Building diversity

The Women in Architecture Festival 2025 aims to create social cohesion, demand equality, promote diversity and showcase women in building culture as trailblazers for new working models and professional structures. In terms of professional policy, the festival aims to set the tone for equal opportunities in professional competition, the promotion of the next generation and the elimination of the gender pay gap, which still stands at eight per cent in architectural professions and is therefore two per cent higher than the German average. This corresponds to around 20 unpaid working days per year. Bremen's FOPA is organising the workshop ‘How do we want to work’. The NRW Chamber of Architects is organising an online symposium on the topic of added value diversity. The House of Architects in Stuttgart is organising the workshop ‘Gender-sensitive planning and building - theory & practice’. ‘The aim of the WIA Festival is to make these inspiring paths visible and to give more space to the wealth of ideas of female architects, interior designers, landscape architects and urban planners,’ says patron Andrea Gebhard, President of the Federal Chamber of Architects. She adds: "If everyone had the same opportunities, then we would just talk about architecture. But this way, we have to talk about how we can ensure that women have the same opportunities".

The protagonists of the WIA Festival are committed to a sustainable transformation of the construction industry, with life cycle-orientated planning, interdisciplinarity and diversity in training and craftsmanship as well as new work cultures. Under the title ‘RESPEKT.Baustelle - Sexismus entsorgen’, the Bremen Chamber of Architects is organising a discussion event for respectful cooperation in everyday planning and construction. In the workshop ‘The Seasonal Salon’ in Bergen auf Rügen, you will learn many details about renewable raw materials; in Hamburg, the festival will open with the topic Women Innovating Architecture, Sustainability and Circularity.

With a scaffolding net embroidered by the Austrian artist Katharina Cibulka on a building site in Düsseldorf, the female architects' initiative nw visibly addresses gender-based grievances from afar. Founded 34 years ago, it is the largest and oldest network for planners of all disciplines and thus a role model for newly founded organisations such as Building Women, the network of female architects of the Saarland Chamber of Architects, which is addressing architecture and emancipation with a film screening as part of the WIA Festival. In Saxony-Anhalt, the WIA Opening in Halle will be the inaugural meeting of a new network, the WIA Summer Salon LSA 2025. The WIA Festival will take on an international dimension through the participation of international players in Germany. The Nordic Embassies in Berlin are organising the Dream Play Challenge: The Future of Sustainability workshop. The Bremen Centre for Building Culture is showing the exhibition Feminist Cities. Mexico-Bremen. And in a roundtable co-operation event, the BDA Gallery in Berlin is presenting current positions of Women in Architecture Ukraine.

The numerous exhibitions, conferences, guided tours and workshops are intended to showcase best practice examples and approaches for gender-responsive architecture and cities and contribute to developing an awareness of a climate-adapted building culture. A special feature of the WIA Festival is the participation of entire cities. Lörrach presents how women have shaped the sustainable, climate-adapted transformation of the Lauffenmühle industrial wasteland into a productive neighbourhood. Gifhorn is showing women's works in the Sanssoucis Mühle. In Waltrop, the Waltrop Moselbachpark has been transformed into a multifunctional green space for everyone as part of a participatory process. And in Neubrandenburg, together with the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Chamber of Architects, works by female GDR architects will be the subject of the dialogue event Experience Eastern Modernism. The final highlight will be the WIA Summit, which will bring together the results from all over Germany.

Women in Architecture Festival 2025
19 to 29 June 2025, nationwide

Summit:
Tuesday, 08 July 2025, from 14:30
Urania Berlin
An der Urania 17, 10787 Berlin-Schöneberg