ABSTRACT
The narrative concerning Swiss architect Flora Ruchat-Roncati’s life and career must consider, besides her prominence as teacher and practitioner, the full significance of biographical circumstance. A mother and widow at a young age, she integrated work and family life, fusing social and professional connections into one instrumental network that shaped her outstanding career. The first woman to ever become a full professor at ETH, Ruchat-Roncati’s academic recognition came on the basis of her built oeuvre, most of it achieved in collaborations with male partners. Her professorship (1985–2002) put Ruchat-Roncati in a public light, forcing her into becoming a visible role model. Her personality and teaching spirit helped open new perspective in the curriculum, as attested by the then innovative lecture series “Women in the History of Architecture,” which influenced a whole generation of female students. Yet Ruchat-Roncati’s legacy remains curiously amorphous. Her preference for shared authorships led to a formally heterogeneous built oeuvre, eschewing a recognizable signature style in favor of hybrid solutions tailored to each project. Similarly, her fluid teaching approach, bridging between the more monolithic methodologies of male colleagues, is equally hard to pinpoint. This chapter identifies and discusses the ambiguities defining this remarkable protagonist of Swiss architecture, arguing at the same time for the need of different methodologies and assessment criteria in the study of women’s contributions to the profession.
