Haus der Frau

Haus der Frau is a participatory project, situated in the foyer of Harry Seidler’s Australia Square, which seeks to reinscribe modernist architecture into the feminized realm of domestic handicraft. The commercial foyer space becomes a temporary craft workshop, as exhibition visitors are invited to engage in the production of a large- scale cross-stitch representation of the building. The structural and aesthetic unity of Seidler’s architecture, credited with bringing Bauhaus principles to Australia, is opened up to informal play, incompleteness and error. The title Haus der Frau is taken from the women’s pavilion at the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition – a model living space, which aimed to reconcile the domestic and professional needs of women. It also alludes to the women’s class of the Bauhaus, which steered female students away from “heavy craft” and architecture, towards textiles and weaving. Resisting these constraints – and a workshop master who vowed never to pick up a thread – the Bauhaus weaving students experimented with form, materials and process. Penelope Seidler’s rendering of Blues Point Tower, which transcribes the architectural elevation onto the orthogonal grid of cross-stitch, provides a precedent for the current project. In Haus der Frau, the distinctive geometry of Australia Square form the template for a collaborative cross-stitch. A set of tables custom-built have their surfaces etched and perforated according to this template. During the exhibition, as visitors participate in sewing directly into the table-top, the image of Australia Square appears in irregular, hand-stitched, coloured thread. By inviting visitors to “pick up a thread”, Haus der Frau explores the contested space between the decorative and the functional, between the professionalized spheres of art and architecture and the domestic “pastime” of craft, and seeks to re-situate the role of women’s labour within the Bauhaus and its legacy. Cottage Industries is a collaboration between Cristina Garduño Freeman, Antonia Fredman and Vicki Leibowitz. Their creative and theoretical projects explore intersections between architecture, design, heritage and art through critical spatial practice and forms of participatory culture. Past projects include The Lost Street, a site-specific work for Expanded Architecture in The Rocks, held as part of Sydney Architecture Festival 2013, and Towards a New Sandwich, a video guide to remaking a Modernist icon.