Seminar | Cultural Heritage and the Female Gaze

2 October 2025, Thursday, 08h45-18h45, Room CCR.01

Recent research has increased the visibility of women in architectural projects, highlighting their agency in a field historically dominated by male protagonists. Beyond authorship, the relationship between women and cultural heritage reveals diverse practices and experiences that enrich the understanding of the built environment. Paying tribute to Raquel Soeiro de Brito, Suzanne Daveau and Gritli von Mitterwallner—born in 1925 and whose legacies continue to inspire reflection on gender and knowledge production—the programme features keynote lectures by Oliver Kessler (University of Bonn) and Antonieta Reis Leite (CES-UC).

Programme

Opening Session | 8h45 – 9h00
Sidh Losa Mendiratta

Keynote speaker | 9h00 – 9h30
Oliver Kessler
Gritli von Mitterwallner. A 20th century art historian between industrial Germany, declining Portuguese India and the independent India of Javāharlāl Nehrū and Jahangir Ratanji Dadabhai Tata

Session 1 | 9h30 – 11h00

Graça Correia
À Luz do Tempo

Francesca Sisci
Imagining Space and Female Agency. Chronicles of a Personal Journey within a Collective History

Jared Fantasia
Across Cultures and Frontiers: Susan Louisa Moir Allison and the Female Gaze in Colonial British Columbia

Pedro Murilo de Freitas and Larissa Vasconcelos
Lina Bo Bardi’s travels to Sergipe: the remaining documents of Camurupim Housing Cooperative

Coffee Break 1 | 11h00 – 11h15

Session 2 | 11h15 – 12h45

Constance Hinfray
Storage Box Unit: Nesting with Léonie d’Aunet and Rats in the Basement of an Art School

Fernando Ferreira
Threads of the Unheroic: Weaving Women Workers’ Stories Around the Factory

Juliana Wexel
Autoficção e autoescritura nômade na videoarte ARETUSA hydro_VOX

Fabiana Dicuonzo and Alice Semedo
Zaha Hadid’s Vision at the MAXXI Museum: Integrating Contemporary and Historical Heritage

Lunch break | 12h45 – 14h15

Keynote speaker | 14h15 – 14h45
Antonieta Reis Leite
The observer's gaze on the built environment: female travelers in the history of the Atlantic islands

Session 3 | 14h45 – 16h15

Rogério Miguel Puga
Romantic-Victorian Female (Travelling) Gaze on Portuguese Historical and Religious Heritage: Dora Wordsworth's Journal of a Few Months' Residence in Portugal (1847)

Ana Brett
Territory and Affection: Raquel Soeiro de Brito’s Interpretation of the Goan Landscape

Joana Chaves Ramos Cabrita Silva
Memory and Archive: The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile, and the work of Rojas Mugica

Session 4 | 16h15 – 17h10

Maria Assunção Gato
Territórios olhados por Raquel Soeiro de Brito: recortes antropológicos sobre perfis geográficos

Pedro Baía
Do outro lado da lente: o olhar de Alison Smithson e Sandra Lousada nos encontros do Team 10

Elisa Izquierdo Roiz
Designing upon the Existing: Female Agency in the Museographic Restoration of Spanish Heritage

Coffee Break 2 | 17h10 – 17h30

Session 5 | 17h30

Chloé Darmon
Water architecture: the washhouses as cultural heritage inhabited by women

Paula Maria Monteiro
Arquitetas no Ultramar: Género e Construção do Património Urbano Colonial

Tiago Cruz and Cláudia Duarte
Enter the "Valley of Lillies": Spatiality, Ritual and Enclosure in the Convent of Saint Monica, Old Goa

Closing Notes | 18h45


Organisation: Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, within the project ID-SCAPES – Building Identity: Religious Architecture and Sacral Landscapes of Christian Minorities in India and Bangladesh, coordinated by Professor Sidh Losa Mendiratta, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) | Scientific Committee: Alice Santiago Faria, Ana Alves Costa, Antonieta Reis Leite, Carla Garrido de Oliveira, Sidh Losa Mendiratta | Organising Committee: Ana Brett, Cláudia Duarte, Giuseppe Resta, Tiago Cruz