This article contributes to shedding light, documenting, and disseminating a pioneer event that has not been part of the recorded history of urban planning. In 1991, two feminist engineers working at the City of Vienna’s Urban Planning Office organized a ground-breaking exhibition with the aim of understanding gender bias in urban design. The event exceeded their prospects in an unanticipated way. Since 1991, the City of Vienna led the way to the conceptualization of gender mainstreaming that was happening at the European level – and that did not take place until 1997, when the Amsterdam Treaty came into effect. In 1992, the City of Vienna established the Women’s Office, with authority in urban affairs. Paradoxically, the success of the exhibition did not allow the organizers to properly document and preserve it, nor was it conserved in the City’s Archive. This unprecedented research relies on unreleased archival material gathered from the personal archives of the exhibition’s photographers, as well as from ad-hoc interviews with the organizers, Jutta Kleedorfer and Eva Kail. Thirty years later, the City of Vienna is known for this approach to urban planning. The exhibition ‘Who Owns Public Spaces? Women’s Everyday Life in the City’ was the turning point.

The remoteness of Galicia, a cultural and linguistic bridge between Portugal and Spain, did not prevent it from playing a significant role in the history of female architects in the Iberian Peninsula. Nine Galician pioneers have carved the path since the first generation of Spanish female architects outlined the precedents during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). They were also present in an initial period, even if housewifization theories were intensively fueled by the dictatorship (1939–1975); likewise during the continuity period in the transition to democracy (1975–1982), and the second wave of feminism. However, it would not be until progressive democratic institutionalization (1982–1986) that more women gained access to architectural studies in university (consolidation period); but what is the legacy of these pioneers? Are Galician female architects ‘in transition’ yet? Based on data primarily collected by research group MAGA and released publications, this piece explores how, despite their achievements, their recognition is still superficial. And even if the number of undergraduate students reached quantitative equality, female practitioners continue to leave architecture and these numbers are increasing. Towards a critical approach to inequality in the profession, this article researches the history—and stories—of Galician female architects to examine how far we are from effective equality in the Galician architectural world.

The Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, the Dutch museum for architecture, design, and digital cultures holding the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, is implementing different initiatives to bring overlooked actors and forgotten stories into the discussion. The aim is to examine the role that archives play in the construction of the history of cities and their inhabitants, as well as to contest institutional memory and the dominant historiography. Since 2020, the project Collecting Otherwise seeks to disclose, create proximity to, and enlarge the understanding of the relevance and intersections of the National Collection of Architecture and Urban Planning regarding contemporary societal urgencies. In this collaborative process, the Nieuwe Instituut collaborates with a wide array of external researchers, among whom the co-authors of this paper throughout the project Cherchez la femme! (2021-2023) This contribution maps these interlinked activities to further investigate how these experiences, situated around unacknowledged agents, have transformed the institutional procedures of archiving, collecting, and curating. During this process of preserving, creating, and transferring knowledge, certain collection choices have been made, and new heritage practices have been developed. This paper elaborates on the consequences of these choices from the different positions required in the archival process: curator, researcher, activist, and donor. Rather than understanding heritage as a neutral and objective legacy, this approach goes beyond the archival process itself, presenting new forms of collecting, producing, and transferring knowledge during, meanwhile and after the process of archival collection starts.