Home Planning and Gender in Mandatory Palestine

This article dives into the relationship between architecture and gender in Palestine. It explains the influx of the German population in Palestine led to the transfer of European ideas from architects who were trained in Germany and immigrated to Palestine. Specifically, the article highlights Lotte Cohn’s ideas of the “new woman” and the “living kitchen.” This idea of the new woman is that they need the ability to do things faster at home than they are required by society to do, being the “homemaker” because they have new opportunities in society outside of the house and to serve the family and herself better the kitchen — the main space the woman spends her time in —  needs to be redesigned to accommodate this “new woman.” Cohn’s main idea was to bring in new technology and to expand the kitchen slightly to make room for a dining table. Her ideas were not welcomed by architects, construction companies, and the Histadrut as they believed in the working kitchen,  a tiny compact kitchen that was yes efficient, but included no dining table and isolated the kitchen from the rest of the home, which then makes it hard for women to watch their children or get to other areas of the house quickly.

An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Écochard, Candilis, and Atbat-Afrique

This piece talks about how architects in Morocco were creating separate, unique spaces for Muslims, Jews, and Europeans while staying true to the modernist shift in architecture and taking traditional architectural elements seen in the homes and trying to recreate and revamp them to provide for the increase in population Ecochard proposed a grid solution in which this traditional courtyard house could be easily replicated to provide for the influx of immigrants. While Candilis, in collaboration with ATBAT-Anfrique,  took it one step further and took the grid idea and made it vertical. The idea is that building upwards allows for more units per hectare. Candilis buildings were debated amongst architects as to whether this was the best solution. The main reason for these courtyard spaces was to provide a space for women to connect, but when shifted vertically,  “today’s women are like caged birds” (Andre Adam).  While it was debated, the vertical buildings continued on and were then designed for Moroccan Jews and Europeans. They combined all three designed buildings into a space “designed for families of diverse origins.” Candilis and Woods saw the importance of “the need to adapt to local customs and not simply to climate.” This idea of mass housing was a new take on the West’s universalist approach. However, it was still stripping away valued parts of the home to many different people that these architects believed they were helping. Architects were oversimplifying what Muslim and Jewish populations found necessary in their homes to try and be a part of this modernist push in the mass housing industry.

The Right to the City: From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession

This reading primarily explains how capital surplus largely affects urbanization, how urbanization affects communities, and who controls the right to city planning and design. It is often that capitalist developers are the ones deciding what is being built without taking into account community members’ opinions; this often leads to a city revolt, for example, when “the dispossessed in Paris rose up in 1871, seeking to reclaim the city they had lost.” Harvey, the author of the piece, dives into how “private or quasi-private interests,” such as billionaires or private, wealthy universities, have much say over the city’s design. Often, they decide to make an area expensive by designing it to look a certain way and price out the community that has been there for many years. Harvey explains that urbanization is a process of surplus absorption and can lead to “creative destruction,” where urbanization happens by tearing down and rebuilding, often displacing the working class. Communities lose autonomy over the place they call home. Harvey addresses that this feeling of losing “the right to city” is happening worldwide. He suggests that if these people were to demand something, it should be “—greater democratic control over the production and use of the surplus.”

Critical Analysis

It’s aggravating that even though women in Palestine had more opportunities to work in architecture, their opinions on household design were not valued. The article mentions that women perhaps didn’t have the confidence to speak up as they thought they wouldn’t win that argument with all the men controlling the architectural story in Palestine. Sadly, men never thought about creating a kitchen where women would want to spend time. They just wanted women to be more efficient, so they suggested the working kitchen, where a woman was supposed to cook in a tiny space for “efficiency,” versus listening to the women who perhaps wanted something entirely different. Cohn’s idea of putting the dining table in the kitchen and having more cohesion of spaces within the kitchen so that women can watch their children while fulfilling their “duties” would possibly be a good idea.

Application

During a pivotal design movement in Japan, one of the most important buildings of this period was designed by a female architect, Kishō Kurokawa. She was the architect of the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, considered one of the best examples of Metabolist architecture. The Capsule Tower was built between 1970 and 1972 and is a prime example of female representation in architecture. This is nearly 20 years after Cohn’s ideas finally took root about kitchen design. It’s nice that women’s designs and concepts were gradually more respected over time. I am curious, though, if during the time Kurokawa was building the capsule tower, if she had pushback from male architects and what kind of pressure she felt to succeed as a woman in architecture during such a pivotal architectural time in Japan.

Take-Aways

• Consulting the users of the space is very important.
• Communities are displaced from urbanization, which often the wealthy private individuals or institutions have a lot to do with this
• It’s not enough to rely on a few individuals who may or may not represent the community well. The responsibility lies in going directly to the source, engaging with the community as best as you can when designing urban spaces