THE QUEER SPACE

In Architecture

  PHOTO: Alexander Popov

Every June cities around the world celebrate Pride month to honor and support the LGBTQ+ community. And in this month the most common story that articulates is the story that many of the people involved in the center or the community knows and tell - the story of a young man, living near Sacramento who decided to reveal his sexual identity to his parents. They disowned him and knowing what else to do, dropped the boy off in the Castro.
Whether the story is fact or legend, it reveals that the center has a very powerful symbolic place in the community's imagination, no matter who one speaks to. A young person, sexually open for the first time, could only have wandered between bars or churches a few years ago. Now that the building is complete, however, one can imagine the young man in the story (no matter his race, orientation, or background) standing in front of the center, knowing that he wants to go inside, but trying to decide whether he will march through the glass doors or make his way around back.

     PHOTO: National Museum of American History

Queer space(s) can be defined as a space or spaces that critique the divisions of sexuality, gender, class, and race through political, cultural, social, real, ephemeral, geographic, and historic contexts.

As Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner define:
Heteronormativity is more than an ideology, prejudice, or phobia against gays and lesbians [and queers]; it is produced in almost every aspect of the forms and arrangements of social life: nationality, the state, and the law; commerce; medicine; and education; as well as in the conventions and effects of narrativity, romance, and other protected space[s] of culture.

Queer Space Theory
The subject of sexuality and space began in the 1990s as the growing analysis of gender and architecture spurred into more areas of identity and architecture. Each area examined the conception and experience of space according to non-dominant perspectives in architecture (female, gay, lesbian, African American, etc.). The studies of sexuality and space range in approaches from psychological, geographical, political, and architectural.

Here and the next two renderings are a project by transgender historian Susan Stryker, architect Joel Sanders, and professor Terry Kogan.

Interior space, however, is more opaque when it comes to queerness, even if its role in sexuality is longer and more complicated.
The washroom (or water closet) has been at the heart of architectural discourse since modernists such as Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier championed plumbing as a cultural boon. Yet pristine white fittings alongside pipes and drains are as much about concepts of gender as they are about modern technology.



Challenges of Visibility
If we ask ourselves why we don’t speak about those important things that may not be visible, there’s a reason we’re hiding it. Architects representing a variety of generations, sexual orientations, and gender identities in the crowd responded to this by telling stories about the hesitations they felt about coming out at work. Many expressed fears that they would be mistreated or receive little support due to implicit biases held by employers and fellow employees.

“I’d rather be rejected for a job than get a job where I’m not free to talk about my personal life." -Spencer Lepler, AIA
Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals face challenges that other segments of the queer community may not. Gender binaries are ever-present in the workplace, from human resources documentation to bathrooms.
There is a need for updates to traditional systems and spaces that don’t reflect inclusive values. “For me, it comes down to respect. In a workplace, you want to be able to do your work and be able to not worry about anything impeding that".

      PHOTO: Luna Park

Elsewhere in Transgender Architectonics, Crawford issues a bold call to arms for designers: “To exhume these ideas and address them, we must redesign actual washrooms and metaphorical “plumbing.’” It’s a challenge that transgender historian Susan Stryker, architect Joel Sanders and professor Terry Kogan have taken up with their ongoing project Stalled!.

Comprised of three distinct zones — one dedicated to washing, one to grooming, and the other to eliminate — the project looks to “address an urgent social justice issue: the need to create safe, sustainable and inclusive public restrooms for everyone regardless of age, gender, race, religion, and disability.”