Fabrication and Ms Conduct: Scrutinising Practice Through Feminist Theory

This paper describes a collaborative practice between an architect and textile designer: its outcomes and the critical theoretical and feminist contexts from which the practice evolved and to which it still responds. The practice advocates the interweaving of more than the yarns, material and cultures on which it is physically based—the intertwining of feminist theory, practice and technology as a means to advance the discourse of architectural practice. This is a response to Sherry Ahrentzen's charge to feminist scholars and practitioners to “embrace not only the abstract conceptual nature of much postmodernist theorizing, but also that derived from the serious ‘hanging out’, looking at, listening to, scrutinising and theorizing lived experiences of the everyday”—in this instance, the everyday practice of combining concrete and textiles.