A feminist design power tools manual - a personal self help kit for my own altering practices

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A feminist design power tools manual - a personal self-help kit for my altering practices

Katla Maríudóttir

Architecture + Gender: Feminist Design Power-Tools Critical Studies, KTH School of Architecture Teachers: Hélène Frichot and Helen Runting

Contents 00 | CONTENTS 00 | Introduction // Positioning

01 | Feminist Manifestos: How to think architecture otherwise! /

/ Zoom in and/or zoom out

02 | Altering Practices : socio-politicaland participatory engagements / / Listening and understanding - All the mewing and barking‌

03 | Body-Building: embodied architectures and affect / / Open ended thoughts on spatial requirements

04 | Architectural Techno-Girls /

/ Containing, and being one and with many

05 | ĂŠcriture feminine: architectural writing practices / / The gradient between a house and a home

06 | Materialist Ethics /

/ Illuminated by dark lamps

Introduction 00 | POSITIONING My name is Katla, I am a designer and a nature-lover from an island at the juncture of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. I am also a student on the verge of graduating into the big scary ‘real world’ of architecture.

On my journey to become an architect, I have like so many before me, through hard work equipped myself with a toolbox, partly learned from others and partly invented. I have up until now, considered those tools ‘tools of truth, intelligence and good intentions’, and have held onto them with a tight grip, considering myself backed up by treading the path of millions before me. The path must be a right one since it is wide and hard-packed by - or is it? Now it is time to look back with a my critical-glasses...

This little booklet is a manual for my self, intended as a feminist-self-help kit for me to use in my diploma work, and hopefully even into my professional career. A reminder of my altering practices, of how I want to work, how I can shake up, shake off, break up, twist, turn, zoom into, scale out of and look back at my education and practice.

The manual is written from myself to myself, mostly composed of rather incoherent rambling, just the way I like it. As such, I assumes some certain things about how I work. Keep that in mind when applying the tricks to your work, you might have to pepper and salt until it suits your taste. The manual is forever work in progress, I will continually need to revisit, rework, rethink it. The ramblings usually touch up on some of the concepts or thoughts from reading material, but they are in no way intended as a summary of the reading material, nor as a critique.

Having said that, enjoy!

Feminist Manifestos: How to think architecture otherwise! xxx 01 | ZOOM IN AND/OR ZOOM OUT Note to self: Start with the best bit.

Katherine Shonfield describes the way muf design process works – which can be described through the formula detail/strategy=DETAIL, “[…] meaning the utopian projections of strategy are simultaneously understood through the transformation of a tiny piece of the here-andnow, DETAIL, capital letters. […] So strategy derives from the up-close look at the up-close and personal; and DETAIL from an up-close look at a strategic ‘what if …’. DETAIL is a kind of premature gratification of a utopian longing.” (Schonfield 2000:17) Using muf’s formula literally has proved to be helpful forme, when I am in the midst of the classic confusion during the first stages of a design project, especially if the project is one huge cake and I have to eat it all by yourself {“Oh, cruel world!”}. “It’s like starting your meal with the best bit. […] it makes you want to eat more because the hors d’oeuvres tasted so good.” and she continues: “Do the best, most sensual and seductive bit first - and fast.”

(Shonfield 2000:18) The logic of moving from one scale to another in the ‘right order,’ e.g. moving from 1:5000 to 1:1000 to 1:500 to 1:100 to 1:5 has always felt a little odd. I have always felt a little bad about wanting to do 1:1 and 1:5000 simultaneously. What will happen in my project if I throw away the binoculars for a while and dust off my microscope? Maybe I can use the muf formula to embrace my architect-planner instincts of switching between: using the scale 1:1 to define what a house for dance actually is or what it could become.

Start with the cherry on top, then lick away the icing, then break the cake into three uneven chunks, scrape the filling away, then you can better control the filling versus sponge ratio.

Update: By now you are beyond full and feel you will never eat cake again. Tips for the next time, cake is always better when shared.

Katherine Shonfield, ‘Premature Gratification and Other Pleasures’ in This is What we do: a muf manual, London: Elipsis London, 2001.

02 | LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING / ALL THE MEWING AND BARKING… Note to self: Position myself, remember to think critically about where I am coming from.

Put my ego aside, and try to understand what the client is saying. Remember to think about others affected by decisions I make is someone, Is someone being forgotten? Whose vision is being realised? Lastly think about architecture as a verb, not a noun.

One of my teachers used to say that one profession barks and another angrily mews back. {“Since who understands dogs anyway…?!”}. Needless to say, that discussion leads nowhere if those two professions don’t go out of their safe sphere and try to listen to the sounds the other animals in the forest make. Sure, it will take time to develop an understanding, but with willfulness to cooperate and a dash of patience they will start understanding each other.

Our world has gone far since modernism with its efficiency sorted everything into shelves and boxes - in everything from separating different parts of the house all the way to extreme specialization within professions. That leading to a isolation of the disciplines in its language, maybe again leading to a less cooperation between and beyond disciplines.

That was. But how will it be - how should we work in order to leave the status quo? How do we want to work? Or how do I want to work? “As bell hooks has put it, the question of ‘yearning’ is not about ‘who we are’ but ‘what we want to become’; the Altering practices are about what we want the world to become…” (Petrescu 2007:4) I dare to believe that there is an increasing understanding of the necessity of transdisciplinary (and/or multiplicity) approaches to problem solving. Multiple voices to be heard and acknowledged. This is one of the things Atelier d’architecture autogérée/studio for self-managed architecture (aaa) have realised and work with. aaa uses what they call ‘urban tactics’; “encouraging the participation of inhabitants at the self-management of disused urban spaces, overpassing contradictions and stereotypes by proposing nomad and reversible projects, initiating interstitial practices which explore the potential of contemporary city (in terms of population, mobility, temporality)”. (See www.urbantactics.org) For me this sounds like a lot of common sense. But taking a step back to my education that is about to accumulate in a degree in architecture - this is not how we are taught how to do architecture. To work in the manner that the aaa and muf (to name a few who ‘do architecture in another way’) takes a lot of courage. It asks you to put your ego aside and let go of your preconceived aspirations in order to engage fully and wholly in the project - in order not to overlook voices that sound weaker or further away. And at the very least it requires that you know where you are coming from and what ‘luggage’ you carry - to realise whose vision is being created (Brown 2011:4).

xxx Altering Practices : socio-politicaland participatory engagements Altering practices takes the perspective that architecture is not a noun, but a verb - not the outcome but the process, even though most houses, squares and streets are built to last a human lifetime or so. It is a ‘becoming’ discipline. “Ultimately, this is one of the primary goals of Feminist Practices; to think outside and beyond the practice of architecture in order to broaden and expand architecture’s role and engagement within our everyday world for everyday people.” (Brown 2011:6) Doina Petrescu, ‘Altering Practices’ in Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space, London: Routledge, 2007.

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

Urban Tactics. http://www.urbantactics.org/ Retrieved October 9, 2013.

Body-Building: embodied architectures and affect 03 | OPEN ENDED THOUGHTS ON SPATIAL REQUIREMENTS Note to self: Expect the unexpected. Break up old habits.

I am stuck in “spatial requirements”. What does it mean? What is the space of my requirements? How much space do I need? How much space does my body need? “And what does “need” mean anyway?

Building a body of architecture is expensive. If the volume of the built exceeds the users needs, the built becomes too expensive. If the volume fails to meet the users needs the project has failed and the effort is lost. The building will then have no blood pumping through its arteries and veins, and it dies.

I have been browsing through Neufert: Architects’ Data, a guidebook for architects and planners that was first published 1936. According to Amazon it “[...] provides an essential reference for the initial design and planning of a building project. […] it provides a mass of data on spatial requirements and also covers planning criteria and considerations of function and siting.” (Emphasis added). It has become the go-to source for architects, designers and planners since, answering questions regarding spatial requirements and general configuration and arrangement of spaces and functions within buildings. It is built on the idea of the Normalmensch, the average, standardization, repetition…

Diller describes that at “the end of the nineteenth century, the body began to be understood as a mechanical component of industrial productivity, an extension of the factory apparatus.” (p. 77) The body seems to be only one of the pieces in the machine of living. The needs are averaged, and calculated. The body is a part of a bigger machine, a part.

The documents such as the Architects Data are made with good intentions; to ensure that every body can claim the right to their own space. Minimum space for all the normal bodily functions and rituals, the recommended amount of sunlight, air, etc. We architects tend to use this data without blinking. It saves us precious time in designing. We have to be critical about documents like these. Even though they are mostly well intentioned they can be dangerous, misleading, favoring the privileged and reducing the diversity of people down to a mere average.

Because even though we are well intentioned too, bodies of the built last longer than that body’s blood, the users - and the shortcuts we make as architects become shortcuts for our predecessors. We need to do some “cutting and carving into the very flesh of architecture and, revealing the many incarnations and incorporations that have constituted its matter and spirit over the centuries.” (Teyssot 1994:8) Elizabeth Diller, ‘Bad Press’ in Francesca Hughes, ed. The Architect Reconstructing her Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 74-95.

Georges Teyssot, ‘The Mutant Body of Architecture’ in Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Flesh: Architectural Probes, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. ) Image references: 1) Ernst Neufert, Peter Neufert, Bousmaha Baiche, Nicholas Walliman, Architects’ Data, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2012.

2) http://availablecities.wordpress.com/

Architectural Techno-Girls xxx 04 | CONTAINING, AND BEING ONE AND WITH MANY Note to self: We are composed, and compose a larger organism. We are becomings. We are containers and contained. Containers are not dumb spaces, but contain intelligence. Neither we, architecture nor technology are a status quo: not a noun, but a verb.

I feel that it has been fruitful for me to think about myself and my body - as suggested by Donna Haraway and Zoë Sofia - not as one unity, separate from everything else. But rather as an organism connected with both the larger organisms, as well as composed of smaller organisms. To be one is always to become with many. (Haraway, 2004:4) We are complex beings, or becomings (Petrescu 2007:3). And as beings we are not one, but composed of many and a part of and depended on many other organisms. Or as Sofia says, building on Bateson’s work that an organism’s survivability, agency and receptivity, and intelligence extend “beyond its skin”. She continues: “The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. […] intelligence is not confined to the deliberations of the intending ego or cogito, but can be found in the changing patterns of mutual adaptation and co-adaption undergone within and by the organism-environment ensemble. […] The environment itself is a bearer of intelligence.” (Sofia is building upon Bateson’s work, see Sofia’s article for further references; Sofia 2000:183).

Architecture is politic - and it materializes a lot about how our culture is constructed, and about the society’s hierarchies. We have to “[…] unsettle habitual assumptions that space is merely an unintelligent container, or containers dumb spaces […]” (Sofia 2000:182).

Let’s end this chapter with the last words/list of Zoë Sofia’s essay: • “There is no such thing as an infant [apart from the maternal provision] • There is no such thin as an organism [apart from the environment (Bateson)] • There is no such thing as an actor [apart from the network] • There is no such thing as a discovery/invention [apart from the potential space: lab, studio, study, etc.]

• There is no such thing as a tool [apart from the workshop, domain of equipmentality (Heidegger)] • There is no such thing as a thing [apart from the fourfold (Heidegger)] • There is no such thing as a technology [apart from the standing-reserve (Heidegger)]” Doina Petrescu, ‘Altering Practices’ in Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space, London: Routledge, 2007.

Donna Haraway, ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books, 1991, pp. 149Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, University Of Minnesota Press, 2007.

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

écriture feminine: architectural writing practices xxx 05 | THE GRADIENT BETWEEN A HOUSE AND A HOME Note to self: “[…] fall asleep a mouse and wake up an eagle!” (Cixous 1991:11)

Quite some time ago, I read a few texts by Cixous and really enjoyed them. Now though, I struggled when starting to read this week’s text ‘Coming to Writing’. I found the text full of blanks. But a little into the text, I remembered what it was that I had loved about those texts that I had read before; and it actually had to do with those blanks Cixous leaves. She somehow manages to leave just enough blanks h her texts in order to allow the reader to insert their own experiences, feelings and thoughts.

To me it feels like she allows the herself, the author, to melt or join with me, the reader. But what then, is the ‘I’ in those circumstances? Where do I fit in? What is hers and what is mine?

And I can’t help but think about my profession; architecture, and the tired discussion about the author, the starchitect, the single person’s sole idea; a chair, a house, a neighborhood, a city - born out of his head. Where does the ‘I’ (the ‘mouse’ if you like) fit in there? What is my role in writing a house, a city for that matter? And do I really think I am an eagle - do I have the right reasons to write? ““Hey! What are you doing up there? Is that any place for a mouse? For shame!” Shame overcame me.” (P. 11) Will I ever be able to design a dwelling?

Do I have what it takes?

The text has a poetic feel to it. The voice in the text fades from a singular (rather small or mouselike, even) individual being to a larger body of multiplicity. The essay is a beautiful example how it is possible combine theory and poetics, but I imagine that poetics are usually have been avoided in many theoretical discourses, especially in the so called ‘hard’ sciences.

Poetics have everything to do with feelings, which has for a long time been considered feminine and/or weak. Instead, Cixous celebrates what is or is considered feminine.

“You want everything. But having is forbidden to human beings. Having everything. And for woman, it’s even forbidden to hope to have everything a human being can have.” (Cixous 3) Hélène Cixous, ‘Coming to Writing’ in Hélène Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Materialist xxx Ethics 06 | ILLUMINATED BY DARK LAMPS Note to self: Remember to try to put myself in the shoes of others, while remembering that I can never fully understand what others are thinking and feeling. Instead of speaking for the other, allow that or those others to speak for themselves.

One of the most powerful, yet simple art exhibitions I have been to was called “Myrkurlampi” or “Dark Lamp” a pitch-black room that had been covered with some kind of sound insulating material and a recording of a woman reading words - colors, if I remember it correctly - in a neutral tone of voice. The feeling was somewhat like being in a womb, but this time with memories. And simply hearing a word read, not only did my mind fill with visual memories like vivid colors, but also more very haptic memories. E.g. hearing ‘fiery red’ filled the room with the scent of autumn leaves and the taste of hot chocolate, feeling of a cold nose and fingers on a chilly afternoon.

Our culture is very visual, at the cost of the other senses; or as Rawes says about Irigaray that she shows that “[…] sense-based experiences have always existed, but have been forgotten

by Western traditions of technology and visual culture.” (p. 49) But has this always been so?

I have heard that in the viking age culture in Iceland, hearing ranked higher than vision in the sensory hierarchy. This was before we started to document the Icelandic Sagas, and before the Laws were written down. Before that, people knew the stories by heart and when the people gathered after dusk someone would tell stories. Then the ‘Dark Lamp’ had been turned on...

At that moment, if you reached into the thick shadows in the corners, you could touch the characters of the stories.

I think it is very helpful to exercise shutting some of the senses down for a minute. I imagine that it allows us to see the world differently, to channel our perception of it a bit differently than we usually do. “[…] to challenge the hierarchy drawn between intellectual, abstract and immaterial forms of knowledge, versus the unstable and material images, ideas, spaces or relationships that are constructed through our senses.” (p. 49) Peg Rawes, ‘Introduction’; ‘Touching and Sensing’ in Peg Rawes, Irigaray for Architects, London: Routledge, 2007.

Haraldur Jónsson, Myrkurlampi [Dark Lamp], 2008–2012. Exhibition at Listasafn ASÍ, Iceland.

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

Hélène Cixous, ‘Coming to Writing’ in Hélène Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

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.

Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, University Of Minnesota Press, 2007.

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

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

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

Meike Schalk, Brady Burroughs, Katja Grillner, Katarina Bonnevier (2012) ‘Fatale Critical Studies in Architecture’ in Nordic, Vol. 2.

Katherine Shonfield, ‘Premature Gratification and Other Pleasures’ in This is What we do: a muf manual, London: Elipsis London, 2001.

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

Georges Teyssot, ‘The Mutant Body of Architecture’ in Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Flesh: Architectural Probes, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.

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, 200.

COMMENTS ON WWW.ARCHANDPHIL.WORDPRESS.COM Comment on “Gossip as a strategy of forming subject” by Döne Delibas

Comment on “The non-visual perception of space” by Matilda Schuman

Comment on “Read Vs. Unread” by Boya Guo

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Comment - “Use your words” - by Klara

Comment on “”refuse to disappear on cue” (p. 177)” by Elsa Jannborg

Comment on “Premature gratification and other pleasures” by Matilda Schuman