ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how women have creatively constructed spaces to support themselves and their agendas both within existing environments – sometimes by preserving and/or modifying them, as was the case in London and Charleston, South Carolina. Sometimes through the formation of new forms of design practice both without and within architecture, as happened in early twentieth-century Rochester in upstate New York, interwar London, and wartime Britain and the US. The book focuses on how the tensions played out in South Africa both during and after apartheid emphasizes how women there have been disempowered by multiple layers of prejudice and exclusion.
