Read between the lines

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A Feminist Design Power-Tool Instruction Manual

read between the lines Anders Isacson


Contents .introduction .rewrite the words .reinvent the wheel .rebuild your body .rewind your cyborg mind .refold your room .relate to a plate (or a brick wall) .conclusions .references .addendum


Introduction The built environment, our everyday world, is shaped by values, intentions and opinions. Sometimes this is obvious, sometimes it is hidden beneath, within or beyond. Before you can write architecture you have to learn how to read it. Not just the facades, you’ll need to look further. You’ll need to read between the lines. This booklet is a collection of blog posts I have made in the course Architecture + Gender: Feminist Design Power-Tools, at KTH school of architecture. They all spring from the weekly readings in one way or another, yet they don’t necessarily discuss the weekly themes, at least not in an obvious way. I have interpreted the assignment quite freely, relating to my own thoughts on feminism, revolutionism, creativity, philosophy and politics, and of course architecture and design. Each post consists of a piece of text and an image, interacting in someway. The readings are found below the posts and in the reference list at the end. The themes of the course (in chronological order, same as my posts): Feminist manifestos, Altering practices, Body-building, Archi-techno-girls, Écriture feminine and Materialist ethics.


read between the lines


Rewrite the words “I believe one of the most important responsibilities of architectural feminism is to heal this schizophrenic spatial schism – to find a new architectural language in which the 'words', 'grammar', and 'syntax' synthesize work and play, intellect and feeling, action and compassion.” (Weisman, Women’s Environmental Rights: A Manifesto, 1981) In any given context, the terminology matters. Words are the tools we use to create thoughts, ideas, hopes, changes. The words we use reflect our understanding of the world and everything that surround us. One could say that we live in a bubble, or rather a fortress, where the walls are made of letters, words and syntax. We know little, if anything, of what is outside of these walls. Occasionally we add or remove some insignificant ornamental detail, but the overall structure remains. In order to improve the way we create and design our environments, we need to be aware of the way we use the language. Like so much else, the language is constructed to maintain a certain order of power. If we don´t rethink the way we write and speak, what words we use and the way we use them, it would arguably be difficult to change this bubble we call the world.

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.


Reinvent the wheel In the text Altering practices, Doina Petrescu illuminates the importance of viewing architecture as a dynamic ongoing process. This regards to the actual constructed objects as well as the practice itself, and therefor supports a dynamic view on architectural knowledge in general. A dynamic view, in turn, encourages reconstructions. “These collective reconstructions, in our case, suppose ways of doing and undoing, ways of making and remaking space, of 'producing space' according to 'altered' rules and values” (p. 5) In order to move forward, to get further, we have to rely on the writings, sayings, doings and shapings of others. It´s human development and progress. In some cases however, one could argue that the groundwork has become too detached from our modern values to support any further adding. Too outdated to make sense anymore. One could say that this calls for a revolution. Or maybe simply a reinvention. I find myself trapped within a system that I do not agree with. A system that entwines and influences everything. I can´t seem to live and act without taking part in and supporting it. Perhaps it´s just time to go back and actually change the basic rules on which the system leans. In some cases it might really be a good thing to reinvent the wheel.

Doina Petrescu, ‘Altering Practices’ in Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space, London: Routledge, 2007.


read between the lines


read between the lines


Rebuild your body or careful instructions on what you should absolutely not do 1. Close your eyes. Carefully apply a thick layer of foundation from the cheek bones and all the way up over the eyebrows. 2. Push a finger through your left earring hole and expand the hole until you are about one centimeter from the outer edge of the ear. Repeat the procedure for your right ear. Now gently loosen the top of your right ear from the side of the head. Bend it outwards five to ten centimeters, but be sure to keep the bow-like shape. 3. Open your mouth. Stroke generously with a glue stick along the inside of your upper and lower lips. Use your fingers to press and hold your lips together for at least one minute. 4. Take a firm grip around your nose, count to three and rip it off as you would a plaster. If a hole appears, fill it with spackling paste and cover with foundation. 5. Gently dip your index fingers into a glass of beetroot juice (or some other coloring liquid), and place one finger on the upper side of each temple. Lean your elbows against a table and slowly turn your head as far as it goes in each direction. This will mark out a line for the scissors. Now cut carefully along the marked line until the top of the skull is completely detached. 6. Stir steadily with a soup ladle while adding some solvent, and pour the content over whatever you have been working with for the last couple of weeks.

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


Rewind your cyborg mind or Ironic power de(con)struction manual Donna Haraway suggests in the beginning of A cyborg manifesto (1991) that irony is “..about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true” p.149. Some say that in order to understand something, you need to understand its opposite. To understand nature, you need to learn about culture. To understand humans you need to study animals. To understand binary oppositions you need to explore multiple similarities? I don´t know about this, but I would say that the nature of binary oppositions are cultural constructions. Now this is where the irony comes in. Since we seem to be lost in a “..maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves” p.181, there is no comprehensible way to explain the alternative. The cyborg imagery, as Donna Haraway suggests, might offer a way out of this maze. However, it seems to be about erasing, or rather blurring, the borders, not explaining alternatives. It´s quite possible I haven´t understood the cyborg imagery correctly, but that´s fine, since I´m rather confused than correct. And correct me if I´m wrong but change can be about destroying as much as building up. Destroying hierarchies. Building equalities. Eradicating power structures. Constructing alternatives. Blurring borders. Drawing new. Pulling apart and putting together. Nobody is innocent and nothing is holy. Nature flows through our minds and fingertips and is suddenly culture. In the search for laughter everything is ironic. “The machine is not an it to be animated, worshiped or dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment.“ p.180 Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books, 1991.


read between the lines


read between the lines


Refold your room I'm five years old. I'm lying in bed at night unable to sleep. The apartment is quiet, dark, tiresome. Thinking keeps me awake, but how do you not think? I try my usual think-about-everything-at-the-same-time-strategy, constantly throwing in new thoughts, no lingering. I move my eyes rapidly back and forth, up and down, trying to not think. It doesn't work. I'm still awake. Then a car drives by in the street below, casting a yellow light across the ceiling. The light is pale at first, moving slowly, but expands and accelerates as the car approaches, just to quickly fade away at the far side of the room. Such a wonderful display. Light and shadow interacting, illuminating the physical boundaries of my room. When the light reaches the end of the ceiling there is nowhere to go but down the wall. This causes it to transform, change shape, adapt. Never before have I been aware of that upper corner where the ceiling meets the walls. It's a strange place. You can't go there, you can't even reach it, and it's never decorated, not even considered. Just an inevitable effect of the efficiency of a square room. But there is something more to it. It might be the only place in the apartment with no intentions of use. It's a blank page, and I've got four of them. It's only a matter of creativity. I'm in a cube, but suddenly wishing I was in a dodecahedron. (Not that I knew what that was at the age of five, but being a child you can wish for anything.)

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


Relate to a plate (or a brick wall) Recent studies show brick walls manage emotions like humans do. Researchers have discovered striking similarities between the emotional development of brick walls and that of humans, suggesting these massive constructions regulate their emotions in a human-like way. Detailed snapshot analysis of daily city life allowed the researchers to measure how brick walls handle their own emotions as well as how they react to the emotions of others. They found the two were related in that brick walls that recovered quickly and easily from their own emotional upheavals, such as after losing a fight, showed more empathy for their fellow walls. Researchers note those brick walls more often gave body comfort (kissing, embracing, touching) to those in distress. The brick wall is widely considered the most empathic wall, a conclusion other research supports. "This makes the brick wall an ideal candidate for psychological comparisons," a researcher says. "Any fundamental similarity between humans and brick walls probably traces back to their last common ancestor, which existed around six million years ago," s/he continues. "Wall emotions have long been scientifically taboo" says the researcher, but s/he stresses how such studies that zoom in on emotions can provide valuable information about humans and our society. "By measuring the expression of distress and arousal in brick walls, and how they cope, we were able to confirm that efficient emotion regulation is an essential part of empathy. Empathy allows brick walls, as well as humans, to absorb the distress of others without getting overly distressed themselves," the researcher concludes. Jane Bennett, ‘A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism’ in Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, eds. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.


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Conclusions Frankly I’m not really sure how to conclude this sprawling collection of thoughts. But maybe it is about all those things that are so immensely important in life, yet rarely discussed in the professional context. I’m referring to things like touching, smelling, hoping, wishing, dreaming, feeling, loving etc. This goes for the practice of architecture, sure, but just as much for all the other components that form our society. It seems we like to keep the public and the private separated. But for once, wouldn’t it feel good to just let the two of them explode together in one great frantic ecstasy, smearing the streets and the walls, the living rooms, highways, parks, cars, people, pets, the square and the subway. This feminist design power-tool instruction manual offers no answers, nor any consolation. What it hopefully does though, is presenting the humble idea of shifting perspective once in a while, to have an occasional peek out of our beloved castle of norms.


References Jane Bennett, ‘A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism’ in Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, eds. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Elizabeth Diller, ‘Bad Press’ in Francesca Hughes, ed. The Architect Reconstructing her Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books, 1991. 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. Jane Rendell, Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Doina Petrescu, ‘Altering Practices’ in Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space, London: Routledge, 2007. The last post, relate to a plate (or a brick wall), is a remodeled article found on Science Daily called Baboons manage emotions like humans do: http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/2013/10/131014155739.htm


Addendum, comments ..on Porridge and People by Elsa Jannborg I’ve heard somewhere that a household consisting of only one individual is our most common way of living. I enjoy solitude, but not to live alone. Apparently a lot of people do though. But what about the elderly? A hundred years ago, a family of three or even four generations could live together in the same house, for better or worse. Today we barely know our grandparents. Guess we are a bit too busy with the future to care about the past. ..on Fill in the blanks by Matilda Schuman That’s a good point. To leave room for the reader. For the imagination. But where do we draw the line between what’s decided and what’s left open? It’s tricky to provide the right amount of information and guidelines without it being too much. Maybe this is what separates a good book/architecture from a not so good.. ..on untitled post by Sofia Wollert Olsson It’s an interesting thought that we use the language as some kind of costume, telling people what kind of person we are, or want to be. Not that we necessarily live different lives but just expressing them differently. ..on Moral of development by Johanna Nenander I agree with your description of how we use the concept of “nature” to justify behaviors etc. as being “natural”. Regarding environmental conservation issues, for example, we are deeply concerned about protecting what we perceive as real nature, forgetting that most of it has been effected by humans for thousands of years. ..on Which came first? by Jordan Lane One can also wonder, which will be the last one standing, the organism or the environment? ..on Dialogue with a house by Gerd Holgersson This post makes me smile. I imagine every design project I’ve ever been involved in, lining up in front of me, yelling, screaming, shouting down each other, trying to express their feelings, their desire to be and become. They say houseplants grow better if you talk to them. Maybe the same goes for design projects..


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