Feminist Power Tool Instruction Manual

FEMINIST POWER TOOL INSTRUCTION MANUAL Architecture + Gender Elective studio at KTH , year 4-5 Autumn 2013 Havar Cemal

CONTENTS POWER TOOL

1

FEMINIST MANIFESTOS

2

DO MORE FOR LESS

3

UNDERREPRESENTED

4

THE PROTECTIVE LAYER

5

SITE-WRITING

6

PERCEPTION

7

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY 8

1 FEMINIST MANIFESTOS Leslie Kanes Weisman writes in the text Women's Environmental Rights: A Manifesto, that our built society is built in such a way that it has been divided into classes and thus reinforces inequalities in a society in a negative way.

She sees space as a political act and intends to weaken the existing political factors to design a built environment that is fairer. She stresses the importance of people in different disciplines to get involved in the fight for a fairer society, one in which the built environment does not exclude or discriminate against some groups.

"Discrimination by Design", sentences like this, in my experience has not occurred in my education until now. And when one thinks of what one does by all decisions in the design process, it is perhaps a phrase that should be more important than what I feel it has been.

In our built community there is probably much that is not designed for e.g. mothers, children, and the disabled. An idea that got me thinking about our built environment and how we in school projects deal with issues related to changes in society is the experience I have gained through them.

The projects shows one many times samples of (in my experiences) taking critical design decisions without having empathy, but assuming for e.g. what poor people want without an understanding of the everyday problems that exist. Everyone is different and there is a problem with decision-making based on assumptions, In terms of space, maybe one should think about the definition of space, the usage of it for different groups. An example of difference in space is closed courtyards from southern countries in comparison to the traditional Swedish property boundary that often consists of about a meter high hedge. There should be more focus of how space is used and a deeper understanding of why it is used in a certain way.

I believe one in a learning environment, which is a place with very few limitations, should strive for more than it is done at present.

Every now and then one sees projects at school where radical changes are made to a building or in an area that usually tend to be in poorer neighbourhoods. It is for some reason more justified to experiment in areas where people have less to say, this is the reality one lives in. It is for me staying in the comfort zone because that is something that has been done before and it’s usually not the other way around. To take decisions in order to avoid discussions or conflict (which is more comfortable) is something I believe to be wrong, because conflicts are solutions of problems as long as they are done without violence.

2 DO MORE FOR LESS In the chapter "bad press “, describes Elizabeth Diller on the definition of property and the relationship of what we interpret as a public or private space when it comes to the body. I found the text difficult to directly relate to the introductory text. I associated it very much about the efficiency of the household that came with industrialization and the difference it made life for some.

What interested me in the text was how a group of individuals had to change their lifestyle and make great effort to achieve acceptance by society.

The perception and understanding of what Diller describes about the increased workload that women had the responsibility to fulfil leads me to these thoughts, Thoughts that make me reflect on the struggle of some people making a greater effort to be seen as equals. In the text, there is a good example of how the efficiency of the household should provide more time for women outside of the household, and thus get the opportunity to work for a salary. But the requirements for how the household should be handled reached an excessive level with all the technological advances that were made. And therefore making life even more complicated for women.

The many times I have heard of industrialization, it has often been mentioned of the many brilliant inventions and the great progress made in various disciplines. It is easily forgotten of how certain groups of people make more effort to achieve progress in society. And in that period, just like in present time. Women, like minorities or individuals with ethnic background are groups that belong to the category of people who worked more for less.

What I have mostly fixed my focus on in the text is the changes that came with the new lifestyle; the demands of certain groups of individuals became higher. And for those groups, insecurity has been built up for a long period of time. And to compensate to society they unconsciously do more to achieve more acceptance by the society.

3 UNDERREPRESENTED Lori A. Brown writes in "interdisciplinary approaches to women in architecture" that women in the United States, within the architecture profession are extremely underrepresented. This is despite the fact that the proportion of women and men at the start of the training is evenly distributed. According to Lori Brown, there is a necessity that there is diversity in architectural education and among practicing architects, as this can improve our architectural context.

The text Feminist Practices provides a good insight on the architectural discipline from a feminist perspective within the various design parameters, such as social, political and illuminates the feminist inspiration of these parameters. The text reveals the advantages of a feminist analysis to understand the design of our built environment and also those in power within the discipline. Brown wants that through research projects and exhibitions give a voice to the underrepresented in the profession.

I think that the contents of Brown’s text are underestimated in our education. It is probably difficult to push more subjects in the education since it already covers many different topics. But to strive for the knowledge of how it looks at the top (where all the decision makers are) and how diversity can bring the underrepresented and powerless a voice in society should be of major importance.

4 THE PROTECTIVE LAYER Zoe Sofia Writes with on a general approach to the definition of container and the contained. She examines room as passive, unintelligent, feminine from a Western Perspective. In the studio, I'm working with different layers that enclose the program, where the program Increase in size and outer layers Decrease in size to achieve harmony between different layers. A piece of the text that is somewhat similar to my goal with this and the reminder of the difficulties is: Primary maternal preoccupation and attunement: this lets infant and caretaker get in sync with each other; its Corresponding technological phenomenon concerns the degree of adaptation of the environment / space / container to us: the more a technological object is adapted to respond to or even anticipate our own wishes and capacities the more "user-friendly" it seems.

From an architectural perspective, I find it difficult to define the layers that store architecture. I call it the envelope, skin, faรงade, brass etc. I have never associated it with femininity or masculinity but only that it defines the architecture from a geometric perspective and provides a protective layer against what is outside. It has been the goal of bringing together different parameter, from what is outside the container, to what is stored in the container, Achieving attunement between various parameters, similar with the synchronization between a fetus and the mother. To me, architectural viewed, I mean how e.g. texture, material, context, faรงade, technology interacts with what is contained in a building, such as the program and the individual's experience of the built environment.

5 SITE-WRITING In the text Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism Jane Randell writes on ideas about architecture, art and theory. She suggests a new way to receive and criticize new ideas, in a way where the critic puts art first. Randell describes what happens when discussion of site enters the writing of the art criticism. The explored sites, substantive, conceptual, political and emotional of the artwork's construction as well as the remembered, imagined and dreamed by the artist or critic of other viewers.

We live in a time of rapid technological advances and changes. Large number of books, magazines and information in other forms are being published. Large amounts of information are available in the hands of one when you want. How should we relate to information that comes in so many different ways, one should re-evaluate the consequences of the technological progress in media publishing. It is interesting to look at the intersection of art criticism and technological changes that enable you to think about how to look at information in terms of art or architecture, and how to relate and process the information.

6 PERCEPTION Peg Rawes The passage from the book "Irigary for architects" is about the value of Luce Irigary's philosophical, political and aesthetic theories of 'architectural' thinking. It shows that Irigary's text contains important ideas of architecture and provides an understanding of time and space, body and mind, science and politics in architecture. The text examines how we experience and inhabit space from a masculine and feminine perspective and examines the ways in which one can enable architects and theorists to create architecture with an ethical value to the user.

Vision, hearing, touch, smell plays a dominant role in how people experience space, such as the ability to recognize geometries in one's environment, awareness of the surroundings In terms of depth and directions of nearby objects. This information is constantly put in one's brain to build up a three dimensional environment, either in static mode or while one is in movement.

But every mind uses different signals to understand the room. Touch, smell and taste provide an understanding of space that surrounds the surface of the body that is in reach of the body. While the sight and hearing provides an opportunity to experience space further away from the body.

The on-going exchange between the body and the senses, and the interactions between them create a mixed picture of the space.

In Nature, the experience of the environment that surrounds one can be experienced in a more specific way depending what senses one is able to choose, the result is that the perception of spaces becomes more distinct.

When I feel the same no matter where in the building I am in, I get the feeling that I'm in a sterile environment.

I feel that my perception of nature is that it’s not as sterile as in a man-made environment, so maybe these distinctions could be applied in architecture much more in our context. Giving each room and program a specific experience.

When I read the text, I began to wonder how one could build an environment that acts as an extension of nature. So that one can experience the room even if one lacks one of the senses. Perhaps the result might be that people with differences, whether it is cultural, gender, race, etc. can perceive the room in their own way, so that they make a more personal perception of it.

7 CONCLUSION In this course, I have often begun to reflect on how our architecture education is, what we learn and how the context of the school affects us. It has somehow been unavoidable for me not to get into these thoughts. Even if the texts are not really about how we are trained as architects, I feel that I can relate a lot to what we learn and how we learn things at school.

If I'm going to think about a common problem that I have thought of in all of the texts I have read, I think of inequality in various forms that exist in our context. And how does one solve such a large barrier?

These thoughts make me think of how my education has been at architecture school; it's a personal opinion, I think about the personal experiences of all those times not taking important discussions that creates an uncomfortable mood, avoiding it in fear of conflicts.

I feel that there has not been space to be direct when one argues that e.g. point out that a dark-skinned person does not have the same opportunities as a blond person. It may be perceived negatively to express oneself so directly. It is a subject, which creates an uncomfortable mood. The uncomfortable mood may create a conflict that not many people want.

Therefore, I have noticed that I have repeated the word conflict in problem solving. I have always felt that conflicts / quarrels are a part of the solution, and that it done properly without deliberately offending anyone. To avoid conflicts is to avoid solving a problem, and avoiding it makes it hard to understand what one want or need.

Although it is not easy for one to redefine what the word conflict means, and look at it as something positive and negative. When you consider that you yourself, or someone being treated unfairly because of gender or because of how they look one should strive to dare to take the conflict to mark what is right and wrong. It is something I wish to do and something I wish others to do.

8 BIBLIOGRAPHY Leslie Kanes Weisman, ‘Women’s Environmental Rights: A Manifesto’ in Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, Iain Borden, eds, Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 1-5.

Lori Brown, ‘Introduction’ Lori Brown, ed., Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture, London: Ashgate, 2011.

Elizabeth Diller, ‘Bad Press’ in Francesca Hughes, ed. The Architect Reconstructing her Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 74-95.

Zoe Sofia, ‘Container Technologies’ in Hypatia Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring 2000, pp. 181-200.

Jane Rendell, Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.

Peg Rawes, ‘Introduction’; ‘Touching and Sensing’ in Peg Rawes, Irigaray for Architects, London: Routledge, 2007.