Feminist Architecture Assembly (BE) - PAF x L’architecture qui dégenre

Workshop #1

Emotional Costs of Design Practice – Anna Kozera

We explore the tensions between idealism and professional design practice, examining how designers strive to change the world while advancing their own careers. Participants will reflect on the emotional costs of this tension, which often lead to resignation, burnout, or cynicism. Through collaborative mapping of power and complicity on multiple scales, these costs will be shared and made visible. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s Killjoy Survival Kit, the workshop will also develop strategies of solidarity to mitigate these pressures.

Anna Kozera is a Rotterdam-based urbanist working with radical, feminist, post-growth ideas across design, teaching, facilitating, and co-organising Urbanistas Rotterdam.

Workshop #2

Home Away from Home, How Public Spaces Shape Belonging and vice versa – Aya Akbib

Through walking, mapping, discussion, and storytelling, we explore the idea of “home” in contexts of migration, with a focus on North African communities and urban transformation. Participants will examine how practices such as sidewalk shops, smells, and signage shape public space, and how these everyday gestures create tensions between safety, domesticity, and belonging.

Aya Akbib is an architect, urbanist, and illustrator who explores illustration as a tool to communicate complex projects. Her recent work on home away from home uses storytelling, walking, and collective mapping to reveal hidden urban narratives.

Workshop #3

Drawn to Speak: "Architecture isn't for you" – 3CA (Third Culture Architecture & Art)

This participatory workshop begins with a brief introduction to discrimination, abuse of power, and sexism within the study and work culture of architecture. The student collective 3CA will talk about their previous protest action, in which statements and experiences were brought to life through caricatures. Participants create figures with speech bubbles to visualise experiences and open them for reflection and discussion.

3CA believes architecture is a platform for multiple stories. The student collective celebrates the contributions of underrepresented communities, inspired by Ruth H. Useem’s concept of third culture kids.

Workshop #4

Public Space and Domesticity – Emilie Bechet

We playfully explore key design elements of an inclusive public space. Participants will be invited to question the boundary between the public and the private spheres. Building on the School Contract example, which aims at strengthening – socially and spatially – the relationship between a school and its neighbourhood, we ask how school / professional / private life can better unfold in the public realm. To what extent should the public space become more domestic?

Emilie Bechet is an architect and urban designer. She is part of act., an urbanism atelier that evolves between – and acts on – landscape, architecture and social design, and teaches at UCL-LOCI.

Workshop #5

Mapping Memories – Lara Schrijver and Bart Decroos

Participants contribute to a collective timeline of feminist perspectives on architecture in Belgium and share memories of and references to initiatives, debates, lectures, actions, designs, publications, and other events. The aim is to map the historical development of feminist perspectives on architecture, drawing both on historical knowledge and on personal experiences. The timeline will inform the exhibition Unfolding the Archives 9: Feminist Perspectives (spring 2026 at Flanders Architecture Institute). The workshop methodology builds on similar initiatives, such as the mapping workshop Women in Architecture: Timeline, organized by Stefanie Korrel and Setareh Noorani of the Nieuwe Instituut.

Lara Schrijver is Professor of Architecture Theory at the University of Antwerp. Bart Decroos is a researcher at the Flanders Architecture Institute and teaches Architecture Criticism at the University of Antwerp.

Workshop #6

Roadmap to an Intersectional and Fair Architecture Sector – BAU (Belgian Architectural workers United) and Dear Architects

BAU hosts a workshop on the question: What would a feminist work culture in architectural practice look like, and how could it address intersectionality? Starting from mapping inequalities, biases, and barriers in the field, we imagine inclusive and sustainable practices through a 10-year scenario and outline concrete pathways and a roadmap: How can BAU and participants contribute, and which solutions should take priority?

BAU is a movement by and for architectural workers. In 2023 BAU was able to put false self-employment and sector reforms on the radar of different media and on the political agenda. In 2025 Dear Architects and BAU became a non-profit officially defending the socio-economic position of workers.

Workshop #7

Soil is Alive! Testing three Ecofeminist Lenses for Thinking Architecture through Soil – Jolein Bergers and Nadia Casabella

Architecture too often treats soil as dirt, yet soils do not simply ‘receive’ architecture, they condition it. Architecture, in turn, is not simply placed on soil, it takes part in its formation processes. In which way can an attentive, responsive, accountable architecture care for lively soils? In this workshop, we explore three ecofeminist lenses – ‘soil as care’ (Puig de la Bellacasa), ‘soil as companion’ (Plumwood, Haraway), and ‘soil as inheritance’ (Shiva) – as participants map their own projects and co-create new propositions for an architecture that works with soil, tending to its needs, and honours what it carries across generations.

Jolein Bergers and Nadia Casabella are Brussels-based architects and researchers and members of the Super Terram collective.

Guided Tour #1

Discover the history of Belgian female architects – Elisabeth Gérard (L’architecture qui dégenre)

This guided tour highlights lesser-known post-war buildings in Brussels, from the 1950s to the present day. This is an opportunity to take a fresh look at the city center and become aware of the built heritage present in the neighborhood. This tour also aims to promote and raise awareness of the names of female architects who have had an impact since the post-war period and to present the evolution of working conditions for women in the field of architecture.

Elisabeth Gérard graduated as an architect in 2022 from the La Cambre-Horta Faculty of Architecture at the ULB with a thesis on the first generation of female architects in Belgium. This work led her to become a guide-lecturer for L'architecture qui dégenre in 2021 and then a project manager. Today, she works at the Brussels-based firm agmen and continues her academic research at the ULB, as a teaching assistant and researcher affiliated with the Hortence laboratory.

Guided Tour #2

Queering Brussels – Camille Kervella (L’architecture qui dégenre)

In this guided tour we will ask ourselves questions: What does the city look like for those who are still afraid to hold hands in the street? Does Brussels have a queer history and if so, where to find it? How do we (as queer people) find a way to connect and live in a capitalist/patriarchal city. How are power relations related to gender, sexuality, and sex constructed in the city? Lots of questions waiting to be answered during this tour.

Camille Kervella is an architect and head of the queer division at L'architecture qui dégenre. Her work questions the norms and systems of oppression that exist in architecture, particularly through a queer lens.

Guided Tour #3

Gender and the city – Annabelle Hoffait (L’architecture qui dégenre)

The tour aims to provide tools for analyzing public space from a gender perspective. A theoretical introduction will take place at the Beursschouwburg. Participants will then head to Jacques Brel Square to analyze the public space in situ using a set of themed cards. With the support of a set of thematic cards developed by the non-profit organization Habitant·e·s des Images.

Annabelle Hoffait graduated as an architect in Brussels in 2018. Noticing the lack of consideration given to gender issues in architectural projects in her city, she completed her training with a master’s degree in Gender Studies and now works for L'architecture qui dégenre.

Mapping Station (throughout the day)

Feminist Spatial Practices – Defne Saysel

Feminist Spatial Practices highlights, promotes, and shares feminist practices in art, design, architecture, and activism through its online archive. Drop by the FSP Mapping Station to map local initiatives and explore the relationships between feminist practices that exist or existed within the context of Belgium, including their own. The outcomes of the workshop will be documented as a part of the FSP platform, contributing to international solidarity among feminist spatial practitioners.

FSP is a global collective of architects, artists, scholars and activists that celebrates the diverse ways that creators work towards intersectional gender equity in the built environment. We organize community programming and maintain an interactive online archive of feminist spatial practices across geographies.

Film Screening (optional evening programme)

Out of the Picture (VO FR/EN, ST FR)

Where are female architects? Women have passionately and skillfully created architectural works for centuries. History seems to have forgotten them... or have they been conscientiously erased from a male-dominated profession?

Out of the Picture goes in search of these women, exploring their history and their outlook; it investigates why and how women have been excluded from the honor roll of architecture, and how they now are reclaiming visibility.

Note: Spoken in both English and French, with French subtitles only.

An. Ash Smolar, born in Brussels, is a multimedia artist and director of experimental films, documentaries, and animated films. They complement their practice by teaching animation at ERG. Their research focuses on narrative structures, the representation of gender and minorities, the politics of space, and the transmission of memory. They divide their career between their two passions, cinema and architecture. They made a dozen short films, installations and a feature-length film. Out of the picture is their second documentary.