PROLOGUE Conversations vs. Essays
This essay is not a typical academic probing of ideas, but a conversation between two individuals in seperate academic disciplines and professional practices. The extent of our knowledge varies and in ways is the reason this conversation is taking place. This is as much about a semantic ‘bridging’ of a gap as it is about my thesis project. We both agree there is a fluidity in conversation that lacks in academia due to a number of reasons we will not set forth in this work. More importantly, this is an almost rhetorical practice for me, because I have sat with this specific piece of work we are investigating for well over a year, and the introduction of an alternate and parallel dialogue regarding my thesis is refreshing. The other not so minor detail here is that this thesis’ audience was a jury made up entirely of architects who understood all the insider commentary on specific buildings referenced, central ideas relating to the discipline of architecture. So I am left with only one option to open up ‘other’ possibilities for this work outside of a purely architectural audience, hence the inclusion of a ‘conversation’. Angelo and I both agree that the standard academic essay is too rigid a model to discuss something so fluid, like gender, sexuality, and architecture; the words of Judith Butler ring oh so true when understanding that to make something seem ‘true’ it must be rehersed and rehashed time and time again so that it becomes accepted. The academic essay is an accepted methodology within the structural reality of the academy. But, given the nature and subject of this conference, fluidity in presentation may be analogous enough to the subject of the presentation, so as to create a cohesive critique in both look and topic. The conversation is where ideas are exchanged; respect and disagreement coexist; explaining one’s position is crucial; listening versus preaching can mean the difference between agreeing to disagree and having disdain or disrespect for another based on their position. There is no preaching here, although, as Derrida taught us, every act of definition is an act of appropriation, or something like that. So we’d say, take this as a grain of salt, but our conversation will continue to happen past the confines of these pages and undoubtedly will encounter changes along the way. This is where we situate ourselves. Along a path with a direction, but no presupposed destination.
Expanding Horizons and the need for conversation
The title for this conference is a fitting one in that the work we are conversing about is very much about expanding the dialogue between several fields employing different disciplinary techniques to discuss architecture, sexuality and gender, in seemingly one breadth. The project we are conversing about is my master’s project/thesis entitled, ‘Trangressing Boundaries: Shifting Significance in OMA’s Patio Villa’. Angelo attempts to retroactively find themes not previously associated with it and I begin a discussion based on those provocations. There is no destination, neccessarily, explicit in this conversation. There are no prescriptions given by the design. At best, these are reconfigurations or investigations into existing conditions and what can be learned through creating alternative propositions.
Framing a Mis-reading: Mis-shaping
The purposeful mis-reading of specific texts, written by Judith Butler, Simon de Beauvoir, Derrida, Rem Koolhaas, Beatriz Colomina, and Esther de Costa Meyer, allowed for the development of operative criticisms through architectural language. These specific linguistic ‘moves’ were meant to mis-shape the historical, social, and cultural weight of things like the notions of loggia and widow’s walk, as well as the design of walls, thresholds, facades, etc. Using Rem Koolhaas’ ‘Patio Villa’ allowed for yet another layer of mis-reading to occur in regards to design intent and actual situations (afforded by an interview with someone who lives in the villa currently). The following is text I concluded my master’s project book with. Its placement in this essay is meant to frame the intention of my project, in regards to the content of this essay as well.
Gender and sexuality provoking changes; Changes provoking changes
“The procreation of new ideas and attitudes towards sexuality and gender are not the ultimate goals of this project, although integral to the scenario studied. Is architecture even a viable tool to study these things? Does the architecture reflect the constantly changing understandings of gender and sexuality? The interchanging of meanings and readings, depending on the users and viewers of the space, is the ultimate operation of this project. The process of creating these spaces, which can be read a multitude of ways and lead to questions never before considered, is one which is held on to strongly by me. Since we live in a contemporary era and not in the past, the current and future possibilities regarding this intervention, should also be investigated. Of course, this is speculative and the building should speak for itself. The current condition is that the widow’s villa is owned by a family, and there is no patio in the center, although the configuration is still the same. Dick and Joop are now a middle aged gay couple that have a cozy existence in the patio villa and have no intentions of moving. What does this relationship between normative familial structure and the ever becoming more accepted gay couple, question, in regards to the operations in the interventions? Now, what if the scenario is different and there are two gay couples in the villas adjacent to each other? Do the moments of permeation become purely sexually exciting and begin to influence the dynamics of each couples relationship? What if there are two straight couples? Or a bachelor and a single woman? Or even a Muslim family and a Jewish family? Or a working class steel worker and a bourgeois business woman? What these scenarios begin to do is frame the larger question of how can architecture affect human interactions and relationships. More importantly, how can architecture achieve a certain effect, while at the same time be open to multiple readings and other possible effects? The Patio Villa, for me, was way to explore these questions and gain insight into questions I have never asked before. I do not try to provide an answer because that would go against the constantly changing world in which we live in. Architecture affects our daily lives as we affect architecture.”
Thesis can be viewed online at
http://issuu.com/andrewsantalucia/docs/andrew_santa_lucia_masters_thesis_book_opt
The sections of this essay arranged by theme,proposed by Angelo Santa Lucia are:
Thresholds Gender Bender Inside/Outside
Introductory Statements The main characters discussed in conversation are: the Widow living in the villa adjacent to Dick and Joop’s villa. This duplex forms the Patio Villas, initially designed by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1988. Our conversation focuses on renovations I proposed in my masters project in Spring, 2010.
Andrew Santa Lucia: Gender, for this project, was the provocation. Most of these presentations are going to be very gender heavy. Ours is very gender neutral, in a lot of ways. Its eventuality is gender neutral. It speaks through, not about, gender issues. Angelo Santa Lucia: You want to employ a gender based critique, but even if you employ this, you are still engaging in othering the gendered critique. You can ‘activate’ and ‘deactivate’, in a sense, ‘gender’, if that’s even possible. Whereas, I think in our conversation has that as the ‘understood’ and ‘unstated’ situation. Andrew: The texture of our conversation is gender and sexuality.
Thresholds
Boundaries
Boundaries [Initial Question] [Angelo Santa Lucia : Using the discourse on threshold as being the condition which creates paradox by highlighting difference and destroying division (the ‘and/both’ dichotomy), and taking into consideration this architectural element being present in every structure, I see a threshold as servBoudoir ing an increasing psychoanalytic purpose, as both a penetrative and penetrated force. Can this understanding of the threshold serve as an imbalance, and threaten dominate hierarchiesFoyer (the penetrative) or could it also be seen as a passive element of Boudoir society (the penetrated)?] Foyer Angelo: The way I word it in the question, highlights your notion of the paradox. So it’s the threshold as part ofLiving an Room active element, which highlights difference, yet destroys division. We talked about this earlier, but just to reiterate. Living domiRoom The threshold serves as an imbalance, and threatens nant – or at least socially speaking – threatens hierarchy Loos sets out to create a viewing space on a raised landing in in a penetrative sense. Yet, I think it could still be seen as a the rear of the house. The continous view here is intended to be passive element, in a more penetrated sense. What do you voyeuristic and can only be possible by transgressing the boundthink about these…ideas? aries through creating thresholds. The raised landing is like a
theater,toand the foreground of theon living room,landing is the stage. Fig. 3 oos sets viewing space a raised in Villa out Muller, create 1930, byaADOLF LOOS. Ground Floor Plan Fig. 4 Villa Mü ller by Adolf Loos e rear of the house. The continous view here is intended to be Andrew Santa Lucia: Ok, I think I first would like toofopen with this Diagram Ground Floor There is an active switching aof clear womens position (Highlighted is the sectionand where creating the wrap around and bouThrough establishing boundary aplatform voyeuristic Villa Mü ller by Adolf Loos oyeuristic and can only be possible by transgressing the bounddoir distinction occur) between thresholds in the traditional sense literally, (This diagram shows the viewing direction traversing through the from subject to viewer, using the boudoir asthe the environment, Loos is questioning of gender ies through creating thresholds. The raisednotion landing is like a and segredifferent programs and into the exterior of the house. This is the panmeaning the doorway or opening – which is optic very much an active view from the boudoir.) panoptic point to view fromof thethe living room. gation. eater, and the foreground living room, is the stage. Vouyerism through Threshold
hrough establishing a clear boundary and creating a voyeuristic nvironment, Loos is questioning the notion of gender and segreVouyerism through Threshold ation.
Boundaries
Boundaries
element within Architecture; the door is veryView muchthrough an active eleContinuous ment. [But] Thresholds in this project alsorooms speak of divisions between spaces. And where there’s not necessarily an active element like a doorway, but a mediating element like a wall treatment (the way I Continuous View through specifically deal with the wall, physically, like how I change the charrooms acteristics of a purely solid wall and create permeation or moments of dialogue with something that’s in the adjacent space). I think when we’re talking about threshold, we’re definitely talking about the wall itself and the divisions and the moments these divisions are erased or penetrated, but also the moments where they are penetrative, or very active, specifically, in creating the dialogue. I think that’s maybe where you were getting at. Yes, one could penetrate the walls, in certain ways, but the ways the wall is existent, or the way the wall is mediated and created, can penetrate everything about what you’re trying to do to it.
Boudoir
Ang: this is why I used those metaphors, because the traditional notion of a threshold (being that of a doorway, Foyer or a break in the wall that allows you to walk through it) Boudoir has a penetrating aspect in a very literal sense. You penetrate the wall, in essence, but that penetration is already Foyer omnipresent because the threshold allows it to be there. So Living Roomthis break in the wall is already made. So you are in effect, transgressing boundaries by engaging with the threshold, but that threshold has already created that capability for you to transgress the boundary. Living Room Villa Muller, 1930, by ADOLF LOOS. This is a diagram showing that gaze, through the thresholds starting at the boudoir (yellow), living room (blue), kitchen (green), and outside.
Fig. 4 Diagram of Ground Floor Villa Mü ller by Adolf Loos (This diagram shows the viewing direction traversing through the different programs and into the exterior of the house. This is the panoptic view from the boudoir.)
Continuous View through
And: I think the best way to look at the wall then is an active conundrum, or active paradox. That is the only way to create a wall with a threshold that’s not purely divisional. Ang: well, if its not purely divisional, would else would a wall be?
And: If its not purely divisional in the sense that you cannot actively or physically penetrate it, then there is no threshold. I mean, that we could agree on Ang: Then threshold allows for that boundary to be transgressed, right? So you’re engaging with the threshold, walking through it, engaging in both the spaces that wall separates is a penetrative act. But it also, and this is where I agree with your paradox, the penetrated aspect that threshold is the only thing allowing you to engage in the transgressing of boundaries. And I think this could be seen as ‘limit’. Limits placed on the individual by, let’s say, language. Language being understood as gender or sexuality. These limits themselves are paradoxical because they...
And: you’re talking about threshold as representative, and I think you want to be clear in the fact that it is not metaphorical, it’s representative. Specifically in the sense that this is working on the levels of imposition on a person (body) through threshold, and you’re thinking ADOLF LOOS. Stages set for viewing thresholds. The boudoir in the Villa nook isMuller, a stage to1930, view toby action in the home. The frames about limits as far as gender and sexuality go, and specifically howare implied and transgressed through the view. Picture of interior of living room lookVilla Muller those impose themselves on people. I think one of the main things I ing up at boudoir. was trying to go for, originally, was this weird continuity with threshold that architecture had which was extremely similar to the differentiation between ground and other. For example, in Judith Butler’s work, where ground is this superficial-façade-like thing, and in reality, in a more psychoanalytic way ‘there’s stuff below the ground’, and this stuff below the ground is what’s being issued. So to me, initially, there was this definite push to understand gender and sexuality as a threshold to the rest of the world.
Interior looking towards Boudoir from the Living Room Villa Mü ller by Ado
Ang: But what I was getting at more is using your already framed concept of the paradox and just applying that to the limits that language creates, so does the threshold. Because the threshold allows you to transgress boundaries but in a very fixed way; in a very orderly way. And the only way to transgress those boundaries (being the wall, the partition, or separation) and engage in the two spaces is by engaging with this ‘dual or total space’ that is the threshold. It’s both areas. A threshold has the side of one space, and has the side of the other space. And: ...And has the side of neither. Ang: Right, of course. And the side of neither, that’s the division. Because as the division, it can’t be either/or. And: Neither is the other. I think that was always a mainstay for the texture of the threshold idea. When you look at it in my architecture, you see it in a very ambiguous way. You see the thresholds as these moments where theres mediations between, not only public and private, but very much mediation between the acts that I set up in those spaces. I understand my position as a ‘shaper’ because I know that putting a sauna adjacent to a space that is predominately used for gardening, or interior garden, can be problematic. Especially if there are children in that garden, and there are sexual acts going down in the sauna. Yes, there is a provocative understanding of the space, but then there is this layer of relationship that I try to structurally embed within that threshold. Let’s call that one more of a phenomenological threshold than a literal threshold, because there is no door.
Wall Section, Patio Villa REDUX, by Fig. 50 DetailedLucia, Section of2010. wall between Andrew Santa ThisSauna sec-and Garden (This wall allows the user to get a glimpse, from whichever side, into the pother persons life. There is a mechanism on the wooden tion shows the mediating wall between weepholes that allow for a collection of water into a basin. The water is generated by the steam of the sauna. The plants are irrigated by sauna and garden. that water.)
54 na
And (con’t.) That also brings up the notion that even when there is no literal threshold, there is a level of threshold existing within the space. Whether or not it’s a negative signifier in the sense that it is understood to ‘not allow in,’ but still the dichotomy between being allowed-in and not being allowed-in is active. If we break down that ‘distinction’ in a space where you cannot go in literally, but you can phenomenologically experience and affect another person’s experience of your space, from outside of it, I think that is a better understanding of the possibility of threshold; outside of just the normative notion of threshold as a doorway. Ang: Explaining the threshold as not only the traditional doorway, or split in a wall, but also the non-normative space that a sauna can create, right?
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. This is a rendering of the sauna condition. The wood wall creates visibility literally and connects to the garden through the mist, in a phenomenal way.
And: It’s not only non-normative, because I think there is a dual nature to the house. It’s about how normal everything can become. To the point that you could set up a provocative experiment, and essentially your hypothesis can be disproven. That’s also what’s central to my experimentation, simply because you set up parameters, expect an outcome, and you get pleasantly surprised. That moment of surprise is where I would situate sexuality and gender. People think they are fixed, but I think they are very surprising. Understanding, not only in your acting out of them (gender and sexuality) but also you’re propensity to it, whether or not it’s an active part of your expression. And I think in that ambiguous space you find that you’re not this, and you’re not that, but I’m all of it. Very much the queering of the space. There’s a great building by this architect, and her name was Eileen Gray. She was one of the most famous, next to Lilly Reich (who was Meis Van der Rohe’s muse), female modern architects. She was kind of like Le Corbusier’s muse. She was bi-sexual. She made this house with this guy she was in love with. And in this house, she plays out her dual nature, or bi-sexuality, by making feminine spaces masculine; making the normative notion of ornament, and superfluous notion of ornament as feminine and structure is masculine, she made structural-ornaments and ornamentive structures.
This image captures the interior garden
experience adjacent to the Sauna. There
is a basin that collects the run-off of mist
from the wooden weep holes. This in turn serves as irrigation for the plants.
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. The garden uses the captured mist, through a system of weepholes which transfer the water into irrigation basins for gardening purposes.
Fig. 54 Rendering of Garden
garden sauna
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. This section shows the first and second floors and how sauna and garden have skylight conditions through the patios glass florr above. These rooms become the hearts of the spaces and the main moments of relation with the neighboring villa.
Fig. 49 Longitudinal Section through Patios 1/16”=1’
Widow’s Walk The widows walk is a cultural phenomena in Western cultures, specifically from the late 18th century.
Gender Bender It is made up of a rooftop viewing platform for a
widow to look out at sea for the unlikely return of
her sailor husband. The widow’s walk relationship
to voyeurism is in the gaze, either by the widow or by the public. The widow can only look towards
the sea, keeping her confined in a public eye, to
the walk itself. The public keeps an eye on her and
[ANGELO : If the widow wasn’t physically there, would the space still serve a particular purpose?] her social movements. This is a judging aspect of
a cultural condition that is perpetuated by both the
public and the widow. When one changes the nature of the relationship, the widow’s walk is simply a cupola.
ANDREW : It’s important to note here that regardless of if the widow is there or not, there is this negotiation between public and private regarded by the widow’s walk/loggia condition that is always active. It is very specific. Although the instigation is associated with the widow and the historical connotations of the widows walk, it is not necessary that the widow be there, simply because the architecture doesn’t physically change, but the relationships that manifest themselves through the architecture, do. The widow’s walk is also referred to as the Captain’s Walk, which further engenders the condition. It lays
out the harsh understanding that the wife is looking for her husband and that is the only purpose of this condition, further enforcing gendered roles.
Widow’s Walk, (painting by Rob Gonsalves). This image shows the widow, on the right hand corner turning into the ballistrate railing. The ships she thinks she sees become clouds.
Fig. 16 Rob Gonsalves’ Widow’s Walk (This painting is interesting for a few reasons: it deals with the traditional archetype of the widow’s walk and comments on the relationship between space, vision, and folklore. The widow literally morph’s into the balustrade and the ship she is awaiting, turns into the clouds through the sails.)
ANG: Were these locations (widow’s walks) created for those purposes, or were these port or pier conditions near water, re-appropriated to stand for the location of the widow, historically? AND: Historically, the widow’s walk was designed for a sailors wife to publically await the return and/or mourn the death of their husband at sea. It was a specific condition, socially, culturally, and physically. ANG: This space was constructed both literally and figuratively, under the condition that there would be this widow waiting? AND: Yes. ANG: Its interesting that it is not so much a re-appropriation of space, but rather if that’s what it was intended to be, isn’t that a little different? Would that change the dynamic and the way we understand your proposal? Wouldn’t the intent of the construction also add to that previously held notion and what we expect? AND: When you say intent of construction, do you mean the intent of translating a widow’s walk, AS A WIDOW’s WALK (historically)? ANG: YES. AND: Ok because that is not the intent of the construction. The intent is to use the widows walk language against itself. ANG: Let me try to get my mind around this. The Widows Walk itself was more so created for that sole purpose, phsically. AND: It was created for that sole purpose. There was no other use of the widows walk as a precedent. It was not used outside of its specified social use, hence its pure relationship to gender and social structure. ANG: So the intention of the entire physical material structure is that it is necessary for that space to be active insofar as there is a widow waiting or expectation?
Typical New England Widow’s Walk, Thatcher Island, MA, circa 1850
AND: All that was without the widow waiting was an inactive widows walk, which I think is the power of an active widows walk that serves the exact opposite of the traditional one. That is where the detour comes in: you use an accepted cultural framework, which is WW architectural condition A, and then re-propose that as anti-widows walk architectural condition B. The idea is to subvert the accepted cultural framework of widows walk. One way I try to do that is by basically translating a ‘widow’s walk’ into contemporary architectural materiality and typology, so as to create a widow’s walk-like condition. What makes this (my project) not a widow’s walk is the fact it is not serving the purpose of a widow confining herself to a space gazing out to sea for her possibly dead sailor husband to return, so that the public can make sure that is what she is doing and not engaging in something extramarital. Now, the way you can subvert that is to turn the gaze away from the sea, from her dead husband, from the structure of subservient wife, and place it upon the public voyeurism. What this in turn creates is a mirror and structurally swaps the positions of the public from the judge/jury to the judged. That switch of direction in the gaze, is where the detournement happens.
The widow’s walk condition is reconsidered here through the cultural understanding of the dutch
picture window. Essentially, these moments become extensive and playful viewing platforms.
Fig. 62 Rendering of Second Villa’s kitchen adjacent to the public wall
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. This rendering shows the widow’s walk-like condition where the viewer in the space is gazing outwards and is protected by a double pane of glass.
ANG: So the subject of gaze switching from the widow to the public... AND: ...the widow becomes the voyeur and places herself in the panoptic position of power.
Fig. 62 Elevation 1/16”=1’ (This elevation shows the materiality of the facade and the introduction of the glass loggia/widow’s walk element, superimposed on top of the actual facade. The users would need to go outside of their home to move through it, adding to the paradox of going on out and in at the same time.
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. This image shows an elevation (above) of the facade of the house. In it, there is the activated loggia condition with the widow’s walk-like space on the left-upper floor.
The second image is a section cut through the widow’s walk’like condition where the viewer is protected by the double pane of glass and can comfortably gaze outwardly.
Fig. 61 Transverse Section through the Widow’s Patio Villa (This image shows the kitchen open to the elements and public view.)
Inside/Outside ANG: So the LOGGIA, is only significant if it’s on the façade or front of the building. If it is not in a public perspective it is not a loggia? AND: No, it is not. The loggia, in classical architecture, is a mediating condition. It is a public/private ambiguity that occurs in the building with the weight being more in private than the public, architecturally. ANG: What I am getting at then is that, if there’s a space that activates or creates an interplay with that ambiguity, the both/and/neither of public and private…This space could not have been activated had it not have been on the front of the building. Its not the nature of that ambiguity which makes the loggia a loggia, but rather its relation to the external, right…and how the external understands the loggia. Its very reminiscent of how the self is realized through the other, and the only way of knowing you are the self is by knowing you are not the other. It’s meaning attributed by the external. What makes the loggia important is not JUST because of the public/private or inside/ outside interplay because you can have a structure that engages that ambiguity that doesn’t allow it to be seen, like we can see in houses that have backyards with active inside/outside element in a terrace.
Loggia, City Hall in Poznań (1550–1555). This is a typical historical construction and use of the loggia, in a civic center.
Fig. 17 Loggia on the Facade of City Hall of Poznan
AND: its more active with nature than the public… ANG: It’s about the public (condition of being public) being comprised of the public (the people, the viewers, etc.). The very thing it tries to deconstruct, defines the loggia, i.e. the public defines it. AND: It tries to deconstruct inside/outside dichotomies, primarily.
This Loggia-esque condition questions the normative notion of privacy and publicity as exemplified in the dutch picture window. The loggia forces the users to traverse outside the house into a public act, while going towards usually private
ANG: This is where the paradox is. I don’t know if you mention this in your piece, but since the loggia is an interplay between inside/outside and public/private, it still carries meaning only insofar as the public attributes meaning to it. programs.
AND: Well, of course. But there’s another notion of loggia in an active historical dialogue with loggia. We see them in civic conditions in Rome, but also in Medici palaces (private). There is also a definite notion of social hierarchy embedded in the historical loggia. You have a loggia. You’re looking down. Yes they’re looking up, but just because you are a desirable thing to look at. The loggia, in my project, is sort of an opposing force, but also has a duality because it is meant for the viewer to get an accurate or inaccurate depiction of the user or tenants life… THE loggia essentially becomes a screen, as Baudrillard speaks about the screen/image, in the ‘Ecstasy of Communication’. There is a definite understanding of the interplay of daily life and the loggia as a register of that interplay. And you never quite know if that interplay is honest or not. It depends wholly on how I plan the space. On Dick and Joops side of the Patio Villa you have a loggia with specific functional activation, in this case, a kitchen function within it or a leisurely place to snack during the day or late at night. This loggia also connects their bedroom, so you can always see when they, as a gay couple, go into their private space. This becomes an architectural one-liner that allows the viewer to see the normality of two gay men going to bed. It’s the fucking taboo place or subject. The register of the building becomes an interesting activation. The only way to do this semantically is through that loggia because it is the mediator of language and translator of Dick and Joop’s life and any voyeur that would see. It is expository for D/J and through that exposition comes freedom in a lot of ways. Not to go in this one liner but it is about break a closet, but not for the public’s sake, but more for the ability of wanting to break open a closet. It is not about an imposition as much as its an exposition.
Fi.g 59 Rendering of Loggia condition on the exterior wall (This image helps the reader see the different condition on the wall bordering the exterior.)
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. This is the loggia condition on Dick and Joops side of the villa. This walkway is in the public view and has normal functions allocated inside.
Patio Villa REDUX, Andrew Santa Lucia, 2010. This is a section of that condition showing how their is a public view on the loggia and a private function adjacent to it through threshold/division.