A city in change

A city in change
In the autumn of 2024, it will continue Van Eesteren Museum her year on Women in Architecture, Urban Planning and Design with a project about the history of the London architecture collective Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative. The collective, mainly active in the 1980s, was one of the first female architectural organizations to promote a feminist approach to urban planning.

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The group was of the opinion that the city was designed by men and therefore did not take into account the specific situations in which women found themselves. Dark bicycle tunnels that women were afraid to cycle through at night. Awkward stairs where it was difficult to maneuver with pushchairs. The collective went into practically different neighborhoods to make concrete adjustments for a better use of the city.

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The project A city in change: Women of New West aspires to the same practical adjustments to the city as Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative strived for in the 80s. The history and approach of the British group is the immediate reason and inspiration for this project. This uses heritage as inspiration to construct and present a reinterpretation and reformulation of local history.

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In recent decades, many improvements have been made to the city to make the use of the city more women-friendly, partly because there are more and more female architects and urban planners. But the voice of the city's female user is still often ignored. Many women in Nieuw-West have experience with the situations that Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative As reported forty years ago, many of the female residents of Nieuw West have anecdotes and stories about similar situations.

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What are their stories about the design and use of New West? And what can be improved in the living environment and thus the use of the city today based on these stories? Where are the bottlenecks in women's use? What can be improved? And what do these improvements look like? These are the questions raised in the project A city in change: Women of New West be central.

The project consists of a kick-off talk with Fran Bradshaw, one of the founding mothers of matrix, and four subsequent workshops.