In Search of a Room of Their Own

Abstract: This diploma thesis in architecture is a book composed of a combination of embedded anthropological documentation and creative fiction, written with help from Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. It is a story built up, fragment by fragment, that describesregular visits to the Girls Night events at a Youth Centre in Fittja, in Northern Botkyrka, south of Stockholm, where the author went to meet and spend time with a group of local girls on Thursday evenings in the Spring of 2015. Ungdomens Hus is a Youth Centre in Fittja for locals between the ages of 15 to 22. Many boys come and play games here, including pool, ping-pong, video games, the Turkish game Okey, boxing, they also watch TV and generally hang out. The ability for girls to occupy this room, on the other hand, tends to be reduced to three hours a week, when the room becomes a space for the girls alone: A room of their own. On Thursday evenings Rädda Barnen and the municipality Botkyrka arrange the Girls Nights in the Youth Centre in Fittja. This forum is open for all girls between the ages of 15 to 20 years old who live in Northern Botkyrka. The Girls Nights exists to make it possible for young women to make their presence visible, and for them to be able to take space at the Youth Centre, developing their courage to take place in other public spaces and in the context of contemporary society more generally.