From 17 to 21 June 2026, the 9th Biennial Conference of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) takes place at Aarhus University in Denmark. Researcher Bart Decroos (Collection VAi) will join the thematic roundtable Women's Collective Organizing in Architecture: From the Grassroots to the Global, 1960–2020, where he will present the paper Archiving the Gap: The Oral History of Women and Housing, developed together with prof. Lara Schrijver (University of Antwerp).
The roundtable is organized by Karen Burns (University of Melbourne) and Lori Brown (Syracuse University), editors of the upcoming 'Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture 1960–2020'. The session will discuss how women organized collectively in architecture to advocate for professional equity, new knowledge and social justice.
The VAi contribution focuses on the institute's recent acquisition and exhibition of archival materials from the Belgian Women and Housing working group, founded in 1981 in Leuven. The group — which at one point included architect Danie Staut, interior architect Leen De Becker, landscape architect Els Huigens, and educator Gerd Van Limbergen — developed a feminist critique of the single-family house and advocated for collective housing as an emancipatory alternative.
The presentation will reflect on how conventional archival practices have historically made collective and activist work invisible, and how oral history can trace stories that go beyond material documents. These insights grew out of the preparatory research and curatorial work for the current exhibition Unfolding the Archives #9 Feminist Perspectives 1980–1990, which opened at VAi in April 2026.
The project was realized in close collaboration with former members of the Women and Housing [Vrouwen en Wonen] working group (WV&W), the Platform for Architecture and Feminism (PAF) and other experts: Danie Staut (WV&W), Els Huigens (WV&W), Evelien Pieters (PAF), Gerd Van Limbergen (WV&W), Lara Schrijver (University of Antwerp), Leen De Becker (WV&W), Setareh Noorani (Nieuwe Instituut) and Tine Poot (VAi).
