32 C O N T E X T 1 7 3 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 1950. As a group leader she played a key role in the development of the new mixed development schemes (advocated for in the Ledeboer-penned Design of Dwellings report), most notably at Alton East (1951–55) and later, now working for Lambeth, at the Central Hill Estate (now under threat). She finished her career at the Department of Environment, where she worked with senior civil servant and architect Patricia Tindale on prefabricated timber housing prototypes. As well as exerting considerable influence at national level, post-war women architects (and architect-planners) were also active internationally. Jane Drew, a contemporary of Blanco-White, worked extensively in the emerging Commonwealth nations, with her husband and partner, Maxwell Fry. She also picked up the baton from Gillian Cooke and advocated for women professionals through her work for Union International des Femmes Architectes, and on the RIBA council and as a president of the AA. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, a graduate of the AA’s planning school, became a key figure in CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architects) and its British branch (MARS Group), and a leading town planning theorist, while Alison Smithson was a leading member of the group Team X, which supplanted CIAM as the driver of modernist thinking from the late 1950s. Today we might look to practitioners such as Eva Jiricna, Julia Barfield and Patty Hopkins as heirs to these foundational figures in a British modernism. That we know about these women is largely thanks to the efforts of women architectural historians, including LynneWalker, Kate Jordan, Jessica Kelly, Ruth Lang, Ellen Shoskes and Rachel Lee. The work is ongoing, and historians are doing much to draw attention to the many ways in which women make space and embed a definition of architecture that moves beyond just buildings. Architectural history, like practice, is still somewhat male-dominated and our subject body, the SAHGB, is currently working on an EDI initiative to raise awareness of the diversity of those who write about our built past. Readers might enjoy the EDI network’s current initiative with the C20 Society on the 2022 Building of the Month feature. Elizabeth Darling is reader in architectural history at Oxford Brookes University. Her publications includeWomen and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870–1950 (Ashgate, 2007), Re-forming Britain: narratives of modernity before reconstruction (Routledge, 2007), Wells Coates (RIBA Publishing, 2012) and Suffragette City: gender, politics and the built environment (Routledge 2020). Central Hill Estate, London, 1966–74, designed by a group led by Rosemary Stjernstedt in Lambeth Architect’s Department (Photo: John East) The Economist Group Building, St James, London, 1962–64, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson (Photo: John East)
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