“Plenty more women deserved to be in this exhibition!”

Between 12 May and 9 June 2025, Place Ada Lovelace will be bathed in yellow. The eye-catching installations will pay tribute to women at the forefront of civil engineering, focusing on their iconic works and offering insight into some of the female pioneers in the field. This will be the latest iteration of Queens of Structure, an exhibition that began in Germany in 2021 and toured several cities, including some in German-speaking Switzerland. Now, thanks to the work of Maléna Bastien Masse, the exhibition has been adapted into French and includes portraits of four new women, three of whom studied at EPFL. After stints in Geneva and Lausanne, the exhibits will make their way to Sion and Neuchâtel. We spoke with Bastien Masse, the exhibition’s curator and a researcher at EPFL’s Structural Xploration Lab, who was recently named associate professor at the Geneva School of Engineering, Architecture and Landscape (HEPIA).

What inspired you to bring this exhibition to French-speaking Switzerland?

I was asked to serve on the organizing committee for the Basel exhibition, but I declined because it was too far away – and also partly because of the language barrier. But after visiting the exhibition and thoroughly enjoying it, I thought it would be great to do something similar in the French-speaking part of the country. I got in touch with Nicole Zahner, one of the women behind the project. She’s a Luxembourg native who studied at ETH Zurich and now works as a civil engineer in Berlin. She was fully behind the idea of producing a French version of the exhibition. So that’s how it all started. I then reached out to female engineers in my network to find people willing to serve on the organizing committee.

Curating an exhibition is a very different prospect to doing research.

Absolutely! Before anything else could happen, I had to draw up a budget, search for sponsors and secure funding from our network of contacts. The experience taught me a lot about museology, content creation and graphic design – as well as the nuances of language, because we had to produce new texts and translate existing materials from German. I was more familiar with the project management side, especially in the production and assembly phases. But there was one key difference: this was a non-profit initiative, so we relied entirely on volunteers. There was no shortage of goodwill, but things like these naturally take longer because people have other priorities.

How did you choose women for the new portraits?

We wanted to spotlight women who’d done pioneering work in fields that were underrepresented in the German exhibition. But there were more candidates than we could accommodate. Plenty more women deserved to be in this exhibition!

Who did you ultimately select to be included?

One of the new “Queens of Structure” is Émilie Bellanger, a civil engineer who trained in France and has designed structures in locations around the world. Major road bridges had thus far been absent from the exhibition. Bellanger’s showpiece is a cable-stayed bridge in Morocco, notable for its distinctive tower design. The other three are all former EPFL students. The first is Alix Grandjean, a historic monument specialist noted for her work on the Lausanne Cathedral, a building that has a special place in the hearts of the people of Vaud Canton. Next is Isabelle Fern, who’s honored for the part she played in reinforcing the Lessoc dam in the Canton of Fribourg. We felt that her work touched on an issue of national importance. Although another dam already featured in the exhibition, Fern is the first woman to be named a level-3 expert for dams under the supervision of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. The fourth and final woman we chose to feature is Rachel Nenavoh, a transportation specialist. Her work on rural traffic-calming measures, clean-commuting corridors and train-station accessibility might be more understated, but it makes a real difference to people’s everyday lives.

What else can we expect to see in the exhibition?

One exhibit is the St. Jakob Tower next to the soccer stadium of the same name in Basel. It was designed by Salome Hug, an engineer from Basel who studied in Zurich. And, of course, there’s the Rolex Learning Center. Its designer, Agnès Weilandt, will give a talk at the exhibition’s launch event at EPFL on 19 May. Other highlights include Roma Agrawal, one of the designers behind the Shard, an iconic landmark of London’s skyline. She’s gone on to build a reputation as an influencer whose talks offer interesting insights into the world of civil engineering. And then there’s Charlotte Bofinger’s work, in a field that tends to go unnoticed. She looks at how circular-economy and reuse principles can be applied to construction – a topic that also features heavily in my research. Bofinger works for a firm that specializes in this field.

Why do you feel it’s important to raise the profile of female engineers?

Because it’s still a male-dominated field. The share of women studying the subject hasn’t increased at all in the past decade. I think the discipline has an image problem. Civil engineering is seen as something stuffy – an unglamorous, low-tech occupation that’s all about concrete. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Civil engineers are at the forefront of the green and digital transitions.

Civil engineers are at the forefront of the green and digital transitions.

This exhibition is first and foremost about laying bare the diversity of our profession – showcasing female role models and encouraging women to blaze a trail for the next generation.

Hence the name “Queens of Structure”

Exactly. The name, which comes from the four German women who founded the initiative, reflects the notion that structural engineering is generally a collective effort, yet a female engineer tends to be the only woman on the team, or perhaps the only woman in her family or circle of friends who works in the profession. That’s what makes them the “queens” of their discipline. Our aim is to shine a spotlight on their achievements.

Is civil engineering still a macho environment?

Everyone’s experience is different. Personally, I haven’t really encountered any issues. The overall environment in engineering firms is one of respect. Female engineers face the same barriers – such as motherhood – as their counterparts in any other profession. But those outside the firm still tend to defer to men because they don’t realize that women can also be civil engineers. Things are changing, albeit slowly. We need more women graduates to come through the system to make a real difference.

Who were your role models?

There weren’t many of them. I recall two female professors who made a positive impression on me during my time at Polytechnique Montréal. After graduating, I worked in the private sector, where senior women engineers were few and far between. When I joined EPFL as a PhD student in 2011, Katrin Beyer was the only woman in the civil engineering department. Karen Scrivener was another inspirational figure, although she’s more a materials scientist than a civil engineer. That’s not to say I haven’t had male role models. There are plenty of men – professors and colleagues – who’ve guided me, taken me under their wing and helped me advance in my career.