Alice Constance Austion- Influential Female Architect
Alice Constance Austin (1868-1930) was
a female architect who planned houses designed to reduce domestic
labor. This was to promote gender equality. Not only an architect,
Alice was a city planner, feminist, socialist, and designer.
The Llano del Rio is Alice's most
recognized project. In the early 1910s she was hired to help plan for
a cooperative community in California. This city plan was a circular
model including administrative buildings, restaurants, churches,
schools, markets, etc. Houses included plans for kitchenless living spaces,
communal daycare areas, built in furniture, and other various designs
that were created to reduce a women's domestic workload.
Alice's radical feminist views were
certainly in consideration with her city planning. This modern
feminist design proposed the use of underground tunnels for laundry,
transportation of supplies and goods, and hot mean delivery service.
All of this was designed in hopes to result in less domestic housework, convenient
child care, etc., freeing women of the traditional household duties and allowing her to become more of a member of society.
Although Alice's grandiose plan was never fully
implemented, it is still a pivotal and important city planning design
done by a woman who was looking to break the barriers of that
time, and wanting to allow women to have the same opportunity and
availability as men to become equal members of society.
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Central City Plan Design |
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