Intersectional Theory in Architectural and Urban History: Digital Curation and Archives of Architects and Urban Planners

Taking as its starting point the increasing importance of the role of digital curators within institutions holding architectural archives, the paper analyses the role of tools coming from intersectional theory and practice in contributing to our understanding of how women and black men are represented in the digital curation of architectural drawings in cultural institutions. More specifically, the paper explores how concepts and tools coming from the theory of intersectionality in order to examine how aspects concerning gender and race can be taken into account when establishing digital curatorship strategies. The paper is based on the hypothesis that visualization strategies can show the evolution of the role of women and black people in architectural discourse. An important factor for this paper is that the afore-mentioned institutions are situated within a context having the following characteristics, which are contradictory to a certain extent: on the one hand, they hold in their collections archives of architects that are paradigmatic of the dominant discourse given the fact that they wish to acquire the fonds of architects that influenced and are significantly influencing the dominant discourse, but, on the other hand, they are called to shape interpretative models based on perspectives able to take into account diversity issues