How can we propose a Feminist Alternative to the Traditional (Art) Museum?
Project selected for the Archiprix Exhibition, upcoming in September 2026
For my MSc Architecture graduation at TU Delft, I chose to focus on the traditional museum and its limitations.
House of the Muses is a design research project that rethinks the art museum as an institution shaped by patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist systems. Instead of monumental architecture that imposes distance and prescribes behavior, the project proposes a post-museum grounded in intersectional feminist values of care, repair, and shared knowledge. It challenges the idea that visitors must arrive with prior understanding and instead creates an environment where learning and exchange emerge collectively.
At the core of the project is a redefinition of the Muse. No longer a passive figure, the muse becomes both source and creator, allowing inspiration to circulate between people, materials, and surroundings. In this space, everyone and everything participates in a continuous process of mutual influence.
The design takes form through the transformation of the Katoenhuis, an industrial cotton storage building in the harbor of Rotterdam, into a living structure that fosters relationships and collective transformation. Guided by textile practices such as spinning, weaving, stitching, and natural dyeing, the project elevates processes historically dismissed as secondary due to their gendered associations. These techniques become a universal language that shapes both spatial experience and social interaction, weaving together human and non-human agencies into an evolving architectural fabric.
For more information, please visit the TU Delft repository:
https://repository.tudelft.nl/record/uuid:cd6edd0a-e752-4770-8638-b917733122c4
Section A and B of the Natural Dyeing Machine (Scale 1:50)
Lighting Model Impression (Scale 1:50)