Abstract
Feminist space in North America between 1960 and 1980 was produced through tools, manuals, and service infrastructures; this article situates these practices within a longer genealogy of feminist spatial and organizational strategies. Drawing on women’s centers and their associated networks of handbooks, support collectives, directories, and pedagogical practices, it argues that feminist movements reframed architectural production through repetition and maintenance, positioning service as a spatial practice. Through Nelson Goodman’s notion of allographic art, the article interprets feminist how-to resources as scores: iterative notations that could be enacted across different contexts while remaining recognizable as part of a shared repertoire. Through examples including Cell 16’s manuals, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog, and the pedagogies of the Feminist Art Workers and various women’s centers, it traces how feminist spatial epistemologies emerged less through canonical buildings than through distributed procedures of enactment, adaptation, and transmission. In doing so, the article proposes a genealogy of service in architecture, showing how feminist practices transformed instruction and maintenance into forms of spatial knowledge
- Adams, A. (1996). Architecture in the family way: Doctors, houses, and women, 1870–1900. McGill-Queen's University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773565869
- Agha, M. (2020). Emotional capital and other ontologies of the architect. Architectural Histories, 8(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.381
- Alicia, J. (2019). Maestrapeace: San Francisco's monumental feminist mural. Heyday.
- Awan, N., Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2011). Spatial agency: Other ways of doing architecture. Routledge.
- Bell, S. G., & Offen, K. M. (1983). Women, the family, and freedom: The debate in documents: Volume one, 1750–1880. Stanford University Press.
- Berglund, E. (2008). Building a real alternative: Women's design service. Field, 2(1), 47–62.
- Burns, K., & Brown, L. (2020). Telling transnational histories of women in architecture, 1960–2015. Architectural Histories, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.403
- Castells, M. (1983). The city and the grassroots: A cross-cultural theory of urban social movements. University of California Press.
- Castells, M. (1999). Grassrooting the space of flows. Urban Geography, 20(4), 294–302.
- Cell 16. (1968). No more fun and games: A journal of female liberation, 1(2). Female Liberation.
- Cell 16. (1970–1971). Cell 16 statements [Archival material]. In Female Liberation: A Radical Feminist Organization records, 1968–1974 (Collection M122, Box 1). Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.
- Charitonidou, M. (2019). From Harlem to New Haven: The emergence of the advocacy planning movement in the late 1960s. In Architecture and democracy 1965–1989: Urban renewal, populism and the welfare state. Sixth Annual Conference Proceedings (pp. 41–47).
- Davis, B. (1988). To seize the moment: A retrospective on the National Black Feminist Organization. SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, 5(2), 43.
- Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. Autonomedia.
- Frichot, H., Gabrielsson, C., & Runting, H. (Eds.). (2017). Architecture and feminisms: Ecologies, economies, technologies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203729717
- Furter, L. (2019). Speaking volumes: The new woman's survival catalog. Journal de l'Université d'été de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky, 5, 451–463.
- Goldsmith, S. (1963). Designing for the disabled. RIBA.
- Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols. Hackett.
- Grimstad, K., & Rennie, S. (Eds.). (1973). The new woman's survival catalog. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.
- Guy, R. (n.d.). A what? Ah, a [women's] building [Archival material]. Who We Are Outreach, 1978–1993, Communications, Reel 17. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.
- Hayden, D. (1978). Melusina Fay Peirce and cooperative housekeeping. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2(1–4), 404–420.
- Hayden, D. (1982). The grand domestic revolution: A history of feminist designs for American homes, neighborhoods, and cities. MIT Press.
- Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford University Press.
- Hultzsch, A., & Pérez Martínez, S. (2023). Reading-with: A collaborative method for inclusive architectural histories. Architectural Histories, 11(1).
- Knowles, A., Lockwood, A., Hoff, J., Revell, I., Myers, R., Anderson, B., Anderson, R., et al. (2019). Women's work (J. Hoff & I. Revell, Eds., Facsimile ed.). Primary Information.
- Krasny, E. (2019). Architecture and care. In A. Fitz & E. Krasny (Eds.), Critical care: Architecture and urbanism for a broken planet (pp. 9–17). MIT Press.
- Linton, M., Lacy, S., & Roth, M. (Eds.). (2011). Doin' it in public: Feminism and art at the Woman's Building. Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design.
- Martin, R., & Women's Design Service. (1989). It's not all swings and roundabouts: Making better play spaces for the under-sevens. Women's Design Service.
- Matrix. (1984). Making space: Women and the man-made environment. Pluto Press.
- Matrix. (2022). Making space: Women and the man-made environment. Verso.
- Miller, M. (2019). Behind the making of the feminist Whole Earth Catalog. Eye on Design. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/behind-the-making-of-the-feminist-whole-earth-catalog/
- Moravec, M. (2008). Woman's Building flyer advertising The Waitresses, Ready to Order?, April 25–May 1, 1978 [Document 11A, personal collection]. In How did the Los Angeles Woman's Building keep feminism alive, 1970–1991. State University of New York at Binghamton.
- Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections. (1972–1973). Statements of purpose [Archival material]. In Women's School (Cambridge, Mass.) records, 1971–1992 (Collection M023, Folder 86, Microfilm Reel 36). Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.
- Peirce, M. P. (1870). Co-operative housekeeping: Romance in the domestic economy. John Ross & Company.
- Peirce, M. P. (1884). Co-operative housekeeping: How not to do it and how to do it. James R. Osgood and Company.
- Petrescu, D. (2023). Learning and teaching with the "body": Pedagogical hatches from Jennifer Bloomer. Journal of Architecture, 28(6), 902–924. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2023.2281625
- Radin, M. J. (1990). The pragmatist and the feminist. Southern California Law Review, 63(6), 1699–1726.
- Revell, I. (2022). Speculating on the "feminist performance score": Pauline Oliveros, Women's Work, and Karen Barad. Contemporary Music Review, 41(2–3), 281–294.
- Ruddick, S. (1980). Maternal thinking. Feminist Studies, 6(2), 342–367.
- Ruthchild, R. (1996). Cambridge women's center celebrates 25 years. Sojourner: The Women's Forum, 22(2), 20.
- San Francisco Women's Centers. (1980). A brief herstory, 1970–1980 [Archival material]. In San Francisco Women's Building/Women's Centers records, 1966, 1972–2001 (Collection No. 1996-15, Reports and Structure: Who We Are; Foremothers 1972–1981, Report, Reel 1). Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.
- Sanjek, R. (2010). Sustaining a social movement: Gray Panther ideology and tactics. Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts, 4, 133–144.
- Scanlon, J. (1995). Inarticulate longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, gender, and the promises of consumer culture. Routledge.
- Siddiqi, A., & Lee, R. (2019). On margins: Feminist architectural histories of migration. ABE Journal: Architecture Beyond Europe, 16. https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.7126
- Steiner, H., Riesto, S., & Rosenberg Bendsen, J. (2023). Untold stories: Women, gender, and architecture in Denmark, 1930–1980. Strandberg Publishing.
- Tronto, J. (2019). Caring architecture. In A. Fitz & E. Krasny (Eds.), Critical care: Architecture and urbanism for a broken planet (pp. 2–18). MIT Press.
- Warrior, B., & Leghorn, L. (1975). Houseworker's handbook (3rd ed., expanded). Women's Center.
- Wates, N., & Knevitt, C. (1987). Community architecture: How people are creating their own environment. Penguin.
- Willis, E. (1984). Radical feminism and feminist radicalism. In No more nice girls: Countercultural essays (pp. 117–150). Wesleyan University Press.
- Women's Liberation Bookmobile. (n.d.). Women's Liberation Bookmobile fonds [Archival fonds]. In Canadian Women's Movement Archives (CWMA) collection (10-001). Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa.
- Women's Prison Coalition. (1976–1978). [Records] [Archival material]. Sponsored Projects, 1973–1998, Reel 36. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.
- Wright, G. (1980). Moralism and the model home: Domestic architecture and cultural conflict in Chicago, 1873–1913. University of Chicago Press.
- Yeros, S. G. (2024). Queering urbanism: Insurgent spaces in the fight for justice. University of California Press.
APA 7th edition
In-text citation: (Bissett, 2026)
Reference: Bissett, T. (2026). Outside architecture: Feminist manuals, catalogues, and services, 1960–1980.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 10(2), Article 22.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19070
AMA 10th edition
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Bissett T. Outside architecture: Feminist manuals, catalogues, and services, 1960–1980.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. 2026;10(2), 22.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19070
Chicago
In-text citation: (Bissett, 2026)
Reference: Bissett, Tara. "Outside architecture: Feminist manuals, catalogues, and services, 1960–1980".
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics 2026 10 no. 2 (2026): 22.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19070
Harvard
In-text citation: (Bissett, 2026)
Reference: Bissett, T. (2026). Outside architecture: Feminist manuals, catalogues, and services, 1960–1980.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 10(2), 22.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19070
MLA
In-text citation: (Bissett, 2026)
Reference: Bissett, Tara "Outside architecture: Feminist manuals, catalogues, and services, 1960–1980".
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, vol. 10, no. 2, 2026, 22.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19070
Vancouver
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Bissett T. Outside architecture: Feminist manuals, catalogues, and services, 1960–1980. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. 2026;10(2):22.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19070