In the post-World War II Netherlands, women architects faced enduring challenges to practice, exacerbated by the marriage bar that confined married women to traditional housewife roles. Within this context, women's organizations such as the Women's Advisory Committee (VAC) in Rotterdam emerged as a vehicle through which women could make contributions as voluntary advisers to the construction of new neighborhoods. This article explores the VAC Rotterdam's advisory work through extant documentation related to different social housing projects in Zuidwijk IV, now known as Lo's neighborhood. Zuidwijk IV, which includes buildings by architects Jaap Schipper, Grijpma and de Roos, and Ernest Groosman, is one of eight sections of the garden city of Zuidwijk, itself only one of the ambitious postwar public housing schemes built on the southern edge of Rotterdam. The article concludes that, despite the VAC Rotterdam's valuable input in shaping social housing design, their persistent advisory efforts were only intermittently respected.
As educators, researchers, designers, civil servants, and also in other capacities, several women who graduated in architecture from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s became key players in the struggles against large-scale urban renewal programs, promoting a more socially and environmentally driven approach to the city. Drawing from oral history research we carried out in 2021-2023, this article argues that the individual and collective achievements of these women point to a situated way of working that sheds fresh light on how the professions of the built environment adopted new roles, and how they straddled resistance to as well as reliance on welfare state provisioning, how they radically opened up the inclusion of residents and experts outside architecture in urban renewal processes. The article also discusses the role of the university in these women's work. Telling their stories is important because, despite their significant contributions, many of these women have remained largely absent from historical accounts of the period.
This paper examines the transformation of the designer's role in the regeneration of collective housing districts in both Western and Eastern Europe, particularly when their actions support the emergence of urban commons. Given the ongoing privatization in both contexts, there is a need to repair the broken and fragmented public amenities of these neighborhoods. To this end, commons-based initiatives offer an alternative approach. Grounded in participatory methodologies and combining methods from architecture, urban planning, social sciences, and co-design, the research provides a comparative reflection on the collective production, use, and transformation of shared spatial infrastructure in neighborhoods in Bucharest, Cluj, and Paris. The findings demonstrate how emerging forms of urban commons (such as informal libraries, community gardens, and civic hubs) lay the foundation for bottom-up, resilient regeneration of collective housing estates, and highlight how these initiatives can be critically supported by designers and citizens across various local, social, and political contexts.
In Australia, during and immediately following the Second World War, the provision of children's playgrounds was deemed important, not only for children's welfare but also for community cohesion and national defense. Within this context, this article investigates the work of the government funded National Fitness Council and the South Australian Playgrounds Association (SAPA), with emphasis on their co-operation to secure new sites for playgrounds and advise on their design. In particular, the role of the Secretary of the SAPA, Helen Black, who was primarily responsible for providing playground advice and sketch designs, is examined. The article also explores key elements in developing playgrounds for children - the utilization of voluntary labor and the co-operation of government bodies with municipal authorities, local individuals, voluntary associations, and businesses. Finally, the article investigates how the SAPA became instrumental in increasing the number and quality of playgrounds in South Australia and how, partly due to this work, local playgrounds came to be seen as an essential part of the postwar welfare landscape.
