This thesis begins with the question why, while women have been constructing spaces all along, she and her way of construction are absent from contemporary construction sites. My investigation attempts to address this observation twofold: one is through the gendered approach of tracing her presence and absence, as well as how she has gradually been expelled from the male-dominated construction culture, on historical and contemporary construction sites; the other parallel enquiry endeavours to go beyond the gender discourse to address the loss of certain conceptions and capabilities of construction at large in contemporary culture and socio-political framework, as that which continues to assert constraint on tendencies in the architectural discipline and the building industry. The question of her absence, as the thesis argues, can be understood largely through the problematic gender categorisation and tendency of segregation and specialisation instrumentalised in the power structure, but it also points to the somehow lost connection between construction and all aspects of life, and that to construct is itself a living process.

Arzu Kusaslan is a PhD candidate at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. Her papers have been accepted for the book Improvised Urbanism, Routledge (2026); the III International Congress on Colonial and Post-colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Colonialism and Labour (2026); and the Construction History and Film International Symposium (2026). She presented her paper at the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) 21st International Conference ‘Body Matters’, 2024. She was one of the two key organisers of the AHRA PhD Symposium 2024.