Women in Architecture are presenting a series of three events: Three Colours: Blue White Red. The third and final event Red, on November 20th, is in collaboration with the RIBA and deals with the notion of home and gender. We explore home/ homelessness and celebrate the importance and diversity of what Home means to individuals.

We will include screening a range of short films about gender and space followed by speakers and an opportunity to socialise and network with drinks.

Catja de Haas: Architect, Founder: The Giant Dolls’ House Project

The Giant Dolls’ House Project is an international collaborative arts project that engages local communities. The dolls’ house in the shoebox has been a fantastic medium to explore domestic space with its quirks, traditions and memories for both children as well as adults as it reflects the dreams, hopes, whims and ideas of its creators.

Each participant in the project makes an individual dolls’ house room in an empty shoebox. The finished boxes are attached onto a large black canvas and connected with ropes, ramps, and ladders. The Giant dolls’ house uses the idea of miniature and the dolls’ house to convey ideas, dreams and memories about the home as well as community. We have found with each installation that the Dolls’ House can be used to explore ideas of identity, both shared as well as personal, and that the Giant Dolls’ House project is always a good reflection of the different people who have created it.

Over the past five years the project has travelled to Jordan (to Za’atari), Goa, Dubai, North Carolina, and to various places in the UK It has been part of the London festival of Architecture the past five years and has worked with different universities. More than 2000 people have participated so far. The project has collaborated with charities such as Shelter and Oxfam. The project tries to involve a wide range of people from different ages and backgrounds to create a true community as storytelling sessions and lectures are organised around the project addressing larger issues.

Catja is the founder and director of Catja de Haas Architects, a small practice based in London.

Catja qualified as an architect at Delft University under Professor Herzberger, and holds an MA in housing and Urbanism from the Architectural Association in London (supported by Fonds Voor Beeldende Kunsten). Prior to setting up on her own she worked for Itsuko Hasegawa in Tokyo and Alsop Architects in London and had a small practice, Studio CS, with Sabina Riss.

She completed her PhD by design at the Bartlett school of Architecture, UCL, in 2013. The Giant Dolls’ house project is the result of her ongoing research into the use of imagination and miniature to explore the ideas of home and community, as well as vehicles to bring about change.

Catja has exhibited her work at TESTBEDI and the Bartlett (as part of the PhD) and has published and presented her work. She has been a visiting crit at various universities and is currently a VT at Bournemouth university.

Meet Catja and our three other talented speakers by joining us at the Red event on November 20th. Register here.