50% of it needs to be about women architects. It's a slow, small process, but it has to be done. I know some people don't like the compulsory rates, but I think this is one of the only possible paths.
So the last question: What advice would you offer to women approaching the practice or profession of architecture?
We have had these conversations. My feeling is that there is sort of an unconscious trip we all do through our childhood and adolescence for becoming an architect and getting the degree. And I think this trip is longer for female students than for male students.
There are cultural habits. When you are a male, you usually like sports. I always ask students so they become conscious to looking. What is male room or a female room? If you are putting together female room -is it all pink? Or you look at the dolls we were playing when we were girls, no, and how we would dress, um -all the games were playing, and everything. This is where it starts.
What I will say is that I think it is very important keep the essential aspects of how women create, and how women studying architecture create their own identity, and feel that there is something valuable about that identity. I'm not talking about just one. Many girls have been playing to be mothers when they were children, and many 'were not.' And many were playing with Barbie doll and many were not. Many were into STEM science, and many were not.
But that differential identity, I think it's always valuable. I think the main message is to tell these women starting to study architecture or starting to practice, that architecture as a profession, and society can benefit a lot from these unique background that they are having.
So there are a lot of men practicing as men, but very few people actually having a female background and exploring it in depth, and looking at how it can be useful for society. Yes, I think the advice is that. Understanding that the same things that were helping you to create your identity can help others to have a better environment.
Yes, this is a very important message -to have your own identity ... a reflection and relation to personal experience and values. Thank you so much for sharing your story and ideas.
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