Advance Notice: Lecture by Flora Ruchat-Roncati Research Group “Doing Research on Women Architects”

Guest lecture by Eliana Perotti and Katia Frey about their Swiss National Science Foundation funded research project on the life and work of the architect Flora Ruchat-Roncati (1937–2012), who was appointed first female professor at ETH Zurich in 1985 and later became the first female Dean of the Department of Architecture. The talk will introduce the research project, which focuses on Ruchat-Roncati’s time here at D-ARCH and her lasting legacy. In conversation with the two researchers, we wish to discuss questions concerning feminist biography as well as the potentials and challenges they encounter in the process of writing histories of female architects and theorists.

Both Dr. Perotti and Dr. Frey have collaborated on numerous projects focusing on the role of women in the built environment – e.g. their important edited book “Theoretikerinnen des Städtebaus” (Reimer, 2015), currently out of print (a second volume of this work is in preparation); the research and exhibition project on the SAFFA (Swiss Exhibitions for Women’s Work held first in 1928, and again in 1958); and several others.