Gill (Gillian) Matthewson is a New Zealand-Australian architect, scholar and educator. Since 2016, she has been based at

Monash University Monash University () is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Named after World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the ...

in Melbourne, Australia.

Early life and education

Matthewson was born in

Wellington, New Zealand Wellington is Capital of New Zealand, the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the List of cities in New Zealand, third-largest city ...

, and educated at Tawa College. She received her bachelor's degree in architecture from the

University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...

, School of Architecture, in New Zealand, followed by a master's degree in architecture from

University of East London University of East London (UEL) is a public university located in the London Borough of Newham, London, England, based at three campuses in Stratford, London, Stratford and London Docklands, Docklands, following the opening of University Squar ...

for a study on the work of

Lilly Reich Lilly Reich (16 June 1885 – 14 December 1947) was a German designer specializing in textiles, furniture, interiors, and exhibition spaces. She was a close collaborator with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for more than ten years during the Weimar pe ...

titled "Sex, Lies and the Barcelona Pavilion" (1994). She completed her PhD at the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

in 2015 on the topic "Dimensions of Gender: Women's Careers in the Australian Architecture Profession", for which she received the Dean's Award for Outstanding Thesis. This was part of a larger research project, Equity and Diversity in the Australian Architectural Profession: women, work and leadership, led by

Naomi Stead Naomi Stead is an architectural academic, scholar and critic, based in Melbourne, Australia. She is currently the Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University, Australia. Early years and education ...

Research and professional experience

A strong advocate of addressing gender discrimination in the field of architecture, Matthewson's scholarship concerns the state of the architectural industry's treatment of women. During her professional life, she has practiced architecture full-time for a decade, including at the firm Claire Chamber Architects (New Zealand), and in England at Matrix Feminist Design Cooperative and BDP. In addition to practicing architecture, Matthewson has contributed to the field as an academic with teaching positions at

Wellington Institute of Technology The Wellington Institute of Technology, also known as WelTec, is a New Zealand polytechnic based in Petone, Lower Hutt. WelTec was formed in 2001 by an amalgamation between the Central Institute of Technology (established in 1960) and the Hutt V ...

. She undertook her doctoral studies within the ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History) Research Centre, in the School of Architecture at the

. She joined Monash University Art, Design and Architecture in March 2016, where she is a Lecturer and Senior Researcher at the XYX Lab. She is also a Senior Researcher on the Architecture Education and the Profession study led by th
Architects Accreditation Council of Australia
which is due to conclude in June 2019. Matthewson is a co-founder of Parlour: women, equity, architecture, an organisation devoted to advocating for gender equity in architecture, and a co-editor of the Parlour website. Matthewson's extensive statistical map of the participation of women in the architecture profession in Australia has been an important base for Parlour's advocacy. This work has been extended into demographic studies of the Australian architecture profession as a whole, including studies for the Association of Consulting Architects. Her work also informs the reporting undertaken by the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia. She is acknowledged as the national expert on the demographics of the profession. Matthewson also contributes regular commentary and analysis on contemporary issues in architecture to Parlour and other professional publications, including commentary on the use and misuse of statistics. Matthewson has long advocated for women in architecture in New Zealand, as an activist, commentator and writer, and has been described by historian Dr Julia Gatley as 'the most persistent commentator to date' on women in New Zealand architecture.

Published works

* "Seeds" – NZ Architect, No 1 1984 * "On Discrimination", co-authored with Heather Ives – NZ Architect, Nov 1985 * "Standing in the Shadows" – Interstices 4 University of Auckland, 1996 * "Looking at the Icons" Formulation Fabrication, Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by Andrew Leach and Emina Petrovic, Wellington, New Zealand, December 2000. * "Breaking Clichés: the Human Accessory in the Work of Julius Shulman," Hunch: the Berlage Institute Report, no 3, pp. 78–81. Invited article. April 2001. * "Imaging Utopia: Domestic Frames" In the Making: Architecture’s Past, Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by Kevin Green, Darwin, Australia, September 2001. * "Pictures of Lilly: Lilly Reich and the role of victim," Additions to Architectural History, Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by John Macarthur and Antony Moulis. Brisbane: SAHANZ, 2002 d-rom 12pp. * "Pictures of Lilly: erasures, additions and errors" Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 11 (November 2003): 65-77 * "Take it to the Limit: Women as Breach in Architecture." Limits, proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, edited by Harriet Edquist & Helene Fichot, Melbourne, October 2004. * "Sketching in the Margins: women in the architectural profession." Charles Walker (ed) Exquisite Apart: 100 Years of Architecture in New Zealand, Auckland, NZ: Balasoglou Books on behalf of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, 2005. (Invited chapter.) * Leach, Andrew and Gill Matthewson, eds. Celebration: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. Napier: SAHANZ, 2005, 398pp * "In a Glass Darkly: the Glass Pavilion and reflections in Photographs." In Contested Terrains Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by T McMinn, J Stephens & S Basson 345-350. Fremantle: SAHANZ, 2006. * Gill Matthewson and Christine McCarthy, eds. Inhabiting Risk: Proceedings of the 3rd Conference of Interior Design / Interior Architecture Educators Association. Wellington: NZ, 2007, 179pp. * "People who Live in Glass Houses: Walter Benjamin and the dream of glass architecture." In Cultural Crossroads Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by J Gatley. Auckland: SAHANZ, 2009. * "You have No Idea: Women in Architecture in the Eighties" in Christine McCarthy (ed) "... ponderous pedantic pediments prevail... good, clean fun in a bad, dirty world": New Zealand Architecture in the 1980s, Centre for Building Performance Research, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Victoria University, pp 57–6, 2009 * "House Work: women and the Group" and "Houses for Modern Homes Inc" in Julia Gatley (ed) Group Architects: towards a New Zealand Architecture, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2010. 6pp & 5pp. (Invited chapters.) * "Suburban Imaginings: the Rotherham House Stories" in Imagining... Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by Michael Chapman and Michael Ostwald. Newcastle: SAHANZ, 2010. pp 253–257. * "Architect Barbie Through the Looking Glass: gender, identity and architecture" in Fabulation: Myth, Nature, Proceedings of the 29th Annual SAHANZ conference, edited by Stuart King, Anuradha Chatterjee and Stephen Loo Launceston: SAHANZ, 2012. * "Nothing Else Will Do: the call for gender equality in architecture in Britain" Architectural Theory Review, 17, 2-3, 2012 * "Women and Leadership in the Australian Architectural Profession: Prelude to a Research Project" co-authored with

and Karen Burns, in Rosemary Francis, Patricia Grimshaw and Ann Standish eds. Seizing the initiative: Australian women leaders in politics, workplaces and communities Melbourne: eScholarship Research Centre, The University of Melbourne, 2012. * "Women in Architecture: who counts?" Architecture Now, 5 Nov 2014 * Matthewson, G. (2017). The gendered attrition of architects in Australia. ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly, 21(2), 171-182. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135517000367 *Stead, N., Matthewson, G., Clark, J., & Burns, K. (2017). Parlour: The First Five Years. Field, 7(1), 143 - 160. * Matthewson, G. (2018). Where Do You Go To?: The Class of ’76. Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 85-100. http://interstices.aut.ac.nz/ijara/index.php/ijara/article/viewFile/270/454 * Tanner, S., Kalms, N., Cull, H., Matthewson, G., & Aisenberg, A. (2020). 'Unsafe in the City' - SM - 'Disruption and Design: Crowdmapping Young Women’s Experience in Cities'. IDS Bulletin, 51(2), 113-128. https://doi.org/10.19088/1968-2020.133 * Ison, J., & Matthewson, G. (2023). More than a dot point: Connecting primary prevention of violence against women and public transport. Journal of Transport & Health, 30, 01591 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2023.101591

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Matthewson, Gill Living people New Zealand architects University of Auckland alumni University of Queensland alumni New Zealand women architects New Zealand women academics Academic staff of Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology Australian women architects New Zealand architecture writers Australian architecture writers Architecture educators New Zealand feminists Academic staff of Monash University Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century New Zealand women writers 21st-century New Zealand women writers 20th-century New Zealand writers 21st-century New Zealand writers Alumni of the University of East London