‘In all houses, women/Outside of the world are relegated,’ sang the French activists of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (Women’s Liberation Movement) in 1971. How can this interior space, suggested by another slogan, ‘home sweet home,’ be read in the light of feminism? To answer this question, Stéphanie Dadour, a researcher and lecturer in humanities and social sciences at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais, who specialises in issues relating to the domestic space, discusses the modern movement, Dolores Hayden, and the choice of curtains.

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Anastasia de Villepin

When would you date the rise of an interest in the interior of the house and its layout, beyond the simple architectural typology?

Stéphanie Dadour: Architects have always been interested in interiors. Joel Sanders, an American architect and professor, explains that in the profession, the separation between the work of architects and that of decorators – whose work focused mainly on interiors – became more pronounced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nowadays we would call them interior architects or designers. This has created a hierarchy that values the work of the architect as the overall work, to the detriment of the ‘decorator,’ who only intervenes late in the game, concentrating on the interior, which is seen as inferior, and also as woman’s work. This hierarchy gained momentum in the 1960s, and continues to this day: it values the architecture, most often represented by a male figure, at the expense of the interior design, whose designer, even if he is a man, is assimilated to female stereotypes.

You are talking about Joel Sanders’s text ‘Curtain Wars’, translated into French and published in 2020 in Re-vue Malaquais No.6, which you edited.

Yes. It’s a very beautiful text, originally written in 2004, which revisits the relationship between architects and interior designers. The title is a good illustration of what’s at stake: the curtains are the decorators’ trademark, which the architect refuses to touch – ironically, except nowadays for energy reasons. In a play on words, he contrasts it with the ‘curtain wall’ to maintain the distance between the two fields. In my opinion, this is still very symptomatic of these ‘professional’ assignments. We know that the reality is different: are doors, windows and thresholds interior or exterior elements? As far as I can see, there are no grounds for this debate.

What were the consequences of this hierarchisation?

I would like to quote the book by historian Alice T. Friedman,1 in which she shows how the iconic houses of the modern movement – Gerrit Rietveld’s Schröder House, the Villa Savoye and others – were all designed by men and commissioned by women. The study of the correspondence between the architects and the women clients precisely traces the development of these houses, which were based on reflections about the suitability of interiors and lifestyles…

Read the whole interview in AA's lastest issue, « The House. Revolutions of a model », now available on our online shop.