Jos Boys is an architecture-trained, activist, educator, artist and writer. [1] [2] She was a founder member of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative and co-author of their 1984 book Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment (Pluto Press 1984/Verso 2022). [3] [4] Since 2008 she has been co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project [5] with disabled artist Zoe Partington, [6] a disability-led platform that works with disabled artists to explore new ways to think about disability in architectural and design discourse and practice. [7] [8] [9] [10]
Her books Doing Disability Differently: an Alternative Handbook on Architecture, Dis/ability and Designing for Everyday Life (Routledge 2014) [11] [12] [13] and Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (Routledge 2017) [14] have become key texts in this field, with the latter called a "brilliant gathering of texts, both synthetic and surprising [that] should be taught in every architecture and design program, and may well become the new standard text for interdisciplinary disability studies courses generally" (Susan Schweik, Professor of English and Disability Studies, UC Berkeley). [15] Boys is also co-editor with Anthony Clarke and John Gardner of Neurodivergence and Architecture. [16]
She has given numerous international keynote talks, including at The Bartlett UCL (2021), Arizona State (2021), [17] Goldsmiths (2020), UTS Sydney (2020), [18] the Design Museum London (2019), [19] Melbourne University School of Design (2019), [20] University of Innsbruck (2019), [21] Yale University School of Architecture (2018), [22] Victoria and Albert Museum (2018), [23] Aarhus University Copenhagen (2017), Architectural Association London (2016), [24] University of the Arts, London (2016) and the Taylor Institute, University of Calgary (2016).
Boys has been a Visiting Professor at Ulster and London Metropolitan Universities. [25] She has been a Design Council Built Environment Expert (BEE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; is Guest Professor at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and an honorary associate professor in the Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, UCL. Jos Boys was one of the BBC’s Women of the Year 2021. [26]
Jos Boys is currently working as co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, enabled by funding from The Supporting Act Foundation for 2024-5. [27] [28] Previously she worked at The Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment, University College London where she was Course Director of the MSc in Learning Environments. [1] Before that, she worked for over 10 years as an independent Learning Environment consultant and researcher; and has written extensively about the complex and often contested inter-relationships between pedagogies, academic development, institutional policy and strategies, facilities planning and management, and building design. [29] She has also worked as an educator [1] [25] in architecture and related disciplines across many institutions both in the UK and internationally, and as an academic developer and instructional designer. Underpinning this, as well as all her community-based design activism, [29] is a particular interest in how to improve our understanding of everyday social, material and spatial practices, in support of the most disadvantaged in society. All her work explores how we can act across different perspectives and agendas to collaboratively discuss and improve built environments. [30] [31]
Jos Boys obtained her BSc at the Bartlett School UCL (then called the School of Environmental Studies) and has master's degrees in Advanced Architectural Studies (UCL 1981) and Photography (De Montfort University 2003). She obtained her PhD from the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies, University of Reading entitled“ Concrete Visions? Examining inter-relationships between housing design, material practices and everyday life in England 1830 – 1980” in 2001. [1] Originally training as an architectural journalist for Building Design magazine, [29] she also undertook projects at the Greater London Council (GLC) writing guidance on Women and Planning; and at Women's Design Service [12] [32] where she was a development worker, with co-founders Vron Ware, Sue Cavanagh and Wendy Davis. Throughout her life Jos Boys has been involved with many feminist and related networks, including Cutting Edge, [33] a cross-disciplinary feminist research group exploring new design technologies, based at the University of Westminster (1995–2001), and the feminist spatial practices group Taking Place (2000– ). [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] Together with curator Jon Astbury, she co-created an exhibition about Matrix at the Barbican entitled How We Live Now: reimagining spaces with Matrix feminist design collective (May – December 2021), [40] as well as leading on the ongoing development of an open and accessible Matrix online archive. [41]
The archive has been accessed and displayed in national and international exhibitions including Found Cities Lost Objects (a touring Arts Council England show, co-curated with Lubaina Himid,) [42] in the Chronos: health, access and intimacy exhibition at Tensta Konsthalle Stockholm, [43] Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, University of Melbourne, [44] Oslo Architectural Biennale, [45] ETHL Lausanne, ETH Zurich, MAXXI and Newcastle University UK. [46]
Jos Boys' research, writing and teaching is concerned with understanding the social construction of 'normal' architectural and design education and practices; and about co-developing alternative forms of producing built spaces that instead start from difference, from the perceptions and experiences of marginalised groups, whether in education or other spaces. [24] [1] [25] There remains a lack of theoretical understanding as to how built space works, or its complex relationships to diverse occupation, whether for living, working or learning. [12] [3] Boys' co-edited collections all aim to open up multiple perspectives and voices, so as to share approaches and attitudes; to critically reflect on different assumptions; and to work together to build better models for architecture as a discipline that based on social, spatial and material justice. [3]
Disability and Architecture
Learning Environments
Feminism and Architecture
Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban design considers 'bigger picture' issues of economic, social and environmental value and social design. The scope of a project can range from a local street or public space to an entire city and surrounding areas. Urban designers connect the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning to better organize physical space and community environments.
The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, also known as The Bartlett, is the academic centre for the study of the built environment at University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. It is home to thirteen departments that have expertise in individual subfields, including the Bartlett School of Architecture, Bartlett School of Planning, Bartlett Development Planning Unit, and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. The Bartlett is consistently ranked the highest in Europe and the UK and among the highest in the world for the "Architecture and the Built Environment" category in major rankings. It is currently ranked the first in the world for the year 2023.
Disability studies is an academic discipline that examines the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability. Initially, the field focused on the division between "impairment" and "disability", where impairment was an impairment of an individual's mind or body, while disability was considered a social construct. This premise gave rise to two distinct models of disability: the social and medical models of disability. In 1999 the social model was universally accepted as the model preferred by the field. However, in recent years, the division between the social and medical models has been challenged. Additionally, there has been an increased focus on interdisciplinary research. For example, recent investigations suggest using "cross-sectional markers of stratification" may help provide new insights on the non-random distribution of risk factors capable of exacerbating disablement processes. Such risk factors can be acute or chronic stressors, which can increase cumulative risk factors The decline of immune function with age and decrease of inter-personal relationships which can impact cognitive function with age.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments and learning spaces that can accommodate individual learning differences.
Iain Borden is an English architectural historian and urban commentator.
Elizabeth DePoy is a disability theorist, professor of interdisciplinary disability studies, social work, and cooperating faculty in mechanical engineering at the University of Maine and also senior research fellow. Ono Academic College, Research Institute for Health and Medical Professions. Kiryat Ono, Israel.
Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock is an art historian and cultural analyst of international, postcolonial feminist studies in visual arts and visual culture. Since 1977, Pollock has been an influential scholar of modern art, avant-garde art, postmodern art, and contemporary art. She is a major influence in feminist theory, feminist art history, and gender studies. She is renowned for her innovative feminist approaches to art history which aim to deconstruct the lack of appreciation and importance of women in art as other than objects for the male gaze.
Dolores Hayden is an American professor emerita of architecture, urbanism, and American studies at Yale University. She is an urban historian, architect, author, and poet. Hayden has made innovative contributions to the understanding of the social importance of urban space and to the history of the built environment in the United States.
muf is a collaborative of artists, architects and urban designers based in London, England, specialising in the design of the urban public realm to facilitate appropriation by users.
Michael Ulrich Hensel is a German architect, researcher and writer. His primary areas of interest and inquiry include performance-oriented architecture, embedded architectures - architecture and environment integration, and advanced data-driven design. His work is located in the intersection between architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, micro-climatology and ecology.
Lizbeth Goodman is Professor of Inclusive Design for Education at University College Dublin, and a professor in the university's School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.
Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist approach to transform it.
Matthew Gandy, FBA is a geographer and urbanist. He is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography and Fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge, moving from University College London (UCL) in 2015, where he was also the founder and first Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory from 2005 to 2011.
Women in architecture have been documented for many centuries, as professional practitioners, educators and clients. Since architecture became organized as a profession in 1857, the number of women in architecture has been low. At the end of the 19th century, starting in Finland, certain schools of architecture in Europe began to admit women to their programmes of study. In 1980 M. Rosaria Piomelli, born in Italy, became the first woman to hold a deanship of any school of architecture in the United States, as Dean of the City College of New York School of Architecture. In recent years, women have begun to achieve wider recognition within the profession, however, the percentage receiving awards for their work remains low. As of 2023, 11.5% of Pritzker Prize Laureates have been female.
CJ Lim is the Academic Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London (UCL); and served as Vice-Dean and Pro-Provost of University College London. He is the founder and director of Studio 8 Architects, a UK-based multidisciplinary and international practice in sustainable urban planning, architecture and landscape, focusing on interpretations of social, cultural and environmental programmes. Along with Simon Dickens and Bernd Felsinger (2006-2016), Lim leads PG Unit 10 within The Bartlett School of Architecture's Architecture MArch course.
Jane Rendell is an architectural historian, cultural critic and art writer. She has taught at Chelsea College of Art and Design, Winchester School of Art, and the University of Nottingham. She has been based at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL since 2000, where she has been Professor of Architecture and Art since 2008, teaching primarily across the Situated Practice, Architectural History and PhD programmes. She was Director of Architectural Research (2004–10) and Vice Dean Research (2010-3). She is currently Director of Architectural History and Theory and leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission.
Elke Krasny is a cultural and architectural theorist, urban researcher, curator, and author. Her work specializes in architecture, contemporary art, urbanism, feminist museology, histories and theories of curating, critical historiographies of feminism, politics of remembrance, and their intersections. Krasny received her Ph.D. from the University of Reading. She is Professor of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She worked as a visiting professor at the University of Bremen and the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. In 2012 she was visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture CCA, Montréal. In 2014, she was City of Vienna Visiting Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR) at the Vienna University of Technology. Using the framework of political care ethic developed by Joan Tronto, Krasny works on developing a perspective of critical care for architectural and urban practice and theory. In 2019, together with Angelika Fitz she edited Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet.
Rebecca Jane Francis, is a British educationalist and academic, who specialises in educational inequalities. Since January 2020, she has been Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Before joining the EEF, she was Director of the UCL Institute of Education at University College London. She has also taught and researched at the University of Greenwich, London Metropolitan University, Roehampton University, and King's College London. She has also been Director of Education at the Royal Society of Arts (2010–12) and an advisor to the Education Select Committee of the House of Commons since 2015.
Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative was formed in London in 1981. It was one of the first architectural organisations worldwide to bring a feminist approach to architecture and the design of the built environment and to challenge patriarchal spatial systems. Matrix pursued these objectives through built projects, theoretical analysis, commissioned research and publications, including the book Making Space:Women and the Man-made Environment. The book explores relationships between gender and architecture, building on the then emerging work from feminist geographers and historians in the UK and USA, including Doreen Massey, Linda McDowell, Susana Torre and Dolores Hayden.
Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh is an Iranian British academic who is a professor at University College London. She was awarded a senior research fellowship at the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2022.
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