Choices: Sex, Desire, and Gender in Architectural Space, Place, and Materiality by Mikale Kwiatkowski

Choices: Sex, Desire, and Gender in Architectural

Space, Place,

and Materiality Mikale Kwiatkowski

Mikale Kwiatkowski

Choices: Sex, Desire, and Gender in Architectural Space, Place, and Materiality

“...our potential to go beyond that which society sanctions our imaginations to explore.” — Jim Fourratt “Extended Sensibilities: The Impact of Homosexual Sensibilities on Contemporary Culture”

Content

Contents Abstract Discourse Literature Review Literature Map Case Study Strategies Study Trope Study Project Description Final Thesis Presentation First Quarter Second Quarter Third Quarter Fourth Quarter Bibliography

Abstract The built environment represents aspects of a cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s value system. In Western society, heteronormative values regarding sex, desire, and gender are coded into architectural space, place, and materiality. In this project I am using feminist and queer critical perspectives to determine how such values are written into these architectural mediums. Studying defamiliarizations (Shklovskji, 1998) of these codes will help architects challenge present limitations related to biases and assumptions so that they might construct a built environment that is more attentive to the needs of diverse populations. If we accept that these codes are culturally constructed through their collective repeated performance (Butler, 2006), we might also wonder how they can be disrupted. Gyms inact a space for the production and reiteration of socially constructed aesthetic norms, thus, this project seeks to use gym typology to challenge normative codes. Here bodies gesture and display themselves, coming into contact with the surfaces of architecture (Sanders and Arning, 2000). Gyms exist within the core of Western cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideals for sex, desire, and gender (Sassatelli, 2010). Through popular culture, media, print, and the Internet, gyms display normative coding and promise to help users produce these ideals. As part of the initial research, gym tropes were identified and field investigations were carried out in gyms. These observations were intended to explore how people inhabit the space of the gym and how architects create gym space. The resulting analysis informed the design and construction of a full-scale locker instrument utilizing furnishings and spatial qualities found within the locker room. The locker became the building site and a spatial apparatus that people enter to physically engage with ideas of sex, desire and gender coding. It is anticipated to be an experiential commentary and a device that marks and records individual use. Some of the ideas gathered with the locker instrument were then deployed into other spaces within a locker room design.

Discourse Consciously or unconsciously, the built environment represents aspects of a culture’s value system. In Western society, heteronormative values regarding sex, desire, and gender are coded into the architectural mediums of space, place, and materiality. Before going further, let me define the words “sex,” “desire,” “gender,” and “heteronormativity.” Sex is generally considered biological. The term refers to our culture’s labeling of males and females based on sex chromosomes and hormones and internal and external genitalia. These physical attributes are used at birth to identify babies as male or female. Gender, although often directly linked to sex, actually “refers to an individual’s sense of themself as a man, woman, both or neither.”1 This internal sense, as well as external expressions of one’s identity, is the construct of gender. Often desire refers to physical and/or romantic attraction, but desire can be spoken of more broadly to include elements such as economic and social exchange. Heteronormativity is the view that there are two specific genders, woman and man. This view holds that there are specific roles for each gender as well as “normal” expressions of desire, that being heterosexual. As a result, the concept of heteronormativity implies a direct link between sex, desire, and gender. Studying architecture from a feminist critical perspective provides a framework for understanding how related ideology becomes embedded into these architectural mediums. The feminist critical perspective recognizes that the world is not based on simple oppositions. In fact, recognizing pluralities offers a more nuanced and complex way of engaging with the world. As designers of the built environment, architects have great potential to influence outcomes. Architects are coauthors of these codes, and thus, it is important that they gain an awareness of their role in upholding or resisting cultural values. Choice to resist requires that architects understand how to accommodate pluralizations of sex, desire and gender normativity in their practice. Cultural codes have been built into the systems of our buildings and cities

1 Gender Spectrum, “Understanding Gender.” http://www.genderspectrum.org/about/ understanding-gender (accessed September 14, 2012).

throughout history. In her chapter titled “Architecture from Without: Body, Logic, and Sex,” Diana Agrest critiques the direct link that Vitruvius, Alberti, and others made between the body and architecture in Renaissance classics such as The Ten Books of Architecture and Ten Books on Architecture.2 Vitruvius writes: Without symmetry and proportion, that is, if there is no precise relation between the members as in “a well-shaped man,” there can be no principles of design. Furthermore, the measurements for buildings are all to be derived from the members of the body.3 Comparing measurements to a male figure negates any possibility of a female or any gender in between. Throughout Agrest’s work she continues to point to examples in which Vitruvius, Alberti, and others use the male figure as the determinant of ideal architectural measurements. The quotes that Agrest pulls from various texts make it clear that this “body” was a male body, and that the male architect in Vitruvius’ notion either erased or eclipsed the female body.4 If the actual words of Vitruvius and Alberti are not clear enough, a quick examination of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing titled “The Study of a Man According to Vitruvius” used to argue the relationship of architecture to the body should pursuade. [Image 1] These proporational drawings always use a male figure. It is clear that female bodies were not considered in the datum of Greek architecture since female bodies do not possess the same proportions as male bodies. Surprisingly, this way of determining architectural measurements is not considered out of date. A more recent example of the male body used as an ideal proportional datum for architecture is Le Corbusier’s “Modulor,” introduced in 1943. This figure was based on the average height of a French man, 5 feet 7 inches. Later this was increased by 5 inches even though the average height of

2 Diana Agrest, Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991) 174. 3 Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover, 1960). Originally published by Harvard University Press, 1914. 4 Agrest, 96.

French men did not reach 6 feet.5 Augmenting the height to 6 feet further emphasizes the notion that ideals are not real. From Greek times through today, the recorded

IMAGE 1 Title: “Study of a Man According to Vitruvius (Vitruvian Man)” by Leonardo da Vinci, Florentine, ca. 1485-1490

history of architecture’s contributors has been sketched using predominately male figures. The percentage of “Masters” of architecture that are recorded in architectural history are almost entirely male. Even today “white” and “male” are still the dominant descriptions of people working as architects. As recently as March 2012, ArchDaily published an infographic stating that as of December 2011 only 21 percent of architectural 1

staff are women.6 The lack of diversity within recorded history and the current industry may be

one contributing factor resulting in the heteronormative structures that exist within the built environment today. Critical theorists of public space, like Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau address the cultural dimensions of space. Both have theorized space as a material and a social medium, meaning space is socially produced through a generative process, and thus, it is a product of social construction. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre holds that space as a material and a social medium is a social product that is constructed through a complex relationship of societal values and power. Lefebvre focuses on the social production of urban spaces and argues that this medium in Western culture is fundamental to capitalism and that it is used as a tool by a hegemonic class to reproduce dominance.7 Michel de Certeau’s theory in The Practice of Everyday Life contributes to this line of thinking as well. He argues that the activities of everyday life are unique in that they are unconscious and repetitive. In general, he suggests that there is a system

5 Le Corbusier, The Modulor: A Harmonious Measure to the Human Scale, Universally Applicable to Architecture and Mechanics (Basel & Boston: Birkhäuser, 2004) 56. 6 Megan Jett, “Women in Architecture,” ArchDaily, http://www.archdaily.com/216844/ infographic-women-in-architecture/ (accessed September 25, 2012). 7 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) 9—10.

of power made up of government, corporations, and institutions. These power structures are the “producers” of the city. The individuals are the “consumers.”8 De Certeau’s argument diverges a bit from Lefebvre’s in that although the “producers” frame the experience of a city in a particular way, the consumers use the rules and codes, but not always in the same way as the “producers” intended. Both Lefebvre and de Certeau’s views relate to the idea that society is a social product and there is a dominant power that attempts to orchestrate and normalize the overarching cultural values and experience. I provide these examples of Lefebvre and de Certeau in order to connect the social production of space with the social production of gender, as articulated by Judith Butler. A feminist theorist of cultural politics, Butler argues that binary relationships of gender and sex should not automatically be assumed. Instead, she urges us to consider that the collective cultural values around gender are created through the collective repeating of those values.9 She uses the term ‘performativity’ to refer to repetitive unconscious acts that manifest gender.10 These acts lead to the normalization of gender. These acts are not the individual’s expression of gender, but the collective culture’s repetitive representation of gender. They lead to a socially produced ideology of gender. In other words, we collectively construct the idea that being a man means having short hair, wearing suits, and showing less emotion through the repetition and expectation of men having short hair, wearing suits, and showing less emotion. This is strangely illogical if you think about it. Men and women become what we collectively represent, which means we potentially miss entire layers of what we might become if we considered our options more broadly. Through Butler’s work, people have come to understand that gender is more complex than a binary system can offer. Working to uphold the binary means participating in a system which believes anything that falls outside the binary is abnormal. If people do not consider the ramifications of following heteronormativity unchecked, oppositional thinking gets built into our environment. This is a problem for architecture as it exacerbates the numb 8 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California, 1984) 166—167. 9 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York and London: Routledge, 2006) XV. 10 Butler, XV.

reproduction of sameness. May we all ask collectively how a shift in thinking might affect the architectural mediums of space, place, and materiality while, at the same time, be wary of creating another prescriptive set of rules? Instead, I propose an open invitation for the investigatory pluralizations of sex, desire, and gender normativity in architecture. In the 1970s architecture saw the emergence of the first feminist debate. Over the past 40 years gender and feminist theorists in architecture have raised discussions in a multitude of ways. According to Jane Rendell, the first 30 of these 40 years can loosely be categorized as “Feminisms,” “Herstory,” “Interdisciplinary,” and “Practice”.11 Rendell categorizes the past 10 years into “Spatial Practice,” “Other Spaces,” “Difference and Location,” and “Performative Turn.” I would like to focus on the past 10 years and provide brief descriptions of Rendell’s categories of “Spatial Practice,” “Other Spaces,” and “Performative Turn.” “Spatial Practice” seeks to use interdisciplinary collaboration “to resist the dominant social order of global corporate capitalism.”12 “Other Spaces” relies on the Derridean Theory of Deconstruction to challenge binary thinking, specifically with regards to the “public-private division of gendered space manifested in different cultures at various historical periods.”13 “Performative Turn” uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the relationship of “spatial politics,” “internal space,” and “external space.”14 I would like to combine elements of each category into one term, “critical spatial practice,”15 and define this term as the effort to take the theoretical feminist approaches to architecture and use them as an underlying philosophy that guides strategies within the practice of architecture.t Studying feminist critical perspectives of architecture provides a framework for understanding how heteronormative ideology becomes embedded into architectural space, place, and materiality. Some feminist and queer theorists

11 J ane Rendell, “Tendencies and Trajectories: Feminist Approaches in Architecture,” in The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, ed. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen (London: SAGE, 2012) 87—96. 12 Rendell, 92. 13 Rendell, 92. 14 Rendell, 94. 15 Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture: A Place Between. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.

in architecture such as Aaron Betsky and Katerina Bonnevier connect the discussion of sex, desire, and gender directly to these architectural mediums. Each author leverages empirical examples to evidence their argument. In Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality, Betsky illustrates the emergence and continuation of exteriority representing maleness and interiority representing femaleness through his review of architectural forms and space across a historical framework.16 His 1997 book, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-sex Desire traces a historical account of queer culture’s influence on the creation of pluralized architectural spaces, disciplines, and materials.17 Bonnevier analyzes Eileen Gray’s E. 1027 house through a queer filter.18 Through this analysis, she “attempt[s] to interpret some codes hidden in the heterosexual matrix of architecture.”19 It is at times hard to see what Bonnevier is calling “‘leaks’ in the boundaries of heteronormative architecture.”20 For example, she states that the relationship of the upper floor terrace to the living-room reverses the reading of inside and outside. On the other hand, Bonnevier examines Gray’s interpretation of the “living-room,” noting the large bed, the grandest piece of furniture in the room, and stating that the room is “a multifunctional space for all aspects of life — pleasure, rest, studies, business meetings, and parties.”21 The blurring of public and private exist in this room, two seemingly oppositional spaces. Noted feminist scholar, Eve Sedgwick, conceptualizes queernees as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constutient elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically.”22 Gray’s design of the E. 1027 “living-room” is a queer representation of their normal

16 Aaron Betsky, Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Morrow, 1995). 17 Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-sex Desire (New York: Morrow, 1997). 18 Katerina Bonnevier, “A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray’s E.1027,” in Negotiating Domesticity, ed. Hilde Heynen and Gülsüm Baydar (London and New York: Routledge, 2005) 162—180. 19 Bonnevier, 162. 20 Bonnevier, 162. 21 Bonnevier, 166. 22 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993) 8.

relationship because of queer theory’s belief that identities are not fixed, but fluid. This thinking destabilizes notions of dualism. Betsky and Bonnevier offer visual ways of seeing sex, desire, and gender codes in the architectural mediums of space, place, and materiality. The discourse needs more of these investigations because as coauthors of cultural codes, architects need visual references that help them understand what heternormative gender values look like within the realm of architecture and how they might move beyond the binary system in their practice. But how do practicing architects use a critical feminist theory as a practical approach to making? Matrix, muf, and Sara Wigglesworth are architects and architectural designers that have used feminist theoretical ideas as underlying bases for their design philiosophies and strategies. Matrix was a group of women who worked together in the 1970s and ‘80s. There driving philosophy was to work directly with their clients and the users of the buildings as they developed design solutions. It was important to them to give the users a voice during the design process so that Matrix could relate the proposed design solutions directly to how people intended to use and actually did experience the spaces. In their book Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment they write: Buildings do not control our lives. They reflect the dominant values in our society, political and architectural views, people’s demands and the constraints of finance, but we can live in them in different ways from those originally intended. Buildings only affect us insomuch as they contain ideas about [people], about our ‘proper place,’ about what is private and what is public activity, about which things should be kept separate and which put together... As feminist architects and designers we want to avoid the architectural determinism that sees building-users as puppets, capable of being manipulated according to the architect’s idea of desired behaviour. The arrangement of space in and between buildings is a reflection of accepted views which may have a greater or lesser effect on the occupants — or which may have unintended effects on social life in general. 23

23 Matrix, 9—10.

Matrix challenged dominant values not only in what they designed, but how they designed. How they designed was grounded in the philosophy that people are individuals, and architecture should support unique experiences of the individual instead of forcing people to fit within predetermined standardized ideology. Architecture should fit people instead of people fitting into architecture. Clearly this approach would affect and support diverse design solutions for diverse populations. Another architectural group who works to apply theorectical ideas to practice is muf architecture/art, founded in 1995 in England by architects Liza Fior and Juliet Bidgood, author Katherin Shonfield, and artist Katherine Clarke. In Emma Sheppard-Simms’ essay about muf she write: An early and key component of the design process at muf is developing appropriate modes of representation that impart a visual and tangible expression of public stakeholders as part of the design process. This approach moves beyond traditional community consultation as the designers immerse themselves within the site and the community, taking on an activist role by deliberately searching for and mapping the disconnected elements of sites at the scale of lived experience. Whether this translates to mapping the random patterns of children’s play in a public square or understanding the role of small business in the social life of streets, muf’s urban planning and design is committed to understanding and revealing how people appropriate space to create a sense of collective local identity.24 Again, there is a strong effort to realize a variety of identities, even if they are contradictory, within architectural spaces. Regardless if the project is about a singular building, muf focuses on the public space. Their process seeks to understand fully the complex interrelationships in each project. “There are interviews and conversations with residents, users, passersby, clients, associations, institutions, and politicians whose wishes, requests, opinions, and

24 Emma Sheppard-Simms, “Organizers and Presenters Respond to Themes (and Acts of God) at the 2010 National Architecture Conference” (Essay written after the Extra/ Ordinary: 2010 National Architecture Conference, Darling Harbour, New South Wales, April 22–24, 2010).

interests are made visible on maps and diagram.”25 muf’s process illustrates an intentioned desire to consider individuals, to not use assumptions or stereotypes as the points from which to make design decisions. Sarah Wigglesworth is the director of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects located in London and is a Professor of Architecture at The University of Sheffield. Wigglesworth has produced both installations and built projects that challenge heteronormative values. She articulates her motivation for working in this manner by noting, My personal interest is how the social construction of sexual difference, and the value ascribed to gender roles, becomes institutionalised in the practices of everyday (including professional) life and how one can change them... An important part of feminist research is to step outside of the circular logic of rationalised theoretical thought and to reformulate the terms of the argument in relation to (women’s) lived experience of the political and social world. Its aims are social, but its means are personal, political and symbolic. At least for me, therefore, questions of gender (perhaps more than sexuality) are a fertile but under-explored territory in which to make a critique of dominant ideologies and their social practices.26 This quote is significant given that Wigglesworth is both a practicing architect and a professor of architecture. She is quite literally putting theoretical ideas into practice. Architecture cannot resolve issues like this alone, but it can participate in the conversation. Interrogations of heteronormative cultural codes in architecture rarely make the invisible qualities of the issue visible. If feminist approaches in architecture are to move beyond theory and into common practice, built architectural examples must be investigated. Additionally, language surrounding these ideas must move from only theoretical notions toward ideas for making that can be embodied by designers. This is not a suggestion that we need a set 25 Sheppard-Simms. 26 Katerina Rüedi, Sarah Wigglesworth, and Duncan McCorquodale, Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender, and the Interdisciplinary (London: Black Dog Pub., 1996) 278.

of prescriptive rules for how cultural values regarding sex, desire, and gender normativity should be written into the architectural space, place, and materiality. That would, in turn, create yet another level of rigid binary constraints. The discourse does need more visual and experiential efforts aimed at bringing awareness to the sometimes invisible manifestations of heteronormative codes in Western cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architecture as well as visual and experiential efforts aimed at offering pluralizations of sex, desire, and gender normativity.

Literature Review INTRODUCTION In Western society, heteronormative cultural codes of sex, desire, and gender are written into the architectural mediums of space, spatial use, and materiality. Studying feminist critiques of architecture provides a framework for understanding how related ideology becomes embedded into these architectural mediums. Either consciously or unconsciously, the built environment represents some aspects of a culture’s value systems. Architects are coauthors of these codes, and thus, it is important that they gain an awareness of their role in upholding or resisting cultural values. Choice to uphold or resist requires that architects understand better how to pluralize the normative codes of sex, desire, and gender in their practice.

BRIEF HISTORICAL SUMMARY In the 1970s architecture saw the emergence of the first feminist debate. Over the past 40 years gender and feminist theorists in architecture have raised discussions in a multitude of ways. The first 30 of these 40 years can loosely be categorized as “Feminisms,” “Herstory,” “Interdisciplinary,” and “Practice” (Rendell, 2012). In the past 10 years, Rendell (2012) suggests that the categories are “Spatial Practice,” “Other Spaces,” “Difference and Location,” and “Performative Turn.” Brief descriptions of these categories will clarify distinctions between the terms and be useful for further discussion. “Feminisms” includes efforts by feminists to “advance their status within the ranks of the architectural profession as it exists” or “question the nature of architectural practice” and then “redefine their architectural design practice in ways that differ radically from existing models” (Rendell, 2012). “Herstory” is a category of efforts that address the exclusion of women from architecture and “produce an alternative history of architecture by uncovering evidence of women’s contributions” as architects, designers, builders, and patrons (Rendell, 2012). “Interdisciplinary” incorporates gender theory from other fields to extend the

architectural discourse. The result is two fold: it creates “new objects of study” and new “intellectual criteria” with which “to interpret those objects of study” (Rendell, 2012). “Practice” includes feminist architectural practices that work to relate written theory to built design. Additionally, these practices contribute to the discourse pushing against the edges of the architectural profession, creating “new ways of working” (Rendell, 2012). “Spatial Practice seeks to use interdisciplinary collaboration “to resist the dominant social order of global corporate capitalism” (Rendell, 2012). “Other Spaces” relies on the Derridean Theory of Deconstruction to challenge binary thinking, specifically with regards to the “public-private division of gendered space manifest in different cultures at various historical periods” (Rendell, 2012). “Difference and Location” explores “new ways of knowing and being in spatial terms, developing conceptual and critical tools...to examine the interrelations between location, identity, and knowledge (Rendell, 2012). And finally, “Performative Turn” uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the relationship of “spatial politics,” “internal space,” and “external space” (Rendell, 2012).

CRITICAL THEORISTS OF PUBLIC SPACE Henri Lefebvre discusses the cultural dimensions of space. In his book The Production of Space (1974), space is both a material and a social medium. Lefebvre’s argument is that space is a social product that is constructed through a complex relationship of societal values and power. Lefebvre focuses on the social production of urban spaces and argues that this medium in Western culture is fundamental to capitalism and that it is used as a tool by a hegemonic class to reproduce dominance. Michel de Certeau’s theory in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) contributes to this discourse. He argues that the activities of everyday life are unique in that they are unconscious and repetitive. In general, he suggests that there is a system of power made up of government, corporations, and institutions. These power structures are the “producers” of the city. The individuals are the “consumers.” Certeau’s argument diverges a bit from Lefebvre’s in that although the “producers” frame the experience of a city in a particular way, the consumers use the rules and codes, but not always in the same way as the “producers” intended. Both Lefebvre and Certeau’s views relate to the idea that society is a social product and there is a dominant power that attempts to orchestrate and normalize the over arching cultural values and experience.

Lefebvre’s theory that value systems produce space connects ideology to built environments. However, his focus on urban planning is broad. Instead this thesis inquiry intends to take a more focused look at ideology that influences the architectural medium of space, spatial use, and materiality.

FEMINIST THEORISTS OF CULTURAL POLITICS Both Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick link the discussion of social production to the concept of gender (Butler, 2006; Sedgwick, 1990). Butler, specifically, says that gender normativity is culturally produced; it is manifest through a collective repetitive process. Her term ‘performativity’ refers to this process and has influenced spatial investigations of the relationship between place and gender. This binary system contributes to the rigidity of societal rules and values that maintain gender stereotypes and contribute to diverse expressions of sex, desire, and gender being seen as abnormal. These stereotypes make their way into our built environment on the back of assumptions. This is a problem for architecture as it exacerbates the numb reproduction of sameness. How might a shift in thinking affect the architectural mediums of space, spatial use, and materiality while not creating another prescriptive set of rules or binary structures, but instead be an open invitation for the pluralization of normativity?

FEMINIST AND QUEER THEORISTS IN ARCHITECTURE Aaron Betsky, Diana Agrest, Katerina Bonnevier, Joel Sanders, and Joan Ockman move the discourse directly into the architectural mediums of space, spatial use, and materiality. In Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality, Betsky illustrates the emergence and continuation of exteriority representing maleness and interiority representing femaleness through his review of architectural forms and space across a historical framework. His 1997 book, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-sex Desire traces a historical account of queer culture’s influence on the creation of pluralized architectural spaces, disciplines, and materials. Agrest critiques the direct link Vitruvius and others made between the body and architecture in Renaissance classics such as The Ten Books of Architecture. She states clearly that this “body” was a male body, and that the male architect in Vitruvius’ notion either erased or eclipsed the female body. She uses this critique to pose a drawn project, a “fictional configuration” that fragments and blurs the “order of things and of language” (Agrest, 1991).

Bonnevier, Sanders, and Ockman analyze built environments either highlighting the expressions of heteronormativity or illustrating the pluralization of sex, desire, and gender normativity (Bonnevier, 2005; Sanders, 1996; Ockman, 1996). These contributors as a collection offer visual ways of seeing heteronormative codes in the architectural mediums of space, spatial use, and materiality. They are useful references. The discourse needs more of these types of investigations.

GYM CULTURE Gyms enact a space for the production and reiteration of socially constructed aesthetic norms, thus, this project seeks to use gym typology to challenge normative codes. Here bodies gesture and display themselves, coming into contact with the surfaces of architecture (Sanders and Arning, 2000). Gyms exist within the core of Western culture’s ideals for sex, desire, and gender (Sassatelli, 2010). Through popular culture, media, print, and the Internet, gyms display normative coding and promise to help users produce these ideals. Joel Sanders along with Bill Arning discuss the gym’s role in our culture. In the exhibition booklet for “Achieving Failure: Gym Culture 2000,” an art show held at Waxing Thread Gallery in New York City, Sanders outlines the unique circumstances of gym typology and its potential for resisting normativity. Sassatelli investigates ideas of consumption within the gym. The influence of de Certeau is evident in her consideration of the “producers” and “users” of gym culture and their dialectic relationship with normative cultural body coding.

CONCEPTUAL AND INSTALLATION ARTISTS Conceptual and installation artist have the unique ability to provoke concepts abstracted from the familiar and disconnected from other obligations. This can provide opportunities to materialize ideas and experiences in renewed ways, allowing the viewer to see something that has become invisible because of its ubiquity. Rachel Whiteread’s work is an example of this. She recovers the ephemeral and the lost through wax, resin, and concrete castings of the negative spaces of everyday objects (Whiteread and Krauss, 1997). Cindy Sherman is another artist who prompts consideration of the things so familiar that they are taken as truth. Her film stills are not from films at all. Instead they are tropes of our culture. They are “myths” that are consumed unexamined (Krauss, 1993). Such interdisciplinary methods point to new potential for exploration and critique of the

heternormative cultural codes in the architectural mediums of space, spatial use, and materiality.

CONCLUSION Interrogations of heteronormative cultural codes in architecture rarely make the invisible qualities of the issue visible. If feminist approaches in architecture are to move beyond theory and into common practice, the language of the argument must include ways for the knowledge to be embodied by designers. This is not a suggestion that we need a set of prescriptive rules for how cultural values regarding sex, desire, and gender normativity should be written into the architectural mediums of space, spatial use, and materiality. That would, in turn, create yet another level of rigid binary constraints. The discourse does need more visual and experiential efforts aimed at bringing awareness to the fairly invisible manifestations of heteronormative codes in Western cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architecture as well as visual and experiential efforts aimed at offering pluralizations of sex, desire, and gender normativity.

Jane Rendell’s

“Tendencies and Trajectories: Femini As a Visual Literature Review

“tendencies {

outlines how architecture’s engagement with gender difference has changed in em demands of ‘feminisms’ and the changing place of political work in the profession a

FEMINISM HERSTORY INTERD

“One of most important aspects of the relationship between feminism and architecture is the diversity of positions adopted. Some follow the principles of ‘equality’ (those who have sought to advance their recruitment and status within the ranksof the arch profession as it exists) while others prefer the principles of ‘difference’ (those who have questioned the nature of arch practice and instead redefined their azrch design practice in ways that differ radically from existing models).”

“Feminist architecture history has also adopted a number of different approaches aligned with various political positions. Following reformist or liberal tactics aimed at establishing conditions of equality for women, some feminists have been concerned with women’s exclusion from architecture and sought to produce an alternative history of architecture by uncovering evidence of women’s contributions.”

“Drawing on gender such as psycholanal cultural studies, film t dance, art, literature/ interdisciplinary femi extended the field of discourse, blurring th between theory and between criticism an ...two main issues for architectural history; of study — the actua historians choose to l second, the intellectu which historians inter of study.”

Rendell, Jane. “Tendencies and Trajectories: Feminist Approaches in Architecture.” In The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, edited by Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen, 85—97. London: SAGE, 2012.

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SPATIAL

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ERENCE

ACES DIFF & LOC

“The 1990s saw a rise in the relevance and pertinence of identity politics focusing on class, gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. emerging through, and at times diverging from, this discourse, has been the work of post-structuralist feminists. This work has been particularly important for arch in offering metaphorical insights; new ways of knowing and being have been discussed in spatial terms, developing conceptual and critical tools...to examine the interrelations between location, identity and knowledge.”

PERFORMATIVE

“In visual and spatial culture, feminists have drawn extensively on psychoanalytic theory to further understand relationships between the spatial politics of internal phsyical figures and external cultural geographies. The field of psychoanalysis explores these various thresholds and boundaries between private and public, inner and outer, subject and object, personal and social, in terms of a complex understanding of the relationship between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ space.”

001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

2012

“Choices: Sex, Desire, and Gender in Architectural Space, Place, and Materiality” PROJECT VISUAL LITERATURE REVIEW | MIKALE KWIATKOWSKI

1984 Michel de Certeau

French Jesuit and Scholar The Practice of Everyday Life influenced architecture; "has produced an understanding of practice as a process which occurs not only through the design of buildings but also through the activities of using, occupying and experiencing, as well as modes of writing and imaging which describe, analyse and interrogate"

1990 Judith Butler

Philosopher and Queer Theorist Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity suggests that gender is culturally produced... ”considers gender to be a performance that produces the illusion of an inner sex“... "notions of 'performativity' have provoked those in spatial disciplines to look at how place and gender are performed”

1991 Henri Lefebvre

Marxist Philosopher The Production of Space "...argued that space is socially produced and also that space is a condition of social production.” Also influenced architecture; "has produced an understanding of practice as a process which occurs not only through the design of buildings but also through the activities of using, occupying and experiencing, as well as modes of writing and imaging which describe, analyse and interrogate"

1993 Diana Agrest

Queer Theorist Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice "...recognizing gender as a social construction in order to critique the heterosexual patriarchal bastion of architectural practice" ..."uses examples from the treatises of Renaissance architects who advocated the use of particular proportion systems for setting out the formal geometries of buildings, demonstrated how the male body was used to represent the ideal set of proportions, while the female body was either rejected from the practice of architecture or suppressed within it."

199

Bu Ar Co "H to sp co cu as thr us be hig pr re fe m an bo

Aaron Betsky

uilding Sex: Men, Women, rchitecture and the onstruction of Sexuality Historical materialism pointing the 'social production of pace' — to the role of the onstruction industry, ultural/social context, as well s the reproduction of space rough its representation and s... such methodologies have een adopted/adapted to ghlight the gendering of rocesses of production and eproduction, but also through eminism's own version of materialist analysis, to develop n understanding of the role of ody as matter"

1996 Joel Sanders

Queer Theorist Stud: Architectures of Masculinity "...recognizing gender as a social construction in order to critique the heterosexual patriarchal bastion of architectural practice" ..."critiques SOM's, Cadet Quarters, US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, [to] show how representations of masculinity are central to the work of these contemporary architects"

Elizabeth Diller

American Architect addressed Irigaray's arguement "through a project that demonstrated how feminist critiques of women's role as domestic labourers can be used to inspire creativity... complex choreography... performing a series of folding movements similar to origami, a number of shirts were ironed into perfectly useless forms...a parody of the precision of housework and the reworking of such skills for a new function"

1997 Aaron Betsky

Queer Theorist Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire influenced by Derrida; "draws attention to the spaces both marginalized within gendered binaries in mainstream architectural discourse, such as the domestic and the interior, and/or positioned as terms which exceed this binary distinction, such as the margin, the between, the everyday, the heterotopic and the abject”

1999 Henry Urbach

Queer Theorist "Closets, Clothes, disClosure" "Working with queer theory to rethink understandings of architecture in relation to the spatial practice of 'coming out' ...focused on the history of the design of the closet, to develop an argument concerning secrecy and display with relation to homosexuality"

2000 Joel Sanders and Bill Arning

Achieving Failure: Gym Culture 2000 An exhibition book for a show of the same name, Sanders’ and Arning’s essays add insight to the ideas of the visible and invisible performance of gender within the context of the gym.

2001 muf

United Kingdom Architectural Practice This is What We Do: A muf Manual "strive to relate feminist to architectural design, practice to written text, deal with issues of fem and decoration, relatio looking and the materi fluids, and most import embodiment" "radical proposition...to position building as the 'method rather than as the end the method or process makes it"

Sara Wigglesw

United Kingdom Architectural Practice Architecture; 9 Stock O Street, the Straw House "material is not only see social and economic c for architecture but also as an active ingredien processes of making a itecture... texploring diff potential of architectur materials from the con design to the level of th

theory , built , and mininity ons of iality of tantly

na dology' result of s that

worth

e Orchard e en as the context o viewed nt in the archferent ral nceptual he detail"

2003 Jane Rendell

Architectural Designer, Historian and Art Critic "Between Two: Theory and Practice" seeks to "extend the term 'critical theory' to include the work of feminists and others whose thinking is self-critical and desirous of social change — who seek to transform rather than describe"

2004 Jane Rendell

Architectural Designer, Historian and Art Critic "Architectural Research and Disciplinarity" addresses a concept she calls "practice-led/-based research" to encompass her consideration that "the opposition between history/theory/criticism (or activities which write about architecture) and design (or activities which produce architecture) has started to dissipate, in the academy and in practice"

2005 Katerina Bonnevier Critical Theorist A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray’s E.1027 Analyses Eileen Gray’s E.1027 House through a queer filter.

2010 Sheila Cavanagh

Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination A multi-sensory exploration of the ways in which public toilets assume and control ideas of sex, desire, and gender.

Roberta Sassatelli Fitness Culture: Gyms and the Commercialization of Discipline and Fun Sassatelli examines the relationship of commercial gyms to discipline, desire, and gender identities.

Case Studies Gyms inact a space for the production and reiteration of socially constructed aesthetic norms, thus, this project seeks to use gym typology to challenge normative codes. Here bodies gesture and display themselves, coming into contact with the surfaces of architecture.1 Gyms exist within the core of Western cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideals for sex, desire, and gender.2 Through popular culture, media, print, and the Internet, gyms display normative coding and promise to help users produce these ideals. The case studies started with a search for visuals that might illustrate ideas of sex, desire, and gender within the architectural spaces and materiality of gyms. Three gyms, Equinox, Pink Iron, and Definitions Fitness 2 were highlighted. After this, gym tropes were defined and analyzed. These tropes illustrate generally accepted ways people use the architecture of the gym. Video stills were utlized as a way to diagram movement of the tropes within the space of the gym and their engagement with the equipment. Subsequent diagrams were created for each trope to extend the suggestion of how they might typically use the gym space and equipment. The exploration of gym tropes will continue. Additionally, field investigations will be carried out in gyms. Observations on how these tropes [and others yet to be defined] inhabit space and how architects create space will be examined. It is anticipated that additional diagrams and collages deconstructing the interrelationship of sex, desire, and gender with space, place, and materiality of gym architecture will be created.

1 Joel Sanders and Bill Arning, Achieving Failure: Gym Culture 2000 (New York: Thread Waxing Space, 2000) 12. 2 RobertaSassatelli, Fitness Culture: Gyms and the Commercialisation of Discipline and Fun (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 2.

W. 76TH ST. NYC Azman Architects

Equinox Images above from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTgSm8iYCsg (accessed October 21, 2012)

Pink Iron WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA

Images above from: http://www.youtube.com/user/PinkIronGym (accessed October 21, 2012)

Thanhauser & Esterson 1993 NEW YORK CITY, NY

Definitions Definitions Fitness #2: New York City, New York Diagram by Thankhauser and Esterson, Black and White Photographs by Stephen Barker

Whiteread 2001: Untilted (Apartment): White Robust Plasticized Plaster 9 feet 3 inches x 36 feet 5 inches x 20 feet 2 inches

Whiteread 1997: Untilted (Paperbacks): Plaster and steel Overall 14’ 9 1/8 x 15’ 9 x 20’ 8 3/4

Whiteread 1993-94: House: Concrete

Whiteread 1990: Ether: Plaster 109 x 87.5 x 203 cm

Strate ies

Horn 1970: Measuring Box

Horn 1976: Chinese FiancĂŠe

Horn 1971: Figure Gloves: an instrument to extend the manual sensibility

Horn 2003: Moon Mirror

Horn 1994: Turtle Sighting Tree

GYM ZONES

TROPES

CARDIO PLATFORM treadmill stair steppers elliptical machine stationary bike rowing machine

CHANGING ROOM [MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S] lockers showers sinks toilets mirrors

CHANGING ROOM [WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S] lockers showers sinks toilets mirrors

FREE WEIGHTS barbells/dumbells/racks weight plates/rack flat/incline benches hyper extension bench preacher bench abdominal bench stability ball (Swiss ball) dipping/chin up bars squat rack smith machine power rack

MACHINES leg press hack squat leg extension leg curl seated/standing calf leg adduction/abduction lat pull down pec deck cables and pulleys

RUNWAY[S] long stretches of floor space were people walk

CHECK-IN desk card scan/swipe human worker(s)

the muscle head

Male bodybuilders consider their bodies sculptures. Although hyper masculine, they still fit within society's idea of men. This trope is the human representation of discipline, power, and control over nature.

the amazon

the cardio queen

the narcissist

the hook-up

While male bodybuilders just look like he-men, female bodybuilders are confusing because they resemble our image of men. Clothing, gestures, and form code them as both men and women and sexualize the space. As the gender codes get confused, men may not know if or how to sexualize these women.

Although most often female, this trope may also be male. The Cardio Queen is focused on burning calories and losing fat. Believing that weight lifting will lead to unwanted muscle bulk, the Cardio Queen restricts workouts to the cardio platform.

This Narcissist appears as both men and women and is a common gay male stereotype. This trope works out at the gym, not to stay healthy, but as an attempt to hold onto youthful looks for as long as possible. Egomanical, the Narcissist utilizes the space of the gym to uphold his/her own self-importance.

The hook-up may be nerdy and awkward or socially adept and attractive. Either way, this trope roams the gym looking for objects of his/ her desire. The gym is social outlet for the hunt, not a place to acheive or maintain health.

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Still Frames aquired from YouTube.com “Pumping Iron” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoBFUTCEJzY (accessed on November 3, 2012)

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41 Still Frames aquired from YouTube.com Female Bodybuilders (by Maxim Max!M Sapronov) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwlKNV3qkP0 (accessed on November 3, 2012)

CARDIO QUEEN

THE

Still Frames aquired from YouTube.com Tina Kennard - 5.03- Tina & Alice & Shane -Gym Scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4xoDB-njO4 (accessed on November 3, 2012)

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43 Still Frames aquired from YouTube.com Tina Kennard - 5.03- Tina & Alice & Shane -Gym Scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4xoDB-njO4 (accessed on November 3, 2012)

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Still Frames aquired from YouTube.com Crazy in Love - Gym Scene Funny! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgL77gbqknA (accessed on November 3, 2012)

Project Description The resulting analysis from the case, trope, and field studies will inform the design and construction of an installation project utilizing furnishings and spatial qualities found within gyms. The installation will include an apparatus and a space that people enter to physically engage with ideas of sex, desire and gender coding. This installation is anticipated to be an experiential commentary and an audio/ video recording device. It will be located in a final exhibition, not a gym space as it is not intended to be in dialogue with gym goers, but instead with architects. The project will focus on the space of the gym locker room, and more specifically lockers. The lockers will be purchased, versus found, and the type of locker sought will have an approximate vertical opening of 72 inches. Why the locker room and lockers? The locker room is a place of transformation; a threshold within the gym both physically and conceptually. It is liminal space, space between the identity outside the gym and the one within. The locker holds and organizes artifacts of this constructed identity. It stands in for the body and is a surrogate self, that relates to the scale of the body while containing and defining space. It is space for the purpose of the redefinition of self. The user of at least one of the lockers will be gender queer. This user is important to the project. People use this term as a way not to be defined by the binary systems of our culture. It is a non-normative expression of gender. It is an idea of disrupting stereotypes and cultural patterns, abstracting forms and imagining knowns into vagueness. It does not mean straight or gay, masculine or feminine, male or female, man or woman, transexual, transgendered or

“As ephemeral constructions, installations offer precious freedom to experiment and expand the practice of architecture.” — Sarah Bommemaison and Ronit Eisenbach in Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design

androgynous. It is ambiguious and ephemeral—a sense of possibility. It shifts and slides. It is both, and. The components that will make up the apparatus and the space that houses the apparatus will be no greater than 6’ x 8’ and may potentially be smaller. Programmatic use of the lockers will be developed through additional case, trope, and field study analysis. The installation will require access to a power source and need to be placed in an interior environment. It is anticipated that the technological equipment needed will include video cameras and projection devices, although it is clear that these devices will play only a small role in the total project The main participant will be the designer. Although, select others may be invited to engage with the installation. Scaled maquettes, analog and digital drawings, and collages will be used to develop the design. Anticipated materials include: metal lockers, mirriors, fabric, other building materials, kinetic devices, projecting and display devices, and video recording devices. Space within the School of Architecture’s Fab Lab has been reserved for the building project. Consultant advisors include: Greg Snyder, Carrie Gault, as well as an outside advisor, Kent Britnall.

“In some way, an installation is a distilllation of the experiences of architecture.” — Mark Robbins in Achieving Failure: Gym Culture 2000

Final Presentation

Choices: Sex, Desire, and Gender in Architectural Space, Place, and Materiality

MIKALE KWIATKOWSKI Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thesis A 30\13

I want to define a few words within my title so that you know what I mean when I use them.

Sex

is generally considered the biological; male or female.

Desire

often refers to physical and/or romantic attraction, but desire can be spoken of more broadly to include elements such as economic and social exchange.

Gender

is “an individual’s sense of themself as a man, woman, both or neither.” This internal sense, as well as external expressions of one’s identity, are the constructs of gender. Gender Spectrum, “Understanding Gender.” http://www.genderspectrum.org/about/understanding-gender (accessed September 14, 2012).

Heteronormativity is the view that there are two specific genders and that there are specific roles for each gender as well as â&#x20AC;&#x153;normalâ&#x20AC;? expressions o f desire, that being heterosexual.

To further explain how I am talking about desire, I want to show you some images from popular culture that illustrate the dominate idea of heteronormative desire in consumerism and social exchange.

Barbie and Ken (IMAGE 1)

The artifacts and categories of marriage (IMAGES 2-4)

The ideal family (IMAGES 5, 6)

Acceptable social exchange between women in public versus men (IMAGES 7-10)

1 Doug Holder, “Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy,” ENG101/111 Exercises Blog, comment posted April 5, 2013, http://eng101exercises.blogspot. com/ (accessed April 25, 2013). 2 Weddings 411, “Planning Your Wedding,” http://miamiweddings411.com/ (accessed on April 25, 2013). 3 Favorite HD Wallpaper, “Beautiful Wedding Rings HD 1080p Wallpapers Download,” http://www.favhdwallpapers.com/beautifulwedding-rings-hd-1080p-wallpapers-download.html (accessed April 25, 2013). 4 Samantha March, “Wedding Update!,” Chick Lit + Blog, comment posted March 26, 2013, http://chicklitplus.com/category/chicklitplus/ wedding-videos/ (accessed April 25, 2013). 5 Southpointe Family Resource Center P.C., “Welcome to Southpointe Family Resource Center P.C.” http://www. southpointefamilyresourcecenter.com/ (accessed April 25, 2013). 6 New Jersey Child Assault Prevention, “Keeping Your Family Strong,” http://njcap.org/keeping-your-family-strong/ (accessed April 25, 2013). 7 Reebok Crossfit Games, “The Girls Photo,” http://games.crossfit.com/media-gallery/detail/3009/16130 (accessed April 25, 2013). 8 Mike Greenlar, “Photo Essay: Images 2012: Sports,” The Post-Standard, comment posted December 24, 2012, http://photos.syracuse. com/syracusecom_photo_essays/2012/12/photo_essay_images_2012_sports.html (accessed April 25, 2013). 9 Shanna Rose, “Walker Out with Injured Hand,” NeilWalker, 18, comment posted April 27, 2013, http://walker18.com/2013/04/27/walkerout-with-injured-hand/ (accessed April 25, 2013). 10 Jennie, “The Man Behind the Lens,” Crossfit Fire, comment posted May 27, 2009, http://crossfitfire.com/page/199/ (accessed April 25, 2013).

Another Equinox ad staging women with strategically drawn surgery lines on their mostly exposed bodies. (IMAGE 11)

Again, Equinox advertising very idealized bodies and their performance in a gym. (IMAGE 12)

11, 12 Anita Dolce Vita, “Equinox’s Visionary: A Dyke Who Doesn’t Work Out!,” Dapper via The New York Times, comment posted Aug 30, 2012, http://www.dapperq.com/2012/08/equinoxs-visionairy-adyke-who-doesnt-work-out/ (accessed April 25, 2013).

So my thesis question is this:

How can architectural space, place and materiality be used to create an experience that disrupts normative codings of sex, desire and gender? Or in other words, how can the normative be defamiliarized?

Now I am going to role in one more new concept:

Queer Theory is about the process by which some bodies get marked as normal and o ther bodies get marked as deviant, ill, or threatening. It is about tracing the very process o f normalization. It’s about moments of interruption— moments that force us to think about how the normal works. So yet another way I might ask my thesis question is:

How can Queer Theory be physicalized?

What does this have to do with architecture?

1. Architecture is a cultural endeavor and can participate in changing culture. The built environment represents aspects of a culture’s value system. In Western society, heteronormative values regarding sex, desire and gender are coded into architectural space, place and materiality. Studying defamiliarizations of these codes will help architects challenge present limitations related to biases and assumptions so that they might construct a built environment that is more attentive to the needs of diverse populations.

2. There are potentials and limitations to physicalizing theortical ideas. I would like to highlight the word “potentials.” There is opportunity in thinking new thoughts and inviting new prompts into ones consideration of architectural design.

3. Space as a design material supports or resists ideas. As someone who will be entering the field of architecture soon, I am curious how to position myself in regards to architecture’s support or resistance of various cultural values. My Master’s inquiry offers a good opportunity to begin defining how space as a design material supports or resists contemporary ideas. This exploration is one focus in that larger investigation. It is an effort to explore my ability to utilize my architectural education to challenge heteronormativity, hegamony, exclusion and fear of difference within the constant remaking of culture through architecture.

Research and Influences: Fall

»» Literature Review »» Case Studies »» Strategies »» Trope Research During the fall semester. I conducted an extensive literature review of feminist thought and theory in architecture from the 1970’s to the present. This is a visual representation of that research. (also see pages 26-31)

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981

1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

2012

Research and Influences: Fall

»» Literature Review »» Case Studies »» Strategies »» Trope Research My research led me to focus on the public gym typology. Gyms enact a space for the production and reiteration of socially constructed aesthetic norms, thus, I thought it fitting to use gym typology to challenge normative codes. In gyms, bodies gesture and display themselves, coming into contact with the surfaces of architecture. Gyms exist within the core of Western culture’s ideals for sex, desire and gender. Through popular culture, media, print and the Internet, gyms display normative coding and promise to help users produce these ideals. (also see pages 33-35)

Definitions Fitness #2: New York City, New York Thanhauser & Esterson 1993

Horn 1970: Measuring Box

Research and Influences: Fall

»» Literature Review »» Case Studies »» Strategies »» Trope Research At the same time, I started looking at installation artist because I knew at this point in my process that I wanted to build something to explore my thesis question. Rachel Whiteread and Rebecca Horn were the most influential. Whiteread casts the negative space of everyday objects to create a new reading and experience of those cultural artifacts. In Horn’s early work she explored apparatuses as extensions of the body, devices that registered the body in space and machines that challenge perception. These artists were quite influential in my building process. (also see pages 36 and 37) 57

Research and Influences: Fall

»» Literature Review »» Case Studies »» Strategies »» Trope Research It seemed important to begin to explore how people use the space of the gym, but getting access to gyms can be difficult. So again I turned to popular culture, mainly You Tube, movies and TV shows to identify stereotypes that exist in gyms. Although the tropes didn’t become the vehicle for exploration of my thesis, they did inform my process. This work helped me begin to see how people as normalized ideals use space to stage their identities. It also influenced my use of video as a methodology. (also see pages 38-43)

THE

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THE

HOOK-UP 59

Process and Products: Spring Q1

»» The Lockers »» Locker Room Field Observations »» Video and Video Diagrams To manage the scope of the built project, I focused the investigation to the site of a set of 3 lockers. I used the lockers to evoke the idea of change because we go to the locker to change. The locker room is a place of transformation; a threshold within the gym both physically and conceptually. It is liminal space; space between the identity outside the gym and the one within. The locker holds and organizes artifacts of this constructed identity. It stands in for the body and relates to the scale of the body while containing and defining space. It is space for the purpose of the redefinition of self.

I did end up working my way into some local Charlotte gyms to experience and diagram the locker room spaces. What I began to see is how the locker room, one of the most psychologically vulnerable spaces, is like no other that we inhabit. It is a really powerful place to start talking about architecture. I started thinking about how our culture commonly separates people from their assumed object of desire in a private space like a locker room and how this organizational pattern also makes the assumption that sext will equate to gender, meaning that is someone is born male, they will develop the gender identity of man.

Charlotte GOLD’S GYM

Charlotte DOWD Y

needed a way to explore how a body engages with the locker. I used video recordings to allow me to study this interaction, and then I diagramed the video stills to further analyze the relationship.

Body+Locker

Since I had not to bring th tropes forward from fall, I

The video diagram helped me see more clearly how the space inside and around the locker supports the activity of changing. The locker offers a place to organize artifacts, it stabilizes the body at different points in the process, it veils the body from complete exposure, it holds contents and provides a sense of security, the space just outside the door of the locker designates and area in which one is supposed to stand, so it helps us know where to be in space. And all the locker rooms I visited offered a place to and mirrors in which to see oneself.

Q1 REVIEW COMMENTS \ FEEDBACK * very challenging question; need to outline it clearly for your jury * state the objective of this thesis before moving into other material * am I interested in transforming heteronormative space or transforming everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s notion of identity * think about the locker as a general place of transformation (for changing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clothes; forces a reflection * of self/identity) * need drawing of locker unit in isolation, in context after transformation (to study spatial implications) * how might the transformed locker unit prompt new possibilities, associations, relationships in terms of shifting the locker room to gym area procession? * erasure, masking, reflection, reinscription; operating on the body

Process and Products: Spring Q2

ÂťÂť The Initial Locker Operations At this point I started working on the full-scale locker operations: I took the set of 3 apart and removed the back panels

I made a prototype channel for the back that held a 1 foot high metal sliding element and closed the back with clear acrylic, added wheels and extended the metal channel down the length of the back

Then I cast a square foot x foot box out of hydrocal and made a metal belt system for the box.

Next, I made a pulley system and a rotating door handle and put it all together. The intention was for the shelf to hold a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artifacts of identity and to be raised and lowered using the pulley system. The box filled with artifacts would be pinned wherever the person wanted to veil their body. It didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work. The box was too heavy and the pulley system was not robust enough. I show this failure because it was an important part of my process. It was the beginning of learning how to work with metal, and I became more clear about the potentials and limitations of the tight space within the locker. I was also wrestling with how conceptual and theoretical ideas might become physicalized.

Process and Products: Q3

»» Full-scale Locker Prototype »» Plan Collage »» Experience Collage »» Section Collage Immediately after the second quarter review, I started over again: I drilled aluminum c-channels to align with existing locker holes (One constraint I set was that I could not create any new holes. I must use only existitng holes to attach new appendages to the locker instrument.); built wood boxes to run in c-channels; welded steel flat bars together and tapped them along existing locker holes to make t-bar connectors that attached two lockers back-to-back; built plywood stools; and built a spring-loaded pull bar that allows movement of the plywood box and also locks it in place.

I shot a short video to study this locker in use and made collages so that I could begin to project this locker instrument into the larger context of the locker room, think about what the experience might be over time and consider how the addition of folding panels and mirrors might affect the use and the context surrounding the locker.

© Margo Moritz. Photographs of people in collages were used by permission of Margo Moritz. Margo Moritz, “Switcheroo,” The Bold Italic, http://www.thebolditalic.com/margomoritz/stories/2903switcheroo (accessed April 12, 2013).

Process and Products

»» Final Full-Scale Locker Operations »» Video Still Collages: Fragments of Experience »» Scaled Model of Locker Room »» Projective Collages: Entry/Exit »» Projective Collages: Showers For the final operations, I dado cut channels and inserted two-way mirrors in the back of each plywood box, cut panels using CNC router and installed installed lights. I then used the locker instrument to record fragments of experience over time. The video was shot from three different angles, and I made video collages representing the most important moments. Three types of fragments of experience were noted: exchanges through the locker, varied and unintended uses and perceptual disruptions.

Panels being cut on a CNC Router

Fragments of Experience: Exchanges Through the Locker

passing clothes

stealing glimpses

stealing benches 86

Fragments of Experience: Varied and Unintended Uses

Fragments of Experience: Perceptual Disruption

Then I built a model to explore ways to defamiliarize the normal locker room and consider the generative potentials of the locker instrument. I call this space the Changing Room. It contains new organizational patterns and a new program. It isn’t a unisex locker room; it just isn’t gender at all. This projective model is a redesign of the Belk Gym women’s locker room on UNC Charlotte’s campus. The model is color coded: White represents stationary elements and clear represents kinetic elements.

Belk Gym Women’s Locker Room: Existing BELK GYM WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM: EXISTING SCALE 0.25 INCH = 1.0 FOOT

BELK GYM LOWER FLOOR: EXISTING

BELK GYM WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM: EXISTING SCALE 0.25 INCH = 1.0 FOOT

BELK GYM LOWER FLOOR: EXISTING

Belk Gym Women’s Locker Room: Redesign

THE CHANGING ROOM: REDESIGN SCALE 0.25 INCH = 1.0 FOOT

The design pushes back against the sameness of the spaces that currently exist and the order and length of the rows. I also considered two other thresholds, the main entry/exit sequence and the showers. Thresholds are defined differently here. They are inside the space, so I did away with the door and deconstructed the labyrinth wall. 93

Projective Collage: Entry/Exit Sequence

This projective collage of the entry/exit uses some of the same language within the locker. The frame marks the familiar in space. The two way mirrors reference the box and the pattern reflects the box positions available inside the locker.

Projective Collage: Showers

In this collage of the shower, sliding panels are imagined on all four sides of the stall. These panels acknowledge the familiar position of veiling ones body, but allow for change. The act of moving the panels is a recognition of the norms.

Success of the project is based on how the locker instrument functions to fulfill the thesis question. Remember my thesis question is how can architectural space, place and materiality be used to create an experience that disrupts normative codings of sex, desire and gender? The locker presents a normative experience when you walk up and then disrupts expectations when opened. The removal of the back of the lockers changes what is usually a private singular space into a communal private space that needs to be renegotiated. The moving box disrupts how one experiences their own body and the body of others. The folding panels offer the opportunity for the user to delineate and create different kinds of spaces to fit their needs. The wheels on the locker allow them to be moved and reorganized into new patterns. The locker mediates the experience of different people. This methodology has projective implications. Deconstructing a cultural artifact lead me to defamiliarize the existing order of a locker room. The qualities of the locker instrument created more intimate spaces, a greater variety of spaces and new configurations within the locker room. There is more contrast and differentiation within the space. It stages new interactions, paths, individual decisions and new intensities. The kinetic devices provide opportunity for individual choice and are offered strategically to manipulate and manage space. The design of the space has the potential to change the social coding and shape new thoughts. This is a space for every body. If an architect were to walk through similar steps, it might look like this: Define a space; Define the program of the space; Pick a point to defamiliarize; Utilize the strategies of that defamiliarization and extend them into other areas of the space.

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