Women In Architecture Shine Bright

Architecture studios Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Helen & Hard and Ensamble Studio have designed three pavilions for the Women in Architecture exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre.

The exhibition, which was curated by Sara Hatla Krogsgaard, aims to highlight the work that women architects have created in Denmark and showcases work by both historical and contemporary architects.

The exhibition is important because it spotlights some of the women through history who played a pivotal role in conceptualising, designing, and building Denmark – but who were to a large extent forgotten.

Women in architecture have been relatively difficult to find in the annals of architecture history. Nonetheless, the architectural achievements and breakthroughs of women in architecture have greatly shaped society and the world in which we live today.

As part of the exhibition, the museum asked three prominent contemporary architects – Tatiana Bilbao, Siv Helene Stangeland of Helen & Hard and Débora Mesa from Ensamble Studio – to create pavilions for a section called A Room of One's Own.

The entire exhibition is inspired by author Virginia Woolf's seminal essay 'A Room of One's Own' from 1929, which remains highly relevant at a time when equality and gender issues are at the top of the agenda. The three studios offer very different perspectives on the theme.

Mexican studio Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, named its pavilion – which comprises a number of circular brick structures – A Room, You and Us. The design was created as a space for reflection.

"It's a room of one's own, but none of us have the same concept of intimacy and our structure aims to exist in a way where spaces can be intimate even if they are open, or social even if they are closed," the studio's founder Bilbao told Abode2.