Collective research to highlight the skills of women builders and promote more inclusive and sustainable construction practices.
PROJECT PRESENTATION
Women know how to build. And when they do, it’s often for the better, for others, for the city, for the environment. Yet the collective imagination continues to associate construction with physical strength, justifying the tacit exclusion of women from the building trades, where they still represent only 2% in Europe. This association is based on a false idea: construction is not about strength, but about tools, learned gestures, and transmitted knowledge. To build is first and foremost to have access to tools and to the collective.
In a sector still largely structured around male norms, this project aims to make visible the innovations, gestures, and collective intelligence of women builders. Because construction is inherently collaborative, the initiative brings together those who build, carpenters, masons, plasterers, roofers, plumbers, metalworkers…with those who design, plan, and think the city. In a horizontal and public space of exchange, they share their practices and imagine together more inclusive and sustainable ways of building.
Women in construction are already developing concrete solutions to collaborate better, reduce waste, reuse materials, and protect both their bodies and the urban ecosystem. Yet these practices remain invisible, poorly documented, and undervalued. The project creates conditions to reveal, connect, and ultimately transmit them.
Deployed over one year, the project includes a metropolitan call for applications, a research and on-site interview phase, a series of mini-documentaries, followed by a public exhibition with roundtables and participatory workshops. Visitors are invited to learn how to use tools and collectively build a long wooden bench, guided by women builders.
Through this cycle of research, transmission, and collective fabrication, the project fosters a participatory, social, and collaborative approach, while showcasing grassroots innovation at the metropolitan scale. It asserts that urban innovation is not only technological: it is human, embodied, and deeply collective.
Women know how to build. And when they do, it’s often for the better, for others, for the city, for the environment. Yet the collective imagination continues to associate construction with physical strength, justifying the tacit exclusion of women from the building trades, where they still represent only 2% in Europe. This association is based on a false idea: construction is not about strength, but about tools, learned gestures, and transmitted knowledge. To build is first and foremost to have access to tools and to the collective.
In a sector still largely structured around male norms, this project aims to make visible the innovations, gestures, and collective intelligence of women builders. Because construction is inherently collaborative, the initiative brings together those who build, carpenters, masons, plasterers, roofers, plumbers, metalworkers…with those who design, plan, and think the city. In a horizontal and public space of exchange, they share their practices and imagine together more inclusive and sustainable ways of building.
Women in construction are already developing concrete solutions to collaborate better, reduce waste, reuse materials, and protect both their bodies and the urban ecosystem. Yet these practices remain invisible, poorly documented, and undervalued. The project creates conditions to reveal, connect, and ultimately transmit them.
Deployed over one year, the project includes a metropolitan call for applications, a research and on-site interview phase, a series of mini-documentaries, followed by a public exhibition with roundtables and participatory workshops. Visitors are invited to learn how to use tools and collectively build a long wooden bench, guided by women builders.
Through this cycle of research, transmission, and collective fabrication, the project fosters a participatory, social, and collaborative approach, while showcasing grassroots innovation at the metropolitan scale. It asserts that urban innovation is not only technological: it is human, embodied, and deeply collective.
THE TEAM
Francesca Bonesio is an architect, researcher, and teacher of architecture and design. She is also the author of a book on women builders, scheduled for publication in spring 2026.
Isabelle Swiderski supports social innovation through design within her company Seven25, and as a teacher of human-centered design and social entrepreneurship.
Francesca Bonesio is an architect, researcher, and teacher of architecture and design. She is also the author of a book on women builders, scheduled for publication in spring 2026.
Isabelle Swiderski supports social innovation through design within her company Seven25, and as a teacher of human-centered design and social entrepreneurship.
