On the night of July 17, 1939, the history of Mexican architecture changed to make visible the «A» in the history of the discipline. That afternoon, María Luisa Dehesa Gómez Farías He presented the thesis Type artillery barracks in a room of the former National Academy of Fine Arts – that at that time served as the headquarters of the Faculty of Architecture at the Academy of San Carlos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). It was seventeen flat and a descriptive memory that formulated the dependencies program that competed to life in a military barracks of the time, a project that not only granted him the title of architect (sic.) Unanimously, he was also creditor to a Honorary mention.
That evening was historic for many reasons; At first, for becoming the first architect who saw the nation, as the M. Bertran de Quintana lines point out in Notable architectural ephemeris in Méxic architectureor 3 (1939): “And the aforementioned Academy [Academia de las Nobles Artes de San Carlos de la Nueva España]wanting to distinguish First Mexican woman That by its constant and exemplary application and use, it has given as a student, luster to the National Architecture Schoolhe grants him, in fact as unique as transcendent, a gold medal. ” However, why it is academic merit, Dehesa made much more to be titled, because her dissertation put considerations on the table regarding gender in architecture. In that sense, both points charge vital relevance in the historical memory of women in architecture, because – from a review with feminist perspective – recognizes the innovation that the optics of women contribute to the city to a tradition of predominantly masculine thought.
In their generation, of 113 people only 5 were women.Illustration by Ana Sofía Toral
Put women on the plans
María Luisa He was born in Xalapa, Veracruz, on June 30, 1912. The renovating spirit of the early twentieth century invaded his journey and, from an early age, developed passion for drawing and writing. Later, in 1933, he moved to Mexico City To study architecture at the San Carlos Academyfrom the National Autonomous University of Mexico, along with others five women out of 113 people. In spite of the liberal spirit that was already coming since the end of the 19th century and the impulse – at least on paper – to promote women's education, in practice there was still a marked division of workshops and subjects in higher education according to gender roles. By joining a discipline dominated by men, Dehesa faced structural machismo throughout her career, a factor by which she chooses a «masculine» theme for their dissertation, but, intelligently, it addresses it from a female perspective, when you think a barracks like a home (with all the attachments they must have) and include women and childhoods that inhabited those spaces.
In that sense, Dehesa claims the role of women Even when they are excluded from productive activity and positions them as household architects, while configuring safe and worthy spaces beyond the war task, since it addresses an important problem of post -revolutionary Mexico: the high crime rate among the children of soldiers. In the words of Bertran de Quintana: “The study of the soldier's home is worth mentioning in this project. Home outside the barracks, although close to this, in which the soldier's son has to be raised, and receive the first notions of knowledge in gardens framed by the homes that must have a medical dispensary at hand in which he is attended to which he is going to be a mother and who is the mother of children […] Here is one of the architect's great missions: form the worker's home. ”