For 8,000 years after creating a sophisticated society, women participated in large groups as equals with men. However, after the collapse of the Bronze Age, women’s roles changed. They could no longer participate as equals in social, technological, and cultural developments.
For centuries, misogyny was the norm. Women were enslaved, and only in recent times have escapees begun to break these chains. Yet, the effort to weave a new social narrative — one that reshapes our cities and redefines family, freedom, play, sexual equality, and democracy — is still too often stifled by misogyny.
Consider the roster of leading modernist architects from the 1930s, when the modern movement began. There are 24 men and just 2 notable women, Lina Bo Bardi and Eileen Gray. Both were active at the time, but remain underappreciated. Each faced deep-seated misogyny, as Eileen Gray’s ordeal with Le Corbusier so clearly reveals.
The saga of house E-1027, designed by Eileen Gray, is a vivid reminder of misogyny in modern architecture. Le Corbusier, unable to accept Gray’s vision, defaced her work and still claimed it as his own.
To build SEN spaces and create a People, those escapees who break free of old limits may want to embrace the legacy of the catenary arch and the cosmic egg, and carry these symbols from the past into the future. Boldly using them to confront misogyny and celebrate women as the gateway to conscious life.
