How to Cite: Gilsanz-Díaz, Ana, José Parra-Martínez, María-Elia Gutiérrez-Mozo and Asunción Díaz-García. "In Conversation with Women Architects: The Interview as a Tool for Postgraduate Feminist Research". Dearq no. 40 (2024): 39-51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq40.2024.05
Ana Gilsanz-Díaz
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
José Parra-Martínez
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
María-Elia Gutiérrez-Mozo
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Asunción Díaz-García
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Received: December 8, 2023 | Accepted: June 12, 2024
This paper addresses an experience that integrates research and teaching with a gender-based perspective in the qualifying Master of Architecture at the University of Alicante. This experience interweaves heuristic and hermeneutic strategies with the purpose of providing students with methodologies and tools for analysis that encourage a critical approach to the built environment. The study of collective housing complexes created by women architects in Spain is the catalyst for a biographical inquiry and personal encounters with their works and with the residents, in which the interview becomes an instrument to overcome the condition of architecture as an object and explore its epistemic and political fecundity.
Keywords: Spanish women architects, interview, oral archive, research tools, collective housing, feminist pedagogies, postgraduate studies.
Although the beginnings, evolution, and contributions of the gender perspective in architecture and urban planning are well documented in the Spanish professional and academic context (Muxí 2018; Gutiérrez-Mozo et al. 2020; Sánchez de Madariaga 2020; Pérez-Moreno 2021; Álvarez Lombardero 2022; etc.), the same cannot be said about the way these disciplines are taught, where the issue is still between its in theory obligatory nature1 and the engagement of the most committed teachers.
In the case of the University of Alicante (UA), to which the experience described in this article pertains, the implementation of feminist and queer teaching methods in the Degree in Fundamentals of Architecture, led by the area of theory (Department of Architectural Theory and Design), has been producing results for more than a decade (Gutiérrez-Mozo 2014; Parra-Martínez et al. 2021a; Parra-Martínez et al. 2021b), including the first guide for introducing gender-based perspectives in teaching and research in architecture (Gutiérrez-Mozo et al. 2021a). These undergraduate studies have primarily sought to mobilize these approaches with new educational proposals and formats (Díaz-García et al. 2023), in order to spread a new architectural culture that diverges from the androcentric historiographical narratives that have displaced other ways of understanding, producing, and studying architecture through exclusion, pseudo-inclusion, or invisibility (Arias Laurino 2018; Colomina 2018). Moreover, by focusing on works and projects traditionally considered minor, an attempt has been made to break with another bias of hegemonic narratives and accounts: the apparently necessary iconicity of the architectural event. This knowledge stimulates students' curiosity and encourages nonconformity, reinforces their understanding of the complexity of the built environment and its imagery, and raises their awareness of the influence of power relations and gender norms, through the intertwining systems of capitalism and colonialism, on the planning, construction, and perception of architecture and the city.
This can be linked to the current aspiration to recover the social and political role of architecture and the understanding of the gender perspective as a crosscutting feature that runs through the totality of its practices (Montaner and Muxí 2020). Precisely for this reason, the production of women architects is, in general, inspiring for students who increasingly understand that being an architect means adapting to the challenges of the Anthropocene and prioritizes notions of interdependence and eco-dependence with which building becomes an action that is necessarily approximate to caring.
If these issues are relevant in undergraduate teaching, they are even more important in postgraduate curricula. Firstly, because they open the door to doctoral studies and thus to research whose conceptualization and methodologies require an ethical horizon of inclusion and equity. Secondly, because this implies not only proposing a new approach to architectural and urban reality but also reflecting on other ways of teaching, learning, and producing and sharing knowledge.
This research arises from the theoretical-practical seminar Conceptual Approaches to Architectural Design I (CAADI), a mandatary subject2 taught by the Architectural Theory teaching staff as part of the Master's in Architecture at the University of Alicante. Its general objectives, and specifically for the experience described, are to provide a theoretical and methodological toolkit that regards conversation as a means for acquiring knowledge, and the oral archives deriving from it as primary sources that can contribute to the conceptual construction and research of the final master's project. Furthermore, the particularities of the group studied—women architects fully exercising their profession—allow us to provide references that can be incorporated into the creative processes from the very recognition of their epistemic and ecopolitical fecundity.
In this sense, the analytical frameworks and the references to feminist theory and activism are unavoidable, not only because of their commitment to diversity but, given their critical nature, they also force future professionals to move in contentious areas, create friction, and negotiate the conflicts involved in challenging hegemonies of all kinds. Indeed, the commitment of the postgraduate program lies in locating and even destabilizing other knowledge that is, in fact, already occurring in an increasingly heterogeneous exteriority.
Locating these focal points of knowledge production allows us to learn from the complex experience of sharing our research, which also leads the university to rethink itself on the basis of these findings. For this reason, we understand the classroom as a laboratory, an authentic testing ground where the dissidences revealed, mobilized, and amplified by the gender perspective and, more generally, the intersectional analysis and study of architecture and the city, can be performed.
To this end, the CAADI module was conceived as a theoretical-practical seminar for which we propose two workshops each year3: one on research methodologies, called heuristics because of its openness to discovery and to the paradox that this may entail; and another on reinforcement of sources and references, generally but not entirely textual, that we call hermeneutics. The former is usually a group event, while the second is an individual reflection, based on reading and interpretating writings by women architects who have made a decisive contribution to architectural and urban reflection4.
This is followed by the experience of the 2022-23 academic year, specifically the heuristics workshop entitled The Research Interview: In Conversation with Women Architects. Its conceptual framework was the research project A Situated View: Women's Architecture in Spain from Peripheral Approaches, 1978-2008 (Generalitat Valenciana, 2021-23)5. The students were offered the possibility of studying a series of buildings designed by women that, owing to their social and pedagogical implications, were restricted to the field of collective housing, either a public or a private development. In both cases, this was an architectural type that the students had already studied extensively during their undergraduate history and theory modules and which, with this experience of the Qualifying Master in Architecture, was intended to be approached from a critical standpoint, with a more situated point of view6. In this regard, the methodological challenge consisted in both the design of interviews with the subjects—architects from different generations—and of questionnaires7 aimed at understanding how their works were perceived by the residents of the selected complexes. The experience was therefore conceived as a pretext to stimulate qualitative approaches based on life stories and sensitive approaches, to encourage personal encounters, and to foster exchange without generating relations of otherness, but rather of otherness and empathy. To this end, the fieldwork, which consisted of going out in search of the architects and their works, establishing complicity with the users of their buildings and dialogue with neighborhood associations, were understood as different facets of the same research.
Some illustrative cases were presented to guide and train the students in using the interview as a research tool: works in which architecture and art converged (Koolhaas and Obrist 2011); examples from architectural research magazines, such as the Chilean ARQ or from more generalist journalism (Zabalbeascoa 2022); as well as informative editorial projects that address the interview monographically, such as the Conversaciones collection of the Gustavo Gili publishing house. Finally, an exemplary case of learning about the gender perspective was examined in depth through the use of the interview, specifically the article Building a Place in Architecture: Career Paths of Spanish Women Architects (Agudo Arroyo and Sánchez de Madariaga 2011). A result of a collaboration between a woman sociologist and a woman architect, it studies the situation of three generations of women from different areas—private practice, public administration, university teaching, and architecture office employees—through 21 interviews that included an overview of the transition from training to employment, the difficulties of their professional practice and development, the problems associated with their invisibility, overworking, and unequal promotions, and even the denial of their differences. By reviewing this text to identify the methods used—analysis of recorded and transcribed interviews—where what is said and what is omitted reveal the keys to these architects' careers and their personal experiences, we encouraged the students to formulate their own questions in relation to their analysis of the chosen works, to produce audio-visual recordings of the conversations, and edit the results of their work. To support this work and its compilation into publishable material, three speakers were present during several sessions: one of the authors of the mentioned article, sociologist Yolanda Agudo Arroyo, who provided valuable methodological considerations; filmmaker and documentary maker Gonzalo Ballester; and architect and editor Moisés Puente.
During the workshop, the 65 students8 were divided into ten groups of six or seven members. The list of architects and works chosen by the nine teams that concluded their study is provided below (table 1). This selection (fig. 1) reflected the plurality of situations in which Spanish women architects practice, which also allowed us to speculate on the need to redefine professional practice (Álvarez Lombardero 2017). Seven of the nine case studies were selected for discussion in this article. The selection criterion was that the sample should reflect the typological and scale diversity of the examples (fig. 1).
Table 1_ Works Addressed in the Teaching Experience. The works discussed in this article are marked with an asterisk.
Figure 1_ Works studied (from left to right and top to bottom): Mare de Déu apartment building (Barcelona)*, Guardia Civil Barracks (Oropesa del Mar)*, 72 social subsidized housing units (Paterna)*, Plaza América intergenerational housing building, day care and health center (Alicante)*, 172 social housing units (Alicante)*, 8 experimental housing units (Granada), housing for the elderly and day care center (Alcora)*, intergenerational complex in Poblenou (Barcelona), and renovation of 28 housing units in San Cristóbal de los Ángeles (Madrid)*. Source: author's creation based on the material provided by the students. The asterisks indicate the works analyzed in the article.
During their interviews with the architects, the students were instructed to explore the ideas of the project, the vicissitudes of the commission, design, and construction, their expectations, and the very idea of architecture from the perspective of their practice, which would evidently be linked to a context and to their lives and professional careers. The purpose of this was to document the author's retrospective lens through which, with the passage of time, they evaluate their work and its repercussions on their careers and the discipline.
To supplement the interviews, the students were also asked to prepare questionnaires for the users of the projects and neighbors, which, depending on the questions asked, allowed them to obtain a sample and record of a variety of experiences with the architecture with which to contrast the different viewpoints. The students were required to design the questionnaire, collect and quantitatively process the responses, analyze and edit the results, and draw conclusions. As in the previous task, this second exercise had two presentation formats: audiovisual and textual. Therefore, the assignment consisted of an illustrated dossier with information on the selected work, the interview and the questionnaires, and a short documentary film.
The presentation of the results of this teaching experience is based on a selection of the materials produced by the different teams and the analysis of the edited interviews. However, in most cases, the number of responses to the groups well-designed questionnaires was insufficient to gain insight into the experiences of these architecture projects, beyond the occasional valuable testimony.
This complex of 97 flats in Barcelona's Zona Franca, measuring about 40 m2 each, was built by Blanca Lleó. Originally designed to accommodate young people, today it houses several generations. The residential building includes two facilities, a nursery school, and an occupational center. Designed as a large orthogonal prism, it is built with a system of reinforced concrete screens cast with aluminum molds. In keeping with its industrial image, the terraces, covered courtyards, common areas, and intermediate spaces create a sequence of exterior and interior spaces that are always in relation to the Montjuïc hill (fig. 2).
Figure 2_ Mare de Déu Apartment Building for Young Renters with Quotes from the Interview with Blanca Lleó. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
The interview confirms the main idea of the project: to empty the interior through the concatenation of collective or neighborhood spaces open to the surrounding areas. The importance of unprogrammed empty spaces, "which belong to no one and belong to everyone," Lleó affirmed.
"All these spaces are related to the perception of the mountain," the architect added. This professor of architectural design at the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM) explained the link between her professional practice, teaching, and research; between practicing and teaching architecture. She also spoke of ethics, of "playing fair," of fierce professional competition, and of knowing how to earn respect in a male-dominated world through persistence and hard work, encouraging female students to take the lead on their projects and proclaiming the need for a generational changeover. In this case, the fieldwork and conversations with the residents revealed rent collection related problems with the property management and issues related to multiple occupancies that contradict the original planning brief.
Architects Carmen Espegel and Concha Fisac won the closed competition to solve the complex program for the Guardia Civil barracks. The complex combines work and living spaces: twelve dwellings for families and another twelve single occupancy dwellings, arranged in two L-shaped rooms. The architecture of simple volumes with courtyards and sun protection louvres modernizes the image of this national security institution.
The team interviewed Espegel, an architect with her own studio and a professor of Architectural Design at ETSAM, who explained how, based on a given program, she initiated a project discussion to combine the different uses into a compact and recognizable whole that would allow two different ways of living. One key factor in the design was the security required by the program—protection for its inhabitants, a protected enclosure with video surveillance, and an entrance for prisoners who were to be taken to the cells (fig. 3). Taking this into account, the proposal included courtyard dwellings that adapted to the climate, highlighting the intermediate spaces that take advantage of the sea views and the orientation. Yet, the contemporary image of the architecture, the concrete materials, louvres, and color contributes to transforming the public image associated with a historic institution, without compromising on the security requirements. She also explained the difficulties of working in architecture as a woman and the excitement of developing projects, because "when you build, you build." Finally, she argued that teaching and research are closely linked to architecture work and that, in her case, this dialogue between the street and the academy was critical to her becoming a professor.
The questionnaires recorded a wide variety of opinions, highlighting how difficult it is to disconnect when you live in the same place where you work.
Figure 3_ Oropesa del Mar Barracks with Quotes from the Interview with Carmen Espegel and Concha Fisac. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
This project, located in Paterna, Valencia, illustrates a common situation: the architect who designed the project, Lourdes García Sogo, did not supervise the construction of the building and, therefore, did not control the changes that were made to the original design. The project was for social housing and ground floor premises, including a nursery school. The complex is characterized by its regularity, geometry, and modulation; the dwellings are organized in functional bands and the circulation spaces are reduced to a minimum of surface area. Its clarity lies in the distinctive running terrace as a "continuous element of escape and renewal," in the architect's words, and in the natural light that enters all spaces. Accessible from all rooms, the terrace expands the domestic space and shapes its image (fig. 4).
Figure 4_ Mas de Rosari Apartment Building of 72 social housing units with Quotes from the Interview with Lourdes García Sogo. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
García Sogo, who has run her own studio since 1992 and has tackled all kinds of projects of different sizes, candidly described the discrimination she has suffered and still suffers. She added that despite the changes in the paradigms of the profession there is still much to be done, including in the construction trades, where there are hardly any women. Moreover, she clearly positioned herself by saying that being an architect "is not only knowing how to do the project, but also how to get it built" and, speaking of professional responsibility, by knowing how to intervene, to resign if necessary, so as not to be a tacitly complicit with what we do not agree with, given that "all projects aim to solve real problems," to improve the world.
This ambitious project, with its complex program and facilities management, is an excellent example of caring architecture (Gutiérrez-Mozo et al. 2021b). It consists of 40 m2 rental housing for non-dependent elderly people, in which a percentage of units are reserved for young people who make a contractual commitment to provide services to the community. The apartments are organized in two rows separated by an interior street, a place that expands the domestic sphere, for encounters, dialogue, and everyday life. This was architects Consuelo Argüelles and Carmen Pérez main idea for the project. The program is completed with collective spaces that enhance community life: common rooms, laundry, a solarium, and a garden terrace or vegetable gardens (fig. 5). It also houses other facilities: a public health center, a day care center for the elderly, and a public parking lot. It is a striking collective facility at the service of the neighborhood, an important element in its surroundings that has given the area character and "balances public and private interests in the city" (Chinchilla 2020, 52).
Argüelles and Pérez have been both self-employed and worked for the local city council. They collaborated on this "micro-city" project, as they call it, which was extremely complicated due to the different institutions responsible for each facility and the financial management of the budget. In their opinion, it was a satisfying and successful project given its functionality and the opinions of the residents, neighbors, and users. It is a hybrid intergenerational building that complements and connects with the neighborhood, the authors stated with evident satisfaction. They also explained that they have had to overcome difficult and discriminatory situations in both the university setting, and in the workplace, particularly in project and site management.
Figure 5_ Plaza de América Intergenerational Housing Block, Day Care and Health Center, with Quotes from the Interview with Consuelo Argüelles and Carmen Pérez. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
These dwellings were the result of a call for proposals made by the Valencian Housing Institute (IVVSA),9 which was won by Marta Pérez Rodríguez just after she finished her degree. The complex comprises two blocks that form a U-shape, one L-shaped block, and another free-standing one that occupy the perimeter of the plot and leave a large free space in the center that acts as a square. The powerful material impression of perforated facing brick with openings and lattices made from the same material, conceals a wide variety of housing typologies. Pérez confirmed that the objective was to achieve maximum spatial quality in the smallest surface area, for which she created nine types based on three basic functional units that combine to configure multiple possibilities and spatial relationships. In addition, they are based on the understanding of inhabiting the exterior, generating open spaces adjacent to the dwelling and others that pass through to connect them to a lateral view of a courtyard or terrace. Thus, the impression of roundness protects light, fresh, airy, and semi-open spaces (fig. 6). "The theme of the competition was 'shadows' and that was really what I was looking for," said Pérez.
The interview revealed the challenge of facing the construction process alone, just after graduating, as well as the importance of surrounding yourself with a good team to develop the projects. It was also an opportunity to subsequently become a lecturer at the university. She stated that, although she recognizes herself as a woman architect, "not simply an architect," she does not consider gender to be a differentiating element when it comes to conceiving projects, but rather a question of training, ethics, and sensitivity. Recalling her time as a student, she pointed out that the teaching staff only showed works by men and taught the same type of architecture.
Figure 6_ 172 Social Housing Units with Quotes from the Interview with Marta Pérez. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
The rental housing complex managed by Débora Domingo is the result of a public competition called by the IVVSA. Compact in form, it projects an image of protection and shelter. It was erected on the outskirts of Alcora, Castellón and consists of three housing blocks of 40 dwellings, 40 m2 in size, for the elderly and a day care center on the ground floor (fig. 7). The open corridors articulate the various distributions while providing views of the landscape.
After long delays due to changes in the construction companies and management controversies, the inaction of the managing and political entities had prevented locals from using the housing and social center—the testimonies collected by the students in the municipality reveal a lack of awareness about the building and its services. Domingo recounted the complicated building process and the need to detach herself emotionally from the work in order to move forward. She stated that architecture is a social service and mentioned the challenge of working on site as a woman on her own, since "women were always seen as working in partnership partners with men" who directed large-scale projects. In this regard, after the economic crisis of 2008 and her recent maternity, she worked as a university lecturer in order to achieve the stability that a private architectural practice was unable to provide.
Figure 7_ 40 Social Housing Units and Day Care Center in Alcora, with Quotes from the Interview with Débora Domingo. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
This project is a typical example of architecture that is far removed from utopian visions and based on partnerships between the agencies involved. The building is located in the south of Madrid, in a modest neighborhood isolated from the surrounding districts, with high rates of unemployment, immigration, squatting, and crime.
The block of flats, built in the 1960s, was the object of a closed competition promoted by the Madrid Municipal Housing and Land Company to improve access and energy efficiency. It was awarded to Margarita de Luxán and Gloria Gómez, two architects from different generations, both sustainability specialists. The project redesigned the circulation cores and insulated the roofs and façades, creating naturally air-conditioned galleries to take advantage of the orientation and generate significant savings (fig. 8). The work was carried out through a process of mediation and participation that involved the residents and the project was implemented in such a way that they were not obliged to temporarily leave their homes. The questionnaire recorded their satisfaction with the interventions, including the efficiency of the passive climate control measures.
Both architects have worked together on various projects throughout their careers and have developed a practice closely linked to research at the ETSAM. De Luxán, professor (emeritus) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, is a pioneer of bioclimatic architecture in Spain and Gómez, lecturer and researcher at ETSAM, is also associated with sustainability and is currently involved in projects that address gender inequality and energy poverty. Gómez recounted how "any project is always a research opportunity" and how this was an important challenge in her professional career. She also reaffirmed her belief that the role of the architect was to engage with society, show interest in rehabilitation, listen and speak to clients, and collaborate with other experts.
Figure 8_ Renovation of 28 houses in San Cristóbal de los Ángeles with Excerpts from the Interview with Margarita de Luxán and Gloria Gómez. Source: author's creation based on the materials provided by the students.
This research, and the feminist teaching practice it sets out, revisited the mentioned article by Agudo Arroyo and Sánchez de Madariaga more than a decade after it was written. This article has had inter alia one of the greatest impacts on subsequent literature on the gender perspective and architecture. This review was conducted from both intellectual and ethical positions to enable us to draw conclusions: firstly, as a point of reference to replicate the experience and acquire the rudiments of the social sciences methodology, primarily interviews (qualitative) and, to a lesser extent, questionnaires (quantitative); secondly, as a point of comparison between the reality Agudo Arroyo and Sánchez de Madariaga described, the future their paper projected, and the current situation, exploring the prospective capacity of this foundational text and contributing new insights with which, in turn, we can glimpse a new landscape upon which to act.
In relation to the first aspect, several issues are worth noting. The first involves understanding the contributions of architectural theory to postgraduate studies, which transcend the role of theory as merely supporting and fostering design, offering instead the opportunity for a genuine approach to architecture, its authors, and the profession. This approach requires studying and documenting the works themselves (conceptual content); with regards to the women architects, it requires the use of procedures (studying their career, preparing the interview and arranging, recording, and editing it) and attitudes (empathy, respect, adaptation to other people's lives and experiences, flexibility to rethink the original script, improvisation, etc.); and, in the case of the profession, it requires an open mind towards forms of practice whose variety and intersectionality exemplify the achievements of women in private practice, civil service, teaching and research, management, etc. Indeed, the complexity of the discipline and its relations with others has raised students' awareness about the need to make use of the expert knowledge of others without appropriating it: the contribution of the questionnaires, albeit relative in this case, highlights the obsolescence of the heteropatriarchal model of the profession and especially of its spillover into teaching.
Regarding the second aspect, it should be noted that, although less than a generation has passed, the text by Agudo Arroyo and Sánchez de Madariaga is prescient in its warning that the influx of female architects into the profession will not, by itself, resolve the situations of inequality—from which derives the relevance of affirmative action measures. When analyzing this oral archive of interviews, it is striking to note how some of the "fundamental causes that hinder the professional development of these women" are repeated; overexertion, in particular, is recurrently mentioned, again sublimated under the oft-used platitude of vocation on whose altar personal life is permanently sacrificed or postponed, as well as the denial of evidence or differences, which shines through in arguments unrelated to machismo to explain situations that are clearly sexist or discriminatory. Moreover, it is surprising that this denial is more frequent among younger women architects.
All of the above leads us to believe that we are indeed not where we thought we were going. Except for the fact that, over the past ten years, architecture and urban planning, the political agenda, and research and management with a gender perspective have produced a multitude of practices and reflections that have at least introduced the issue to society. However, they have not yet managed to subvert the justificatory behaviors or discourses, as if they were something new or simply did not happen. Perhaps it is only by starting from the beginning, i.e. from university education, that we will be able to drive the transformation of the profession that can no longer be put off.
1 This is set out, among other regulations, in the Equality Law 3/2007 and the recent Organic Law 2/2023 on the University System.
2 The module's thirty classroom hours are taught between September and November.
3 One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching in this master's seminar is working with different proposals every year, with unknown and unpredictable variables. Another added value is learning together with our colleagues and the guest experts who visit us each year.
4 Among others, Diana Agrest, Beatriz Colomina, Margaret Crawford, Dana Cuff, Elizabeth Diller, Keller Easterling, Alice Friedman, Cristina Goberna, Francesca Hughes, Sylvia Lavin, Ana María León, Mary McLeod, Joan Ockman, Marina Otero, Felicity Scott, Jill Stoner, and Inés Weizman.
5 The aim of this project has been to understand and characterize the idiosyncrasy of architecture by women in Spain between the country's transition to democracy (1978-82) and the paradigm shift that occurred after the 2008 financial crisis, a period marked by the gradual but ineluctable inclusion of women in the profession. Beyond quantifying their multiple and exemplary practices, this research has sought to determine the uniqueness of women's contribution to Spanish architectural culture in the postmodern period. To achieve this, it has been essential to understand the circumstances and material conditions that they experienced. This last aspect, emphasizing the inequalities and obstacles that women architects have had to overcome from the outset—discrimination and even harassment at work, the burden of care tasks, etc.—was precisely the starting point of the workshop, for to ignore them, as the patriarchal mantra that the work should speak for itself, reveals class and gender prejudices.
6 In the mobile application NAM, Navegando Arquitecturas de Mujer (Navigating Women's Architecture), which is the main research output tool of the A Situated View project, 517 works by women architects—18.25% of the total number of works registered—have been registered to date, 95 of which are residential. The buildings and projects selected for this educational experience are all part of this digital archive.
7 The questionnaire, rather than the survey, was chosen because the aim was to collect subject-specific information rather than data that would require statistical processing, which was beyond the scope of the student body.
8 The composition of the participating students was gender-balanced—31 men (47.5% of the group) and 34 women (52.5%)—and their origins were diverse, with 50% of the graduates from the UA and the remaining percentage primarily from universities in Madrid, although there were also students from other regions, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country.
9 The Instituto Valenciano de la Vivienda Sociedad Anónima was a public company of the government of the Generalitat Valenciana that operated from 1987 to 2003.