Women, House Design and Domestic space

1.30-6.00 24th March 2010

This half-day seminar focused on house design and domestic space from a gender perspective. Taking some recent reports and debates on housing space standards as a starting point, the event considered the historical and contemporary involvement of women in house design, women's changing needs with reagrd to domestic spaces, and the implications of a gender perspective when formulating housing and space standards.

Afternoon programme:

1:30 Registration – Tea/coffee

1:45 Welcome – Alison Blunt – QMUL Geography and LWPF Steering Group

2:00 David Levitt - Levitt Bernstein Associates

'Women as designers and consumers of domestic space: Why and when is domestic space a particular issue for women?'

2:30 Marcus Dixon – Residential Research, Savills

'Space, occupancy and the importance of whole places: a market perspective'

3:00 Break

3:15 Elizabeth Darling - Senior Lecturer in History of Art, Oxford Brookes University

'"Enriching & enlarging the whole sphere of human activities": a brief history of women's involvement in house design'

3:45 Georgia Wrighton and Amanda Claremont - Women's Design Service

'Women's Design Groups'

4:15 Discussion

5:15 Drinks reception

Many thanks to Marcus Dixon, who stood in for his colleague Yolande Barnes, and to Georgia Wrighton and Amanda Claremont, who stood in for Anne Thorne of Anne Thorne Architects Partnership, who were unfortunately unable to attend.