What was different about the environments that women created as architects, designers and clients at a time when they were gaining increasing political and social status in a male world? Through a series of case studies, Women's Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, examines in detail the professional and domestic spaces created by women who had money and the opportunity to achieve their ideal. Set against a background of accepted notions of modernity relating to design and architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this book provides a fascinating insight into women's social aspirations and identities. It offers new information and new interpretations in the study of gender, material culture and the built environment in the period 1860-1960.

Introduction 1. Questions of Identity: Women, Architecture and the Aesthetic Movement 2. Creating 'The New Room'. The Hall sisters of West Wickham and Richard Norman Shaw 3. Elsie de Wolfe and her Female Clients, 1905-1915: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator 4. Your Place or Mine? The Client's Contribution to Domestic Architecture 5. Architecture and Reputation: Eileen Grey, Gender, And Modernism 6. Marie Dormoy and the Architectural Conversation 7. A House of her Own. Dora Gordine and Dorich House (1936) 8. Elizabeth Denby or Maxwell Fry? A Matter of Attribution?