by Ingrid Teixeira Peixoto
Abstract
This paper intends to make a brief investigation about the dehistoricization of women's production in the history of architecture, focusing on the trajectory of Ceará's architect Nélia Romero and her contributions to the architectural scene of the city of Fortaleza. Therefore, the history of architecture could be read from a more gender-equal perspective.
Keywords: Women architects. Nélia Romero. Architecture of Ceará
We live in a time of necessary historiographical updates and, it is imperative to rethink the place of women in many spaces, including the history of architecture. To think about women's condition is also to think about central aspects of our society, founded on patriarchal, racist, and classist foundations, the issue of minorities, civil rights, public policies, prejudice, and violence. It is about doing politics.
By reviewing the historiography, we recover the trajectories of both the invisibilized female architects and those who stood out for facing the obstacles of a male-dominated profession, as Zaha Hadid [1], the first woman to win a Pritzker Prize, reports:
"It is a very tough industry and it is male-dominated, not just in architectural practices, but the developers and the builders too. I can't blame the men, though. The problem is continuity. Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. "
In 2014, an initiative emerged in Brazil that recognizes this bibliographic imbalance: the collective "Arquitetas Invisíveis" (Invisible Women Architects)[2], created by students from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Brasília- UNB, and which seeks to recover the life and work of female architects who have suffered historiographic erasure. The project's goal was to expand the repertoire of students and professionals of architecture and urbanism and, at the same time, to incite the discussion about these inequalities between male and female architects in the academic and professional circles.
The Council of Architects and Urbanists – CAU –, also released in 2019, an x-ray of the profession [3] showing the unequal gender conditions, in which although women architects represent the majority of professionals in Brazil - about 63% of the total of registered architects. There is no reflection of this in their social representation. The obstacles for female representation are found both by being a minority in political positions and organizations in the sector, and by the low representation in national competition awards. According to CAU, only 17% of the awards were granted to teams led by women, falling to only 15% in international competitions. Similarly, the participation of female architects in public competitions, as for example in the project for the headquarters of CAU/BR and IAB/DF – Institute of Architects of Brazil, indicated that only 16% of the competing teams were coordinated by women.[4]
Although there have always been female architects with a significant architectural expression who have worked and still work in Ceará, the documentation about the work of these women is, quantitatively, smaller than their male counterparts, which reinforces the erasure of these architects and consequently their devaluation.
Despite the little historiographic prominence, the architects from Ceará also produced works of architectural relevance, like the architect Nélia Rodrigues Romero, figure 1.
Born in Itapipoca, the countryside of Ceará, in 1953, she moved to Fortaleza at the age of 11 with her parents and siblings, brought by her father's dream of seeing all of his children attend college in the capital. In 1972, Nélia entered the School of Architecture and Arts at the Federal University of Ceará. The architect says [5] that her class was mainly women: of the 20 places available, about 14 were occupied by women.
Nelia graduated in 1976, and in her first year working in the office of the renowned architect Neudson Braga, leaving later to work in the public sector, at the Superintendence of Works of the State of Ceará - SOEC, where, for some time, she was the only woman employee. She would remain, then, working in the public sector throughout her professional career. In 1997, the Department of Buildings Highways and Transport - DERT – incorporated the SOEC and, in 2007, the agency changed its name again to Department of Buildings and Highways - DER, in an attempt to adapt to the new configurations of the scope of projects: buildings, state highways, and urban and municipal transport.
It is our care to rescue architects like Nelia Romero and recognize that the invisibility of women in general historiography is also the result of a historical disparity between the spaces and roles assigned to men and women in society. In this sense, there is a question of historical justice and compensation. Therefore, assuming an investigation on the scarcity of female architects' trajectories is to realize that there were not egalitarian conditions for female architects to be more present. And, also, it is to question the perpetuation of this disparity between female and male bibliographies. Thus, to validate these women who resisted, existed, and still have is to come closer to achieving gender equity.
In 2011, the Government of Ceará carried out a new institutional reform, transforming the DER into two new autarchies and creating the Department of Architecture and Engineering - DAE and the current State Department of Highways - DER [6] . During her time in the public sector, Nelia had the opportunity to work with sizable public works and design schools, prisons, and hospitals. Alongside architects such as Melânia Cartaxo, Beatriz Magalhães Carneiro, Janaína Teixeira, Roberto Castelo, and Robledo Valente, she was co-author of relevant works for the capital of Ceará, such as the Legal Medical Institute-IML (2012), the Clovis Beviláqua Forum (1997 headquarters), the reform of the Fortaleza General Hospital-HGF (2011), the expansion of the Albert Sabin Hospital (2009), the rehabilitation and restoration of the Palace of Abolition (2011), and the requalification of the Luiza Távora Square (2011) and the Gentil Barreira school (2018).
Nelia, together with the architect Melânia Cartaxo, designed the structure that today is called CEART – Centro de Artesanato do Ceará – at Luiza Távora Square (see picture 2), a relevant pole for Ceará's handcrafts. The requalification of the Luiza Távora Square is also a landmark for Fortaleza, today one of the most frequented squares by the population and stage for many civil actions and governmental programs [7] . "If I had stayed in the private sector, I would never have produced what I produced [...] I liked the project, my achievement was the project, working with architecture directly"[8] , says Nélia in an interview granted on 04/17/2019.
Another institutional project of relevance was the Clovis Beviláqua Forum (picture 3) – the building has 89700 y² of constructed area and a horizontal extension of 328.084 yards, which gave it the status of the largest public building in Latin America – through which about five thousand people pass every day [9]. Nélia also designed several schools, and here we highlight the Gentil Barreira School, one of her last projects in the public sector, designed together with two other architects: Karinne Victor and Aline Cordeiro. The school (figure 4) was inaugurated in 2018, also in Fortaleza. These projects have great relevance, both architecturally and as public objects for use by the population.
During the 1980s in Ceará, the state reduced the working hours of its architects to cut public spending and, with the extra time, Nélia opened an office with two professional colleagues: Melânia Cartaxo and Marcelo Colares. She restricted her work in the private sector to a few projects for friends and family, and she left the office to dedicate herself solely to public service. From 1997 to 2014 reached the apex of her institutional career as being appointed chief architect of DAE - Department of Architecture and Engineering. She left the public office in 2017 and, she is currently retired; however, her professional trajectory, although recent, has been overshadowed in the Ceará scenario. This invisibility circumscribed to women raises a question: would an architect with the same Nélia's trajectory, who used architecture to meet social demands through the public sector, still be in the shadows?
In a new and brief interview on 04/02/2021 Nélia comments a little about her experiences as a student, enrolled in 1972, and as a graduated architect since 1978:
Ingrid Peixoto: Nélia, do you remember having any women professors?
Nélia Romero: I had some female professors, for architectural history initially: Nícia Bormann, Margarida Júlia and Vera Mamede. Of the women, I only had these three.
Ingrid Peixoto: Did you feel that professors treated female students differently?
Nélia Romero: Some male teachers discriminated against female students who came from Catholic schools, they made jokes, as if they were little girls, but they were joking, playing around, but I think there was a certain prejudice [against women].
Ingrid Peixoto: Did your class go through hazing during college entry?
Nélia Romero: Of course, they tried to make a prank. But my class was very different because we had the first semester, the university made a test, at that time, all the students that passed the vestibular would have to take some subjects again, that they called "the basics," so when we got in, in the second semester, I think that this issue of hazing was a little emptied because of this.
Ingrid Peixoto: Coming out of college, what was your first work project built? Does it still exist?
Nélia Romero: When I graduated, by the way, it is 44 years ago today, so it is a long time. In the first year [after graduating], I worked in Neudson Braga's office, so we did more urbanization projects, square projects. He had a contract, at that time, that did several projects in the countryside, so it was things like that. But when I entered the State, as a State employee, I started to work alone, to have responsibility for the project, my first project was a bus station in Tauá. It was even executed, all in concrete, zenith lighting. It was an interesting job.
Ingrid Peixoto: Is there still a record of this project?
Nélia Romero: No, I don't. Because at that time we did everything on tracing paper, right, everything was drawn in India ink. So all this collection stayed there, before it was PROEC, then it went to SEDET, then DAI, now it's SOP, so I don't know if all these project sectors followed these changes by the institution. It must be there somewhere.
Ingrid Peixoto: But does this bus station still exist or has it been demolished?
Nélia Romero: I don't know if it had any changes, but it does exist there in Tauá.
Ingrid Peixoto: And which projects do you consider most emblematic in your trajectory?
Nélia Romero: We did school projects, hospitals. I also participated, I didn't, in this case the project is mine, I did it alone, from the Itapajé bus station, from Russas, [Ceará] all in the metallic space structure. This project is very interesting. Then we did it too, it was a standard project in this case, already with a steel structure, this one was the one in Itapajé, this one in spatial structure is just the one in Russas. I really like this project. And we made Forúm Clóvis Beviláqua, Praça da Ceart, the original one, because then they changed a lot. Ceart's suitability also, a project entirely in carnauba, but it was not structurally suitable for carnauba, so we had to replace everything with interlaced wood. Ingrid Peixoto: What was modified in the original design of the square?
Nélia Romero: The initial proposal of the building was to have several craft stores, that whole thing, later I think they never worked on it properly, and ended up turning the rooms into administrative areas. And the center that was supposed to be a restaurant, more focused on regional food, was the handicraft part. There were a lot of projects that weren't executed, too. But there is one that I really like, which was not executed, which was the State Public Ministry, it was only in the preliminary draft phase.
Finally, I ask Nélia to reflect on the condition of being a woman and an architect, and she comments:
"[...]the most difficult thing for me was the recognition as a public servant, to know that I Nélia, as a public servant, I have value. I can do it. I am capable of doing. Because in truth, I never guided my work or any movement that I have by the fact that I am a woman, ah, because I am a woman I can, and because I am a woman I can't. I think that I succeeded because I was a public servant because if I was just a woman, I can't. I think that I entered, at least in my head, on equal conditions. That the world is opposed, it's true, the world is opposed to women, because of all the issues that we have to overcome, in the family, outside the family, all the domestic questions are the responsibility of women, or most of them, especially if you have children."
It is up to us to rescue architects like Nelia Romero and recognize that female invisibility in general historiography results from an also historical disparity between spaces and the role assigned to men and women in society. In this sense, there is a question of justice and historical compensation. Therefore, to assume that an investigation into the scarcity of trajectories and references of architects is necessary -which also lags architectural historicity- is to realize that there were no equal conditions for female architects to become more present. It is also questioning the perpetuation of this disparity between female and male bibliographies. Therefore, validating these many women who resisted, existed and still exist is to move closer to achieving equality between the sexes.
Footnotes
[1] - Interview retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/feb/17/architecture-misogyny-zaha-hadid
[3] - Retrieved from: at:https://www.caubr.gov.br/inedito-visao-completa-sobre-a-presenca-da-mulher-na-arquitetura-e-urbanismo
[4] - Retrieved from: https://www.caubr.gov.br/inedito-visao-completa-sobre-a-presenca-da-mulher-na-arquitetura-e-urbanismo/
[5] - Transcribed excerpt of his speech in interview, conducted on 04.17.2019.
[6] - Information is available on DER's official website: https://www.der.ce.gov.br/2018/10/19/departamento-estadual-de-rodovias-completa-72-anos/
[7] - Information is available on: https://www.ceara.gov.br/tag/praca-luiza-tavora/
[8] - Transcribed excerpt of his speech in interview, conducted on 04.17.2019.
[9] -Information is available on: https://www.tjce.jus.br/institucional/forum-clovis-bevilaqua-institucional/
References
Romero, N. R. Nélia Romero: interview [16 Apr. 2019]. Interviewer: Ingrid Teixeira Peixoto, Fortaleza, CE, 2019.
Romero, N. R. Nélia Romero: interview [04 feb. 2021]. Interviewer: Ingrid Teixeira Peixoto, Fortaleza, CE, 2021.
Author: Ingrid Teixeira Peixoto
Architect and urban planner
Master's student at the Federal University of Ceará
Fortaleza, Ceará