The Begijnhoven: Analysis of 'Other' Hybrid Types in the Medieval City

Abstract

It is possible to find in the past the emergence of a new situation where women break with the way of life based on the nuclear family and who have the will to transform the spatial conditions they inhabit - the house and the city that they have inherited from established urban form. This research intends to demonstrate how women were effective in this and the fact that the Begijnhof human-space relationship occurred with a gendered perspective. Two issues are analysed which reinforced each other: the changes they made in the spatial properties of the places they lived in; and the multiple uses that were in the Begijnhoven. This research shows how women updated the existing domesticity by means of the Begijnhoven in the Middle Ages.