Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do

grau de Mestre em Estudos Sobre as Mulheres. As Mulheres na Sociedade e na

Cultura realizada sob a orientação científica de António Fernando da Cunha

Tavares Cascais

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I would like to thank professor Cascais for his interesting classes, where I truly started

appreciating Michel Foucault, whose work has been essential for this thesis. I also thank him

for accepting my project with enthusiasm and for his help in collecting the right material.

I would like to thank my parents for their infinite support and for making my stay in Portugal

possible.

I also want to thank Susana for always being there for me, for helping me with my

Portuguese, and for listening to me even when she didn’t really know what I was talking

about.

Finally, I want to thank Alastair for proofreading my text and correcting my English and

Marion for her very helpful last minute review and remarks.

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Queer(ing) Architecture and the Deconstruction of Power in Space:

The Architecture of Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Goedele De Caluwé

KEYWORDS: Architecture, Queer Theory, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, heteronormativity

ABSTRACT:

Architecture is often understood as the construction of merely technical or artistic objects in space, but in fact buildings are much more than just a neutral background to life. Apart from its cultural and symbolic value, architecture also establishes power relations in space and reflects the specific subject position from the perspective of the builder. In spite of this, the impact of subject positions on the architecture that is created and the influence of architectural models on subjects has barely been considered in architectural theory. Over recent decades, the social sciences have increasingly dealt with the problematics of defining useful identity categories. A similar problem has emerged at the center of the feminist and the gay and lesbian movement, making it increasingly clear that intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, etc. are essential to understanding how subjects are formed. This dissertation positions itself at the intersection of architecture and heteronormativity. The goal of this investigation is to understand how the heterosexual matrix, as defined by Judith Butler, is implicated in architecture, and more specifically how this dominant model can be uncovered and subverted through what I call queer(ing) architecture.

I first establish a theoretical framework that allows me to understand the problem, and to ask the right questions. Afterwards I go on to use this framework to analyze the work of New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. In the first part I explore the work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault to understand how space, power, knowledge, and architecture can be understood. I question how power relations are built into architecture and how they can be deconstructed. Next I elaborate on the spatial implications of constructions of the body, gender and sexuality. I introduce queer theory to explain the workings of heteronormativity and explore existing queer interpretations of architecture. Based on this I define five principles of queer(ing) architecture. In the last part I undertake a queer reading of the work of DS+R in order to test how this framework for queer(ing) architecture can be used to analyze architecture. I discuss nine projects that all reveal their radically different approach to architecture. Despite their more explicit concern with constructions of gender and sexuality in some of the early projects, I also explore less obvious ways of queering architecture. Especially in the last three projects, ‘The Blur Building’, ‘The High Line’ and ‘Brasserie’ I make a more systematic deconstruction of normative assumptions in architecture.

I conclude that new ways of approaching architecture and specifically of defying forms of spatial bias are very much needed. One way of doing this is a queer approach to architecture, where the underlying heteronormativity of architecture is revealed and subverted. Diller Scofidio + Renfro have managed to establish a practice that successfully explores subject positions in architecture. By subverting heteronormative structures, they provide an interesting example of such a queer(ing) architecture.

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Arquitetura Queer e a Desconstrução de Poder no Espaço:

A Arquitetura de Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Goedele De Caluwé

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Arquitetura, Teoria Queer, Diller Scofidio + Renfro,

heteronormatividade

RESUMO:

A arquitetura é normalmente interpretada como a construção de objetos técnicos ou artísticos no espaço, mas de facto os edifícios são muito mais do que apenas um fundo neutro para a vida. Além do valor cultural e simbólico, a arquitetura também cria relações de poder no espaço e reflete a posição subjetiva de quem constrói. No entanto, o impacto subjetivo na criação de uma arquitetura específica e a influência de modelos arquiteturais sobre sujeitos pouco tem sido considerado na teoria da arquitetura. Nas últimas décadas, as ciências sociais têm lidado cada vez mais com o problema de definir categorias de identidades úteis. Uma questão semelhante tem sido central para o feminismo e o movimento gay e lésbico, e torna-se cada vez mais claro que são as interseções de género, sexualidade, raça, classe social, etc. que são essenciais para compreender a formação de sujeitos. Esta dissertação posiciona-se no cruzamento entre arquitetura com heteronormatividade. O objetivo deste trabalho é perceber como a matriz heterossexual, definida por Judith Butler, está implícita na arquitetura, e mais especificamente como esse modelo dominante pode ser revelado e subvertido a partir de uma técnica a que denomino de “queer(ing) architecture”.

Nos primeiros três capítulos desenvolvo um enquadramento teórico para melhor entender a questão e para poder formular as perguntas certas. Depois uso esse enquadramento para analisar o trabalho dos arquitetos americanos Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Na primeira parte investigo a obra de Henri Lefebvre e de Michel Foucault para definir ‘espaço’, ‘poder’, ‘saber’ e ‘arquitetura’, questiono como relações de poder estão construídas na própria arquitetura e como podem ser desconstruídas. Em seguida, elaboro sobre as implicações espaciais de construções de corpo, género e sexualidade e introduzo a teoria queer para explicar heteronormatividade. Por fim exploro interpretações de arquitetura queer existentes. Baseado nisto, defino cinco princípios de uma arquitetura queer. No quarto capítulo faço uma análise queer do trabalho de DS+R para verificar se o quadro da arquitetura queer pode ser utilizado para analisar projetos arquiteturais. Para tal, analiso nove projetos em que todos demonstram uma abordagem da arquitetura radicalmente diferente.

Concluo que são necessárias novas táticas de abordagem da arquitetura, mais especificamente desafiar formas de discriminação espacial. Uma forma de o fazer é pela abordagem queer da arquitetura, que revela a heteronormatividade latente da arquitetura e a subverte. Diller Scofidio + Renfro conseguiram estabelecer uma prática que explora posições de sujeitos na arquitetura. Subvertendo estruturas heteronormativas, eles dão um exemplo muito interessante de uma arquitetura queer.

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Table of Contents

0.   Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6  

1.   Space, Power, Architecture ................................................................................................... 7  1.1.   Henri Lefebvre: Space as a Social Product ................................................................................ 8  1.2.   Michel Foucault: Power, Control, Surveillance ...................................................................... 10  1.3.   Architecture, Power, Space ...................................................................................................... 13  

2.  Deconstructing Power in Space ........................................................................................... 16  2.1.   Trialectics/Thirdspace .............................................................................................................. 17  2.2.   Heterotopias ............................................................................................................................. 19  2.3.   Deconstruction through Heterotopias ...................................................................................... 21  

3.  Queer(ing) Architecture ....................................................................................................... 22  3.1.   The Body in Architecture ........................................................................................................ 23  3.2.   Gender and Sexuality in Space ................................................................................................ 26  3.3.   Queer Theory and Queer Architecture .................................................................................... 29  

Queer Theory ................................................................................................................................. 29  Queer Space and Queer Architecture ............................................................................................ 32  

3.4.   Queer(ing) Heterotopias: Framework for Analysis ................................................................. 35  Queering Heterotopias ................................................................................................................... 36  Framework for Analysis ................................................................................................................ 38  

4.  Diller Scofidio + Renfro ...................................................................................................... 40  Flesh: Architectural Probes ............................................................................................................ 42  withDrawing room ......................................................................................................................... 44  Slow House .................................................................................................................................... 46  Soft sell .......................................................................................................................................... 49  Para-site ......................................................................................................................................... 50  Facsimile ........................................................................................................................................ 52  Blur building .................................................................................................................................. 54  The High Line ................................................................................................................................ 56  Brasserie ........................................................................................................................................ 58  

5.   Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 61  

Works Cited .............................................................................................................................. 66  

List of Images ........................................................................................................................... 71  

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0. Introduction

Architecture is not a neutral background to human activity but reflects and affects

social relations and political structures. Power relations are laid out spatially in our

environment and subjects are partly construed in space. In a spatial context, by appointing

specific places to specific social relations and interactions, moral norms and regulations

are enforced that define who can do what where when and with whom. Many urban

planning schemes are based on the utopian notion of social reform through new spatial

models, and in fact these intentions can be found in any building typology. Michel

Foucault has argued that in modern times the exercise of power functions by normalizing

a dominant subject based on the rejection of an ‘other’. Because of this, social minorities

are often literally discriminated in space. One such minority group, which will also be the

focus of this work, is the lesbian, bisexual, gay, and trans community. Through what

Judith Butler calls the heterosexual matrix a specific alignment of sex, gender and

sexuality has been naturalized and normalized in our society. This heteronormativity

rejects any alternative genders and sexualities on the false premises that they are

unnatural. Nevertheless, queers do carve out places for themselves and they increasingly

manage to successfully establish lives outside of a heteronormative context. The analysis

of these ‘spaces of queers’ has been at the centre of much queer research in geography

over the last decades. In architecture there has been a similar interest in queer architecture,

though arguably on a much smaller scale.

This thesis takes issue with the heteronormative assumptions in spatial and

architectural thinking. But instead of asking how queers have created spaces for

themselves, I want to ask how architecture as a socio-spatial discipline is implicated in

maintaining heteronormativity. The aim is to make a more systematic analysis of

heterosexual bias in architecture, by proposing queer(ing) architecture as a way to reveal

and subvert power relations. In other words I want to ask; if architecture reflects power

relations, how can a queer approach provide new insights about deconstructing power

relations in space? By bringing together these two academic fields, one concerning power

relations in space and architecture, and one concerning the intersection of queer theory

and architecture, I want to explore the possibility of queer architecture as a way of

subverting power relations. Queer in this context does not only refer to sexualities, but

rather it is used as a specific way of looking, as a tool for deconstruction.

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In the first three chapters I will explore these issues on a theoretical level. The first

chapter deals with the question how power dynamics are reflected in architecture and how

architecture constitutes power relations. I will use the work of Michel Foucault and Henri

Lefebvre to define what I mean by ‘power’, ‘space’ and ‘architecture’. In the second

chapter I explore how power relations can be deconstructed in space, based on Soja’s

‘Thirdspace’ and Foucault’s ‘heterotopia’. The third chapter will focus on power

subversion in the context of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities. In this chapter I

will deal specifically with questions about corporeality in architecture and with the

intersection of queer theory and architecture. At the end of the third chapter I explore the

possibility of a queer interpretation of heterotopia in order to establish a framework that

combines both research fields into a series of principles that can be used to analyze

architectural projects.

The fourth and last chapter focuses on the work of New York based architects

Diller Scofidio and Renfro. I will use the principles developed in chapter three to analyze

how their work queers architectural theory and practice. I will discuss nine of their

projects, varying in scale and approach, and from different periods. My intention is to test

how this framework for queer(ing) architecture can be used to analyze architecture. On

top of that, the projects function as an illustration of the theoretical framework, and they

are used to broaden the scope of this dissertation. In this respect the theoretical and

analytical part should be seen as complimentary parts, rather than in a linear, or

chronological order. The analysis of Diller Scofidio and Renfro repeats the line of thought

established in chapters one, two and three but approaches it on a practical level. The

theoretical part is mainly used to reconsider architectural practice whereas the projects of

DS+R will show how queer can be a design strategy.

1. Space, Power, Architecture

In this chapter, I want to deal with how power relations are implicated in space and

the ways in which architecture reiterates these power relations. Since this investigation

will focus on conceptualizing a framework for queering architecture and for

deconstructing power relations in architecture, it is important to specify how I use ‘space’,

‘power’ and ‘architecture’ in this context. Another key issue is the way these three

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concepts relate to each other. Considering that this investigation draws on various

disciplines, it is essential to clarify how concepts are transferred and translated between

them. It is clear that, in a purely architectural discussion, ‘space’ might be interpreted

loosely as the void between the walls of a building. Space, then, would be considered one

of the elementary components of architecture in the perhaps obvious sense that

architecture creates spaces. This notion quickly becomes problematic when we think

about space in a larger social context, or in terms of mental space for example. Similarly,

‘architecture’ might be interpreted very differently in a sociological or political context

than from within an architectural discipline.

To avoid these problems with translation, I will start by briefly discussing

Lefebvre’s book “The Production of Space”, where all the components of this dissertation

already come together. Specifically Lefebvre’s conception of space interests me here.

After that I will consider Foucault’s writings on power, control and surveillance in order

to deal more explicitly with the way power relations can be understood in space. Based on

these two writers, the next question I will deal with is how space and power are related to

each other and, more specifically, how both are important for my definition of architecture

here. At the end of this chapter, I hope to have answered three questions: How can we

define space as more than a neutral background to life and architecture as more than just

built objects in space; how do power relations interfere with both space and architecture

and how does architecture reflect and produce power relations?

1.1. Henri Lefebvre: Space as a Social Product

French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre is known above all for his

interest in lived experience and everyday life. His most extensive work about space is

“The Production of Space”, originally published in French as “La Production de

l’Espace” in 1974. The book offers an elaborate critique of the understanding of space,

with the intention of shifting attention onto issues of space in understanding social

relations, and to theorize about how we can obtain knowledge about spatiality. To

Lefebvre, spatiality, historicity and sociality are equally important and implicate each

other. Being in the world is always historical, social and spatial at the same time (Soja

73). It is important to remark that Lefebvre’s critique is written from a Marxist position,

which explains his emphasis on modes of production and particularly on the effects of

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Capitalism. He considers space as a social and political product, and defines it as the

ultimate locus and medium of struggle. It is through the production of space that

domination and power are maintained. Understanding how space is constructed and used

is therefore essential (Elden 183).

The book starts with the critique that all the existing conceptualizations of space

are based on Euclidean geometry. According to Descartes, space became a science, a

mathematical concern, and ultimately a “mental thing” (Lefebvre 2). It was formulated on

the basis of extension; thought of in terms of coordinates, lines and planes (Elden 186).

Yet the transition from this abstract space to reality, to material space and to social life

unfolding in space is very problematic. To deal with this problem Lefebvre distinguishes

not only a physical space and a mental space, but adds the concept of a social space

because “every society produces a space, its own space” (Lefebvre 31). The introduction

of this social space is meant to break down the dominance of the object-subject binary in

spatial imagination, because lived experience is more complex and cannot be reduced to

purely concrete and physical or purely abstract and mental notions of space.

Throughout the book, Lefebvre redefines this triadic construction in various ways.

The most important one is his distinction between spatial practice (or perceived space),

spaces of representation (or conceived space) and representational spaces (or lived space),

which is called ‘trialectics’ (33). Elden summarizes these concepts in “Understanding

Lefebvre: Theory and The Possible” as follows:

The first of these takes space as physical form, real space, space that is generated and used.

The second is the space of savoir (knowledge) and logic, of maps, mathematics, of space as

the instrumental space of social engineers and urban planners, of navigators and explorers.

Space as a mental construct, imagined space. The third sees space as produced and modified

over time and through its use, spaces invested with symbolism and meaning, the space of

connaissance (less formal or more local forms of knowledge), space as real-and-imagined.

(Elden 190)

It is through this triad that Lefebvre also critiques urbanists and architects for being stuck

in abstract notions of space. According to him, architects and urbanists assume that you

can take a portion of space and work with it in complete freedom but “this space has

nothing innocent about it: it answers to particular tactics and strategies; it is, quite simply,

the space of the dominant mode of production” (360). Moreover, architecture reduces

space to images, to graphic representations, impoverishing the richness of social space and

10

ignoring the experience of the ‘users’ or ‘inhabitants’ in favor of the genius of the

architect-creator. It is also in this context that Lefebvre stresses the importance of

reintroducing the body, since it is exactly this corporeal experience outside of the purely

visual, that does not find expression in abstract architectural or urbanist conception.

Another important consideration in relation to architecture is that it tends to naively

imitate discourses of power under a seemingly objective, scientific or philosophical notion

of spatial creation. However, power relations are always implied in spatial and

architectural production, since they are produced in a particular way according to the

social, political and historical context in which they take place. Since Lefebvre’s1, space

has become the centre of questions on social theory, this new cultural geography as

Hetherington calls it, is based on three key theoretical claims about space, which will also

form the basis of how I use the term:

First, space and place are not treated as sets of relations outside of society but implicated in

the production of those social relations and are themselves, in turn, socially produced.

Second, space and place are seen to be situated within relations of power and in some cases

within relations of power-knowledge. Power is said to be performed through spatial relations

and encoded in the representation of space (…) Third, spatial relations and places associated

with those spatial relations are seen to be multiple and contested. A place does not mean the

same thing for one group of social agents as it does for another. (Hetherington 31)

I will come back to Lefebvre and his Trialectics in the second chapter, to focus on how

openings and subversions can be created in this dominant space.

1.2. Michel Foucault: Power, Control, Surveillance

To continue, I first want to focus on some key concepts in Foucault’s work. Due to

the size of his work and the limited frame of this dissertation, I will only focus on the

specific points required for this investigation. I will start by briefly explaining his

conception of power in “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison”, particularly in

relation to his analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. Next, I will refer to his writings

on governmentality. Finally I will use an interview Paul Rabinow conducted with

1 I use Lefebvre’s work here but the writings of Foucault and Bachelard were equally influential on the development of this new cultural geography. (Hetherington 1997: 31)

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Foucault in 1984, titled “Space, Knowledge, Power”, to reflect on some of his remarks on

architecture in order to move on to the next part.

In “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison” Foucault describes the

evolution of the penal system, in order to show how the way power is exercised

completely changed over the course of the eighteenth century. The central metaphor he

used to explain this new technology of power is Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This

disciplinary power, as Foucault calls it -the meticulous supervision and control of bodies

and their behavior- can be exercised because of the way the panopticon organizes bodies

and gazes. The spatial principles of disciplinary power are not only represented in the

panoptic prison, but they were also translated into the structure of asylums, hospitals, and

schools and thus disseminated across the entire social body. In a panoptic structure, the

subject is constantly seen but cannot see himself, causing him/her to reflect the

disciplinary power onto him/herself. This mechanism renders the physical presence of an

actual observer irrelevant: it is a “magnificent machine” that “automatizes and

disindividualizes power” (Foucault “Panopticism” 341). In a larger social context,

disciplinary mechanisms operate by measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal

(Foucault “Panopticism” 339). A norm is established, and information about bodies is

collected in order to measure them against this norm. In other words, disciplinary power

depends on constructions of knowledge in order to sustain dominance. This connection

between knowledge and power is an essential part of Foucault’s work. Also important is

that power cannot be said to belong to someone, it does not reside in one person, yet it

penetrates every level of society and is present in all social relations and interactions.

“Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of

bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the

relation in which individuals are caught up” (Foucault “Panopticism” 341). Instead of

considering power only as consisting of negative effects such as repression and exclusion,

we must consider power as a productive force with both positive and negative effects.

Despite patterns of domination, power is highly unstable and cannot be monopolized.

Developing on this, I want to focus more specifically on parts of Foucault’s work

that are useful in linking power with spatiality. We have already seen the most obvious

example, the analysis of Bentham’s Panopticon. Foucault uses space and architecture as a

tool to analyze power structures, rather than investigating space itself. But at the same

time, it is the spatial lay-out of the panopticon, its architectural composition, that positions

12

bodies in space in such a manner, as to obtain a certain effect in their behavior. This is

quite a different approach to that of Henri Lefebvre, but it can provide some interesting

ideas for my approach to architecture in the context of this thesis. To explain this, the

concept of government is important, which Foucault defines as “le conduire des conduits”

or the conduct of conducts (qtd. in Huxley 186-187). Governmentality, then, involves:

(…) not only examination of practices and programmes aiming to shape, guide and govern

the behaviour of others and the self, or the calculations, measurements and technologies

involved in knowing and directing the qualities of a population; but also pays attention to the

aims and aspirations, the mentalities and rationalities intertwined in attempts to steer forms

of conduct. These mentalities or rationalities of government are framed within ‘regimes of

truth’ that inform the ‘thought’ secreted in projects of rule. (Huxley 187)

Again we see that the production of knowledge and the exercising of power go hand in

hand. Foucault also notes that in the eighteenth century, with the rise of the disciplinary

society, governing became more and more preoccupied with the organization of space as

one of the ways to control subjects. This resulted for example in the notion that the city

should represent the state, as a model for the governmental rationality of the whole

territory (Foucault “Space” 369). Through the organization of urban space, specific

behaviours and models of order can be enforced, just like in the panopticon. In an

interview with Paul Rabinow in 1984, Foucault says: “Space is fundamental in any form

of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power” (“Space” 376). Again

here the link between space and power is emphasized.

But what about architecture? In the same interview, Foucault also gives an account

of architecture:

It is true that for me, architecture, (…) is only taken as an element of support, to ensure a

certain allocation of people in space, a canalization of their circulation, as well as the coding

of their reciprocal relations. So it is not only considered as an element in space, but is

especially thought of as a plunge into a field of social relations in which it brings about some

specific effects. (Foucault “Space” 376-377)

Only when architecture is considered as more than merely an element in space, is it

possible to understand how power relations are reflected in it. What is essential, however,

is that due to the complexity and the diffuse nature of power, space or architecture alone

cannot be said to be responsible for creating specific effects. In other words, we cannot

speak of an essentially liberating project or an oppressive project, since the intentions of

13

the architect and the actual social reality of the interactions taking place in a building do

not necessarily follow a straight line (Foucault “Space” 372). Spatial distribution does

influence freedom and oppression, but it is not the determining factor, since nothing is

fundamental. In other words:

… it is somewhat arbitrary to try to dissociate the effective practice of freedom by people,

the practice of social relations, and the spatial distributions in which they find themselves. If

they are separated, they become impossible to understand. Each can only be understood

through the other. (Foucault “Space” 372)

Here we find an echo of Lefebvre’s critiques on architecture as merely a metal

construction that fails to consider the everyday reality of the inhabitants using a building

or a space.

1.3. Architecture, Power, Space

It is clear now that power relations have an important spatial dimension, but the

relation between architecture and space is still unclear. Taking all the above into

consideration, it is therefore important to define architecture in this context. Again

Lefebvre’s work is important. In order to analyze power relations in architecture we

cannot only consider buildings as objects in space, we must consider architecture as being

part of space in Lefebvre’s terms, as both constituting and influencing social relations. To

explain this more clearly it is perhaps interesting to turn back to his trialectics and

consider that all three spatial processes -perceived space, conceived space and lived

space- are implied in architecture. More explicitly, our definition of architecture must

consider first of all the material and tactile qualities of the building. Architecture

essentially establishes borders and positions bodies and objects in space. These borders

influence possible movements, interactions and lines of vision. Symbolic references may

reflect ideologies. The materials used affect the acoustic qualities of a room and the

interior design influences where and whether it is possible to sit and have a conversation,

or only to pass through. Second, the architectural project is conceptualized by an architect,

working from his or her own specific background and culture, and this is reflected in the

visualizations and esthetic choices used. Apart from that, there is often an institution

involved, acting as client, who wants a project to reflect their ideas and position in society.

They decide who is meant to use a building, for what purpose, when, and how. Finally,

the way the building is used and adapted by inhabitants and the way social relations are

14

played out inside its spaces may deviate from all these intentions, resulting in a space that

facilitates other social relations. As Foucault noticed, none of these factors are

fundamental in any way yet the resulting spatial reality depends on the interaction of all of

them (Foucault “Space” 352).

With this definition of architecture, we can begin to ask questions about power in

architecture. More specifically two important questions remain: how does architecture

reflect power relations, and can architecture produce specific power relations, and if so,

how? Again the Panopticon comes to mind, but I want to create a more general framework

here, that can be used to analyze any building. Shah distinguishes three ways in which

architecture regulates, which I will use to explain this further:

First, architecture can play a communicative role by expressing cultural or symbolic

meanings. Second, the architecture can affect how people interact. Third, architecture can be

biased and treat certain social groups or values more favorably. (Shah “Introduction”)

To understand how buildings communicate, we have to ask how buildings convey

meaning. In his book “Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of

Modern Building Types”, Thomas Markus tries to explain this by comparing buildings to

language. Just like language, a building can be seen as a classification system that

encapsulates power structures; buildings organize people, things and ideas in space so as

to make conceptual systems concrete. They rely partly on prescriptive rules, and they

reflect the values and intentions of the author in length, subdivision, tone, the degree of

elaboration of parts, and the things that are not said -the silent discourse (Markus 4). The

user of a building can be compared to the reader or listener. It is important to stress that

the reading of a building depends on the position of the reader. Every subject may

experience and interpret a building differently. There is however a common knowledge

associated with building typologies, a knowledge that originates outside of the building

and that directs our understanding (Markus 23). By implementing specific spatial

organizations, the building can be recognized as a certain ‘type’, resulting in specific

behavior. For example, when entering a library or a church, we will know to keep our

voice down, although we might be visiting that specific building for the first time. This

way, behaviors are normalized in specific places in such a way that their spatial

characteristics dictate our actions. Specific furnishings and materials serve to evoke

associations or feelings, and this allows for certain characteristics to be communicated to

the user. Marble and stone for example, may express honesty, trustworthiness, and

15

reliability -think for example about the space of a bank, or a courthouse- whereas wood

may induce a feeling of warmth and coziness (Shah “Communicating through Cultural

and Symbolic Values in Buildings”). Just like languages this meaning is culturally

determined and may find different expressions all over the world.

Architectural layout also influences the type and degree of social interaction in

a building. This is perhaps most obvious in urban planning. Zoning plans literally divide

the city into functional areas and adapt the design and development of those areas to that

division. By doing so, zoning expresses “for-granted conceptions of what is appropriate,

which subjects should engage in what sort of activities, where and when” (Allmendinger

and Tewdwr-Jones 145). The same thing happens inside buildings. Specific rooms are

devoted to certain activities, and establish who has access to them and whether one is

alone in them or not. Furnishings, such as benches, couches or water fountains, increase

the possibility for chance encounters, small talk and exchange, whereas empty hallways

stimulate movement and passage (Shah “The Social Ordering of Space”). Markus defines

the permeability of a building as a defining factor in how buildings control the movement

of specific users. Different circulations paths can be established according to the function

of the user. Furthermore, lines of vision determine who sees whom, and determine the

possibility of surveillance. Finally, hierarchical structures can be reflected in architectural

layout by the amount of space allocated to specific persons. The more private space, the

more control someone has over their environment (Shah “Biased Space”). These territorial

boundaries create power differentials in space.

This leaves us with the question of how bias is reflected in architecture. First of all,

government regulations may favor certain groups over others because of the amount of

attention that is for example given to accessibility or safety requirements. Banalities such

as a single step at the entrance of a building, or the lack of an elevator, actively deny some

people access to buildings. Apart from that, esthetic prescriptions favor local styles over

alternatives and express a norm of beauty approved by the state. Gendered spaces may

restrict who can enter where, or may create hostile environments for non-conforming

individuals. Specific zoning techniques may favor car access and disadvantage those who

cannot afford a car and who rely on public transport.

In this chapter, I have tried to show how architecture reflects and produces power

relations in space, by showing that our built environment is not just a neutral background

16

to social activities. Gieryn makes a very convincing analysis of how technological

artifacts interact with human agency. Without going into too much detail here, I want to

point to his remark that “analysis must respect the double reality of buildings, as

structures structuring agency but never beyond the potential restructuring by human

agents” (41). Here again Foucault’s remarks on architecture are very fitting. Architecture

does establish power relations in space, but there is no such thing as a fundamentally

liberating or repressive project (Foucault “Space” 350). Nevertheless, he also notes: “(…)

that it (architecture) can and does produce positive effects when the liberating intentions

of the architect coincide with the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom”

(Foucault “Space” 351). Power relations played out in buildings are part of a complex

process of interaction between the intentions of the architect, the material reality of the

building and the actions played out inside its walls. Or as Markus formulates it:

“Buildings are more than passive containers for relations. Like all practices they are

formative, as much through the things that happen in them, their functional program, as by

their spatial relations and their form” (Markus 11). In order to analyze power relations in

architecture, we have to take all of this into account.

2. Deconstructing Power in Space

As we have seen in the previous chapter, power is implicated everywhere in space.

In this chapter, I want to focus on theories of resistance. Although some small openings

were created in the definitions I developed earlier, the possibilities for resistance in this

web of dominance have not yet been fully elucidated. Since I wish to establish how power

relations can be deconstructed in space, this is a central issue. In analogy with the first

chapter I will again start from Lefebvre, this time integrating Soja’s interpretation of his

trialectics into the concept of “Thirdspace”. Next, I will develop a similar argument, this

time based on Foucault’s text “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” from 1967, in

which he writes about heterotopias. With these two texts, I shall attempt to identify what

strategies of resistance may look like and to understand how they are played out spatially.

To avoid any confusion, I want to first explain how I use the term ‘deconstruction’

in relation to architecture. Contrary to how it has often been used, I am not referring to a

specific architectural style (Leich 300). Rather, I base this discussion on some of the

17

writings of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. More specifically I use the interview

“Architecture Where the Desire May Live” from 1986, in which he tries to explain what

deconstruction means.

Deconstruction therefore analyses and questions conceptual pairs which are currently

accepted as self-evident and natural as if they hadn’t been institutionalized at some precise

point, as if they had no history. Because of being taken for granted, they restrict thinking.

(Derrida 302)

Deconstruction then, does not just mean ‘the opposite of construction’, but it is a

technique to expose hierarchies and dualism within Western thought.

2.1. Trialectics/Thirdspace

In “Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places”,

Soja uses Lefebvre’s work on spatial trialectics to develop a new perspective on spatial

analysis. His goal is to repeat Lefebvre’s attempt to bring space back to the centre of

attention. To do this he proposes ways to start thinking differently about space, in less

absolute terms. Soja does this through a process of what he calls “critical thirding” where

an original binary opposition is restructured through a creative process in order to create

new alternatives: “I try to open up our spatial imaginaries to ways of thinking and acting

politically that respond to all binarisms, to any attempt to confine thought and political

action to only two alternatives, by interjecting an-Other set of choices” (Soja 5). It is in a

similar way that he analyses Lefebvre’s work. The spatial trialectics are essentially meant

to break the object/subject binary that has held spatial thinking in its grip for so long.

Whenever faced with such binarized categories (subject-object, mental-material, natural-

social, bourgeoisie-proletariat local-global, center-periphery, agency-structure), Lefebvre

persistently sought to crack them open by introducing an-Other term, a third possibility or

“moment” that partakes of the original pairing but is not just a simple combination or an “in-

between” position along some all-inclusive continuum. (Soja 60)

In the case of Lefebvre’s trialectics representational space acts as the ‘other’ term. It is in

this lived space that resistance can take place. By disordering the binary, he creates an

open alternative that rejects all permanent constructions. This ‘third’, or ‘thirdspace’ as

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Soja calls it2, is not the end of it, but the intention is to keep going, to build further, and to

continuously expand the production of knowledge (Soja 61). In “The Production of

Space”, Lefebvre argues that the dominant representations of space turn lived space

invisible, and obscure the relations of power that produce those spaces in the first place

(Hetherington 22). Resistance in this context means revealing these power relations. In a

capitalist society, power is maintained through the production of difference. Because of

this differentiation, spatial contradictions and fragmentations are produced (Soja 87). It is

precisely in these spaces that space is opened up for resistance:

Representational spaces involve making use of sites that have been left behind or left out as

fragments produced by the tensions within the contradictory space of capitalism that lies

hidden by its representations of space. The use of sites whose attributed meaning leaves

them somewhat ambivalent and uncertain allows for these spaces, according to Lefebvre, to

offer a vantage point from which the production of space can be made visible and be

critically viewed. For Lefebvre, it is the task of acts of resistance, in such spaces, to make

space as a whole visible, and in so doing reveal the social relations of power that operate

within society. (Hetherington 23)

This focus on the possibility for and the importance of revealing the hidden power

structures in our environment gives us a primary direction to begin answering how power

relations in architecture might be deconstructed. The problem with Lefebvre’s (and

Soja’s) approach, according to Hetherington, is that he still ends up creating a binary logic

in his work (24). He associates his representational spaces with complete freedom, in

opposition to the spaces of representation that reflect total order, where the former is

privileged over the latter. This reveals a certain “romance of resistance and transgression”,

as Hetherington puts it: “The point that Lefebvre misses is that spaces of resistance are

also spaces of alternative modes of ordering; they have their own codes, rules and

symbols and they generate their own relations of power” (Hetherington 24). In the next

section, I will focus on Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, to counter this problem and to

expand the conceptualization of how we might deconstruct power relations in architecture.

2 The term ‘thirdspace’ refers to Homi Bhabba’s writings on ‘the third space’, in “The Location of Culture”

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2.2. Heterotopias

The term heterotopias was coined by Michel Foucault in his famous text “Of Other

Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”, originally titled “Des Espaces Autres” and first

published in French magazine “Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité” in 1984. The text

was the basis of a lecture given by Foucault in 1967, and dates from that period.3 In what

follows, I will first give a short summary of the text to explain the meaning of the term. I

will then use Hetherington’s analysis from his work “The Badlands of Modernity:

Heterotopia and Social Ordering”, to show how heterotopias are useful for exploring

strategies of resistance in space.

Foucault starts off with the assertion that the present time is above all the epoch of

space, but that it is important to realize that space has a history. In the first part of the text,

he briefly traces this history, concluding that: “In our era, space presents itself to us in the

form of patterns of ordering” (Foucault “Of Other Spaces” 331). Sites can be described by

the relations that define them. Also, space is not just seen as a void filled with individuals

and things, but it interacts with them. Continuing, Foucault moves on to describe a

particular type of site:

However I am only interested in a few of these arrangements: to be precise, those which are

endowed with the curious property of being in relation with all the others, but in such a way

as to suspend, neutralize or invert the set of relationships designed, reflected or mirrored by

themselves. These spaces, which are in rapport in some way with all the others, and yet

contradict them, are of two general types. (Foucault “Of Other Spaces” 332)

These two types are first of all utopias, or sites with no real place, and second what he

calls heterotopias: real places “in which all the real arrangements, all the other real

arrangements that can be found within society, are at one and the same time represented,

challenged and overturned” (Foucault “Of Other Spaces” 332). The description of

heterotopias is called heterotopology and, according to Foucault, is based on six

principles. First of all, there are two categories of heterotopias: heterotopias of crisis,

which have mostly disappeared in our society, and heterotopias of deviation, such as the

3 Since the manuscript was never reviewed for publication by the author it is not part of the official corpus of his work. It was released into the public domain and can be found online at http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf

20

prison. Second, their functioning is specific to a certain time and place and can change.

Third, they are capable of “juxtaposing in a single real place different spaces and locations

that are incompatible with each other” (Foucault “Of Other Spaces” 335). For example,

the theatre brings different spaces on the same space of the stage. Fourth, they break with

traditional time and they either accumulate time, as in a museum, or represent the

absolutely temporal, as in a fair or festival. Fifth, they are both isolated and penetrable,

but never freely accessible. Access is either compulsory, like in a prison, or selective. And

finally sixth, they have a function in relation to all the space that remains: either they

create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, or they create a space that is other

(Foucault “Of Other Spaces” 333-336).

Foucault uses a number of examples in his text to illustrate his explanation,

ranging from cemeteries, psychiatric hospitals and prisons to brothels, theatres and motel

rooms. I want to focus here on three important remarks Hetherington makes in relation to

heterotopias. First of all, he claims that they are about freedom and control, order and

disorder. The concept of heterotopias has been used in various ways, but usually it refers

to sites of resistance. However, if we look at Foucault’s examples, we see that, in fact,

they can be both. Both the panopticon and a festival as a matter of speech can be

considered heterotopias (Hetherington 8). It is for this reason that Hetherington describes

them as “places of alternate orderings”, since both total freedom and total control are still

forms of social ordering. As he explains:

Heterotopia do not exist in the order of things, but in the ordering of things. They can be

both marginal and central, associated with both transgressive outsiderness as well as

‘carceral’ sites of social control and the desire for a perfect order. But in both cases

heterotopia are sites of all things displaced, marginal, novel or rejected, or ambivalent.

(Hetherington 46)

Second, there is a relation between utopias and heterotopias. Hetherington explains that

the term utopia, as first described by Thomas Moore in his book “Utopia” from 1516, is

actually made up of two words, meaning ‘no place’ and ‘good place’. Heterotopias lie in

between these two poles:

Utopia is a striving for something impossible, social order, but whose striving has ordering

effects both intended and unintended. (…) That order is never achieved but endlessly

deferred into new modes of ordering that are utopic in intention but something else in

practice. The realm of the neutral is the realm of social ordering. It is the space where

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difference is both encountered and ordered. The space of the neutral, therefore, is the space

of an alternate ordering; it is the space I have called, after Foucault, heterotopia.

(Hetherington 67)

Heterotopias have a utopic dimension, in the sense that they can act as a sort of

laboratories where societies or groups of people try out alternative ideas about the

organization of society. A third important remark is related to the relation between

otherness and difference, and how this affects the meaning of heterotopias.

It is clear in Foucault that are about the association of difference with Otherness. It is how

being, acting, thinking or writing differently comes to be seen as Other, and the use to which

that Otherness is put as a mode of (dis)ordering that is the most significant aspect of

heterotopia. (Hetherington 51)

In other words, heterotopias use difference as a way of disrupting the dominant ordering

of society. As I have mentioned before, otherness is something that is produced through

knowledge, and then normalized and enforced by disciplinary mechanisms in modern

society. The ‘other’ in Foucault is also established through a process of critical thirding,

since it is not a regular site, nor a utopian site, but something else (Soja 158). But because

heterotopias are sites of orderings, which can be either spaces of freedom or spaces of

control, Foucault doesn’t have the problem of creating another binary opposition.

2.3. Deconstruction through Heterotopias

So how are Thirdspace and Heterotopias useful for revealing possible strategies of

resistance? According to Soja, the essence of both writers’ arguments is similar, but their

approaches are different:

The assertion of an alternative envisioning of spatiality (as illustrated in the Heterotopologies

of Foucault, the trialectics and thirdings of Lefebvre…) directly challenges (and is intended

to challengingly deconstruct) all conventional modes of spatial thinking. There are not just

‘other spaces’ to be added on to the geographical imagination, they are also ‘other than’ the

established ways of thinking spatiality. (Soja 163)

Lefebvre’s approach is interesting because of the potential of ‘critical thirding’ as a

strategy for deconstruction. But his representational spaces do not give a very clear

account of how architecture specifically might be implicated in this. In Foucault’s account

of heterotopias, which starts as a more general inquiry into the way society is organized

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spatially, the described spaces immediately become very concrete, and more architectural

if you will. This is not solely because he refers to actual sites and buildings, but because

of the way he describes them. Heterotopias cannot be considered in isolation from all the

other places in a given society: “It is the heterogeneous combination of the materiality,

social practices and events that were located at this site and what they came to represent in

contrast with other sites, that allow us to call it a heterotopia” (Hetherington 8). So when

Foucault describes the motel room where illicit sex takes place, these three elements have

to be taken into account. The motel shelters and hides at the same time, it provides a space

for an activity that is not tolerated out in the open. Yet no architect would ever design a

motel for these purposes. However, the specific motel esthetic, its cheap materials and its

location along big roads, just far enough from the suburban neighborhoods and close

enough not to arouse suspicion when going there, does facilitate its functioning as such.

And at the same time, the act of illicit sex in the motel room also tells us something about

how and where legitimate sex is organized in society.

I argue that it is the deconstruction of power relations through the creation of

alternate orderings that allows for resistance to exist. This means that we need to look at

whether and how buildings, projects or spaces create alternate orderings, and how, in their

architecture, in their materiality, social practices and events difference is used as a

strategy for displacing normalized assumptions. The ‘other’ questions binaries, not only

because it is other in the sense of being marginal, but also because it reveals, in space,

how those binaries were created in the first place, and uses that knowledge to imagine new

possibilities.

3. Queer(ing) Architecture

So far I have talked about power relations in architecture in the most general

terms. I have developed a definition of architecture in order to be able to work with power

relations in space. I have explained how difference, normalization, otherness, margins and

orderings are all important concepts to understand the deconstruction of power relation.

But this thesis attempts to investigate not just any deconstruction of power relations in

architecture, but queer architecture as a means to deconstruct power relations. This queer

dimension and the focus on difference and otherness in the sense of non-heteronormative

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genders and sexualities is an essential part of this work. Therefore, in this chapter I will

define the angle from which I write, and from which I intend to analyze Diller and

Scofidio’s architecture.

This chapter is divided in three parts. Firstly, to establish a connection between

power relations and architecture on the one hand, and gender and sexuality on the other,

we have to look at the body and at constructions of corporeality. In “The Body in

Architecture” I trace how the body is and has been implicated in all architectural

production. After that, in “Gender and Sexuality in Space” I focus on the gendered and

sexed nature of bodies and on the underlying assumptions about gender and sexuality in

architecture. More specifically, in this chapter I want to question how heteronormativity is

implicated in and maintained through architecture. In the third part “Queer Theory and

Spatial Analysis” I give a short account of queer theory, and about queer research

strategies. After that I will give an overview of how queer theory has been applied in a

spatial and architectural context. The main question in this chapter is whether ‘queer

space’ and ‘queer architecture’ are useful concepts and how they can be defined. Finally,

the fourth chapter “Queer(ing) Heterotopias: Framework for Analysis” brings together my

conclusions from chapters one, two and three in order to establish a framework for

analyzing the architectural projects in the fourth chapter. Specifically I want to explore the

possibilities of combining a queer perspective with the concept of heterotopias, as a

strategy for deconstructing power relations in architecture. The aim is to formulate a set of

questions or principles that can be used to analyze architectural projects.

3.1. The Body in Architecture

In order to understand how architecture reflects constructions of gender and

sexuality, we must start by explaining how the body interacts with architecture, and how

the body is represented and interpreted through architecture. First of all, we can’t forget

that the primary function of any building is sheltering or containing bodies; to provide a

space for bodies to engage in a certain activity. On top of that, as I have explained

previously, buildings regulate the movement of bodies and influence the body’s senses.

However, going beyond this, I will argue that architecture as a system of representation is

built on metaphors of the body, and that the origin of its assumptions and rules about

proportion, organization and esthetic draw on associations with the human body.

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When we trace back the origins of Western architectural theory, we see that since

Vitruvius in ancient Rome, the center of all architectural rules and norms has been the

body of man. As Diane Agrest points out,

The body, transformed into an abstract system of formalization, is thus incorporated into the

architectural system as form, through the orders, hierarchies and the general system of

formal organization allowing for this anthropocentric discourse to function at the level of the

unconscious. (Agrest 361)

In other words, architecture does not refer to a concrete body, but through a series of

symbolic operations, an idealized and formalized body has formed an unconscious basis

for architecture. Metaphors between the body and architecture can be found throughout

architectural history. One could even argue that changing views on architecture are in fact

related to changing perspectives on the body. In “New Wombs: Electronic Bodies and

Architectural Disorders”, Palumbo gives an account of how different corporeal models

have resulted in different architectural models. She also starts from Vitruvius, explaining

how his system of proportion takes the body as a model for measurement. In the 15th

century, Da Vinci interprets Vitruvius’ system in his drawing of the Vitruvian man,

adding onto it a demonstration of the commensurability of man and space as a sort of

proof of harmony (8). After that, Palumbo argues, under the influence of Cartesian

dualism between mind and body, “the idea of the body as a model of formal measurement

was replaced by the idea of the body as a system of perception. This led to the conviction

that architectural forms should be concordant with laws of the senses rather than the

proportions of the body” (12). Beauty became dependent on the sensitivity of the subject,

rather than being the result of harmonious proportions in the object. Under the influence

of Freud, the idea of body as a psychophysical system was developed. In parallel

Palumbo argues: “the perceptive reading of the eye was replaced by a new semantic and

psychological reading of architecture” (16). Walter Benjamin, for example, interprets Art

Nouveau architecture as an expression of a symbolic contact between the organic world,

the nervous system and technique; the cables of the newly developed data communication

network (Palumbo 16).

In the twentieth century, the advent of the machine challenged this long line of

single and univocal models of the body. Le Corbusier’s ‘Modulor’ was perhaps one of the

final attempts to base an entire architectural system on a single model of the human body.

The technological developments of the late twentieth century changed the perception of

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the body as a homogeneous ‘whole’. In the era of the cyborg, the body, “having been

stripped, opened, disemboweled, is now dilated, transformed and reconfigured” (Palumbo

23). Whereas the body moves ever further beyond its mere physical nature, and becomes

an increasingly artificial “postorganic body”, the artificial is seen to turn back to nature.

Architecture is transformed into “a system where the possibility of relation predominates

over the possibility of measurement, where the capacity for connection and interaction

predominates over formal definition” (Palumbo 31). In other words, new ways are

established of creating relations with a fluid, ever changing body. Here, the body is a

model of “sensitivity, flexibility, intelligence and communicative capacity” (Palumbo 5).

Despite all this, Elisabeth Grosz argues in “Architecture from the Outside” that the

body is somehow missing from architecture (14). She is referring to the fact that all of

those corporeal models in fact only represent one type of corporeality, or one type of

subject, namely the white heterosexual male (“Architecture” 40). As she puts is: “space

and building have always been conceived as sexually neutral, indifferent to sexual

specificity (…)” (“Architecture” xix). Architecture represents the male body, or male

conceptions of the body, under the false premise that it represents all of humanity, the

human body. So “it is not that architecture excludes embodiment. Of all the arts,

architecture offers embodiment the greatest sense of acceptance. But what is not

embodied is the idea of sexual difference” (Grosz “Architecture” 13). What we must try

to determine is the gendered and sexualized nature of architecture. So when Palumbo

describes how architectural projects seem to take on the characteristics of bodies, we need

to ask: which bodies? What is interesting is not just the fact that a house could interact

with its inhabitant, but also the way these new connections between humans and

technological objects can change our conceptions of embodiment. Technology is not just

added onto a stable and inert body, it changes and challenges the very idea of that body. In

this context I want to mention Donna Haraway’s “The Cyborg Manifesto”, in which she

theorizes on the feminist possibilities and dangers of the cyborg. What is sure, as

Elisabeth Grosz emphasizes as well, is that the reintroduction of the body into architecture

and the question of corporeality will entail some very important questions about virtuality

and technology.

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3.2. Gender and Sexuality in Space

Since the seventies and eighties, the neutrality of the urban realm and of space in

general has come under scrutiny. Feminists working in geography and urban planning

started analyzing how gender and space intersect, and how our environment reflects

patriarchal society. It was after all in the specific spaces of suburban America that the

second wave of feminism began, with Friedan’s description of ‘the problem that has no

name’ in “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963. In the following decades, also within the

architectural discipline awareness began to grow about the sheer discrimination women

still faced. A key reference here is a text from high profile architect Denise Scott’s Brown.

In 1989 she published an essay titled “Room at the top? Sexism and the Star System in

Architecture” in which she describes the shocking amount of sexism she deals with in her

professional life on a daily basis. Beginning in the nineties, a growing body of theoretical

works has been dealing with issues of gender and architecture in a more general sense. In

particular Weisman’s “Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-made

Environment” (1994), Duncan’s “Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and

Sexuality” (1996), and Rendell’s “Gender, Space, Architecture: an Interdisciplinary

Introduction” (2000) are noteworthy here.

In the years that followed, under the influence of the gay and lesbian movement,

research in the new academic field of gay and lesbian studies also started addressing

questions about sexuality. This resulted in a growing awareness about intersections

between sexuality and space. In the Anthology “Mapping Desire: Geographies of

Sexualities” from 1995, for example, Bell and Valentine bring together research about

how sexual identities are constructed and performed in space, from various backgrounds

and locations all over the world, to explore “the ways in which the spatial and the sexual

constitute each other” (2). Although this interest in the intersection between sexuality and

spatiality has not found equal resonance in architectural theory, there are still some

interesting works to consider which I will deal with more explicitly in the next part. For

now, I will focus on how the sexed body, gender and sexuality are implicated in

architecture and how heteronormativity is maintained through architecture.

As I have explained, it was predominantly the male body that served as a model

for architecture. This specific corporeal model has resulted in a series of binary

oppositions that continue to dominate architectural thinking to the present day. Starting

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from the Cartesian mind/body dualism, spatial concepts are linked to the male/female

division (Duncan 2). This model results in spatial conceptual pairs such as

interior/exterior, or structure/decoration, where architecture is seen as a masculine

profession, and interior design as a feminine one. But one of the most important ways of

regulating the spatial organization of gender and sexuality has been the distinction

between public and private space (Duncan 3). This structure can be linked to the

distinction between the rational and the emotional, in which the former is strictly male and

the latter strictly female. Reason is situated in the political public space, that is considered

neutral and the space of objective knowledge, and emotion is situated in private space,

associated with subjectivity and the body, more specifically the body of women (Alcoff

15). As a result, as Nancy Duncan argues:

The private as an ideal type has traditionally been associated with: the domestic, the

embodied, the natural, the family, property, personal life, intimacy, passion, sexuality (…).

The public as an ideal type has traditionally been the domain of the disembodied, the

abstract, the cultural, rationality, critical public discourse, citizenship (…). (Duncan 128)

The division between public and private space inscribes gender in the organization of

our society. On top of that, this spatial model is also based on the heterosexual

relationship (Duncan 128). Public space is often perceived as neutral to the dominant

heterosexual, as a result of the assumption that sexuality is confined to the private realm

and that it does not present itself in public (Duncan 137). Only in the confrontation with

sexual minorities, are heterosexuals suddenly confronted with sexuality, often resulting in

very clear disapproval, whether by looks and remarks or as extreme as violence. As

Valentine explains, this reaction points to underlying heterosexual norms of behavior that

should be followed when moving around in the public domain (“(Re)negotiating” 146). A

more explicit example of heteronormative spaces is the public toilet or the dressing room.

The separation of the naked bodies of men and women is meant to separate the different

sexes from their supposed objects of desire. It is an institutionalized way of controlling

sexuality and morality. Of course this structure only makes sense in a heterosexual

context. Because separated toilets are an official requirement for public buildings, written

down in architectural codes, it inscribes heterosexuality in building laws.

Private space as the space of women in relation to men also reflects a heterosexual

norm. First of all, some nuancing of the idea of the private as ‘the space of women’ is in

place. As Nancy Duncan states: “paradoxically the home, which is usually thought to be

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gendered feminine, has also traditionally been subject to the patriarchal authority of the

husband and father” (131). It is also commonly considered the opposite of the workplace,

even though for many women it is exactly that. As a symbol of the nuclear family

consisting of husband, wife and children, it is also clearly heteronormative. All this is

especially important in modern times4, where the single-family house as an architectural

typology has played an essential role in normalizing the (heterosexual) nuclear family

unit, where the man goes out to work and the woman stays at home (Bonnevier 370).

Although there have been many experiments with other domestic typologies, these never

managed to become a dominant model (Heynen 9-10). Indeed, as Bell explains in the

introduction of “Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities”; “Most housing in

contemporary western societies is designed, built, financed and intended for nuclear

families” (7).

The presumed heterosexuality of the family unit is built into the basic structure of

the contemporary house, varying only in size and layout (Heynen 3). First of all there are

the ‘family rooms’; such as kitchen and living room. Apart from that there are the

bedrooms, divided into the master bedroom and smaller children’s rooms. Finally there

are the bathrooms and toilets. These divisions are clearly hierarchical, and represent the

structure of the family. There are also a number of rooms in the family house that

traditionally only belong to men. Think about the garage or a working shed, or an office

space where the man can retreat, away from the common areas where family life takes

place. This privilege of having ‘a room of your own’ within the house is usually a men’s

and comes from the social construction and gender roles associated with the family. Men

have a place to be someone other than husband or father, whereas the mother only has her

role as wife and mother. Children on the other hand usually do have a certain amount of

private space, but this is limited by the fact that parents can enter their rooms at any time.

This way, “Through subtle signifiers of heteronormativity the family home is depicted as

a place of walls, of separation, but also of surveillance and discipline” (Bell and Valentine

1). Of course, the structure of the house does not necessarily impair other interpretations

or uses. For many gays and lesbians, the home is the only place where they can really

4 For a more extensive analysis of gender and domesticity in modern architecture, I refer to: Heynen, Hilde, and Gulsum Baydar. Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture. London: Routledge, 2005.

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express themselves without limits. But, as Duncan stresses: “While the home may be a

haven for some gay couples, the family home is often an extremely heterosexist and

alienating site for gays” (137). In any case the family home is an important starting point,

especially in relation to the coming out process of homosexuals, since it is the primary

locus where heteronormative expectations are experienced. The visual image of the closet

is very clear here: not only is sexuality kept hidden from the streets, also within the house

it is sent to hide in the smallest space available.

3.3. Queer Theory and Queer Architecture

In the previous section I discussed the sexed body, gender and sexuality in

architecture, but I used these terms in a very general way. In this part, I will specifically

focus on queer theory, to explain how I intend to interpret notion of sex, gender and

sexuality. I will briefly explore the basics of queer theory by discussing the work of Judith

Butler5. I will then explain how queer theory as a new discipline originated in and grew

out of Butler’s work before outlining some of the dominant methods and approaches

within queer research. I will then give an overview of existing research about the

intersection between queer theory and space, before moving on to discussing the most

important works about queer architecture. In this chapter I want to explore how we can

define queer in relation to space, and more specifically in relation to architectural analysis.

I also want to explain more explicitly the specific angle of the analysis that will follow in

chapter four.

Queer Theory

Starting in the seventies and eighties, both the feminist movement and the gay

and lesbian movement faced a similar problem: how to define a subject that could be used

in the struggle for liberation (Lloyd 2-3). Faced with this problem, both movements saw

an increasing amount of internal fragmentation, with more and more subgroups all

claiming to have found this ‘essence’ of identity. In both movements what was being

challenged was the ‘natural’ sequence of two biological sexes corresponding with

5 I choose Judith Butler’s work specifically because the concepts she introduces will be useful for my analysis later.

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masculinity and femininity, and resulting in a sexual desire of the opposite sex. More and

more feminists started to question the link between female sex and femininity in order to

escape biological determinism. The concept of gender was introduced, to explore the

constructed nature of our identity. In the gay and lesbian movement researchers and

activists explored the link between gender and sexual desire, and between sex and gender.

But the idea of two biological sexes as the basic structuring principle in nature remained.

Sex still preceded gender, both chronologically and logically (Lloyd 31-32).

In “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity”, Butler argues that

sex, sexuality, gender, desire and the body are all constituted discursively; that none of

them is a natural fact of human existence. If we consider gender as what is inscribed onto

sex, as culturally constructed and not as an expression of sex, there is no reason why there

would only be two genders. Masculinity could just as easily be inscribed onto a female

body. But this is not the case. As Butler explains: “perhaps this construct called “sex” is as

culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the

consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at

all” (“Gender Trouble” 10-11). In other words, she concludes that binary sex is produced:

“Gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex”

is produced and established as “prediscursive”, prior to culture, a politically neutral

surface on which culture acts” (“Gender Trouble” 11). Moreover, both sex and gender are

deployed within a normative framework that defines and conditions which subjects are

legitimate. This particular framework is, in our society, heteronormativity. The

heterosexual matrix of correspondence between sex, gender and sexuality describes a set

of ideal relations between these three terms, and enforces them through the production of

a specific knowledge that defines them as ‘natural’ (Butler “Gender Trouble” 23-24). For

a detailed analysis of how normative sexuality was developed in modern times through

the production of a specific knowledge on deviant sexualities, I refer to Foucault’s “The

History of Sexuality”. What is important here is that this heterosexual matrix is part of a

set of power relations that is imposed by force, and that it has important consequences for

how we understand bodies. As Elisabeth Grosz puts it: “It is not simply that the body is

represented in a variety of ways according to historical, social, and cultural exigencies

while it remains basically the same; these factors actively produce the body as a body of a

determinate type” (Volatile Bodies x).

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To explain this further, and to open up the possibility of challenging

heteronormative gender constructions, Butler introduces the idea that gender is

performative (Lloyd 36). Gender performativity is defined as “the repeated stylization of

the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over

time to produce the appearance of a substance, of a natural sort of being” (Butler “Gender

Trouble” 43-44). Performativity resonates ‘performance’ in the sense that gender is

publicly enacted, just like a theatrical performance. There is thus both an individual and a

collective element (Butler “Gender Trouble” 178). Butler considers gender a ‘doing’

without a ‘being’; it is a process without an end. One never ‘is’ ones gender, but only in a

condition of doing it (Lloyd 42). Because it relies on repetition, gender identity is

essentially unstable, and this opens up the possibility of agency and subversion. Repetition

can become subversive when it compels us to question what is real (Lloyd 56). Agency in

this context should not be understood as referring to free will in opposition to

determinism, but instead we should look at it as an embodied agency. Lloyd explains

Butler’s agency more explicitly as “(re)signification, denaturalization and the critical

labor required to identify when and where gender norms might be challenged” in order to

“create the space within which non-normative genders, sexes and sexualities might thrive”

(57). According to Butler, the goal is to identify local strategies for engaging the unnatural

in order to denaturalize the heteronormative gender order. Butler refers to drag as an

example of such gender subversion, since drag reveals the imitative structure of gender

itself, and reveals all gender as parody. That way it undermines the idea that

heterosexuality is somehow original or natural (“Gender Trouble” 175). This does not

mean, however, that we can simply choose to ‘dress up’ as a different gender: “our agency

comes from how we accept that designated position, and the degree to which we refuse it,

the way we live it out” (Grosz “Architecture” 23) Gender performativity is never an

autonomous act, it is based on citational practices and it does not exist in itself.

The legacy of Butler’s work, amongst others6, gave rise to what we know today as

queer theory. In the introduction to their book “Queer Methods and Methodologies: An

Introduction” Browne and Nash explore the different approaches used in queer research.

First of all, they note that in queer research, subjects are considered fluid, unstable and in

6 Sedgwick’s work was also important. See for example Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California, 1990. Print.

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a constant state of ‘becoming’ (1). Because of this, the notion of the ‘objective researcher’

is questioned. Second, queer research aims to “unwrap the commonly taken-for-granted

and normalized connections between sexuality and gender in order to render visible their

contingent connections” (Browne and Nash 5). Further than this, queer theory also rejects

the binary opposition homosexual/heterosexual: Queer theory challenges the normative

social ordering of identities and subjectivities along the heterosexual/homosexual binary

as well as the privileging of heterosexuality as ‘natural’ and homosexuality as its deviant

and abhorrent ‘other’” (Browne and Nash 5). The rejection of any fixed identity category

is essential. Browne and Nash note that there are two major directions of queer research:

While queer scholarship is most often interested in examining the experiences of

sexual/gender minorities, some scholars argue for a ‘queering’ of heterosexual relations as

well as including a rigorous analyses of the category of heterosexuality, its disciplinary

processes and the heterosexist assumptions embedded in much social science scholarship. ”

(Browne and Nash 5)

Another important remark they make is related to queer methods and methodologies.

They conclude that there is no such thing as a queer method, since various techniques are

used to address queer lives and to question normativities. However they note that:

Where queer is taken to destabilize particular understandings of the nature of the human

subject and subjectivities, power relations, the nature of knowledge and the manner of its

production, a ‘queering’ of methods themselves might pose particular difficulties as well as

possibilities for traditional data collection methods. (Browne and Nash 12)

In other words, in order to investigate how power relations and knowledge are constituted,

it may also be necessary to question one’s own methods to obtain knowledge.

Queer Space and Queer Architecture

As I have mentioned before, there are many examples of a queer approach in

geography. Bell and Valentine’s “Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities”, published

in 1995 is particularly significant here. Another interesting work from the same period is

“Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance”, edited by Ingram,

Gordon Brent, Anne-Marie Bouthillette and Yolanda Retter and published in 1997. Both

works focus on how sexual minorities carve out places within a heteronormative context.

“Queers in Space” explores strategies of resistance and traces how different queer

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communities were created in specific contexts. They define a queer space based on the

presence and actions of queers, while at the same time allowing it to remain open to

difference, to different notions of ‘queerness’. Bell and Valentine refer to the possibility

of fracturing the homogeneity of space, by ‘subversive spatial acts’, a spatial version of

Butler’s subversive bodily acts. Two men kissing on the street, or gay prides and equal

rights marches for example show us how the heterosexual street can be temporarily

queered. As they explain: “this heterosexing of space is a performative act naturalized

through repetition -and destabilized by the mere presence of invisibilised sexualities”

(“Introduction, queer space”). In another text from the same period, Valentine explains

how in developing specific visual codes and behaviors to communicate with each other,

queers can create a parallel space, depending not so much on its spatial characteristics as

on the gaze of the other (Valentine “(Re)Negotiating” 149-150). Even through invisibility,

or better, selective visibility, queers successfully appropriate space.

In architecture, although there are only a handful of works about the intersection of

queer theory and architecture, we find similar approaches to queer space, especially in the

nineties. In “Imminent Domain. Queer Space in the Built Environment”, Christopher Reed

notes that a lot of queer architectural projects conclude that “queerness is constituted, not

in space, but in the body of the queer: in his/her inhabitation, in his/her gaze” (64). Yet

Reed also remarks that it is important to realize that this does not mean it only exists when

they are there. According to him: “more fundamentally, queer space is space in the

process of, literally, taking place, of claiming territory” (64). Although Reed already hints

at the fact that the concept of architecture would have to be revisited in order to use queer

and architecture together, the question of whether or not it would be possible to actively

design a queer architecture remains unanswered. The first complete work devoted to queer

architecture is Aaron Betsky’s book “Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire”,

published in 1997. Betsky gives an overview of queer spaces throughout the centuries. His

conception of queer space still focuses largely on the appropriation of existing spaces by

queers. He states that “by its very nature, queer space is something that is not built, only

implied, and usually invisible (Betsky 18). Yet because of his architectural background we

do see an interesting shift towards a more architectural interpretation of queer space. In

his chapter about queer modernism he discusses the work of some queer architects, such

as Philip Johnson, explaining how they build ‘queer homes’ for themselves. He also gives

an interesting account of how postmodernist architecture can be read as a queering of

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architectural form, a sort of deconstruction of the complex orders that modernist

architecture tried to impose on the world (Betsky “Queering Modernism”). What is

missing from his work though, is a more generalized theory of what a ‘queer architecture’

might be.

One of the only books where such an attempt is made is Katarina Bonnevier’s

“Behind Straight Curtains. Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture”, published

in 2007. In order to define a queer architecture, we first of all have to remember our

definition of architecture. Contrary to the way architecture is usually approached -as

static, as an object in space- building, event and user together define a queer architecture.

In this context, a critically queer architecture attacks the normative framework within the

discipline of architecture. More specifically, analyzing queer architecture means looking

for strategies that question gender norms as they are inscribed in architectural space. This

is also the starting point of Bonnevier’s approach to queer architecture. Without going into

too much detail about the projects described in the book, I will just mention a number of

important concepts she uses to define a queer theory of architecture. First of all Bonnevier

states that queer architecture serves “to find strategies for resistance to, and transgressions

of normative orders. (…) Queer implies inter-changeability and excess, the possibility to

move, make several interpretations, slide over, or reposition limits” (22). In a similar way

to what I explained earlier she starts from the idea that “in any building activity ideologies

and norms are reiterated. What I want to bring into play is that this also works the other

way around- subject positions are partly construed through building activities” (Bonnevier

368). This reiterative process points to what we can call the performativity of architecture.

In analogy to Butler’s theory of performativity of gender, Bonnevier argues that the same

mechanisms are at play in architecture. As Bonnevier explains:

“By repeating the same principles for how we build homes over and over again, these

principles are naturalized. For example, one room of the home is repeatedly prescribed as

master bedroom. This taking for granted and even dictating a master, a term loaded with

patriarchal power, in the household. The distribution of spaces has a performative force of

authority”. (Bonnevier 369)

What she wants to show, however, is that there are other possibilities; that there are

strategies of resistance, such as a queer approach to architecture.

A key concept throughout Bonnevier’s book is ‘enactment’. This term “includes

the act and brings into play the interconnectedness of material container, the setting, the

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deeds and the actors” (16). What she strives for is to “read buildings as queer performative

acts and not static preconditions” (372). In other words, in order to analyze architecture

we must analyze not only the material container, the building as artifact, but architecture

as we defined it earlier. This concept of enactment is closely linked to her focus on

theatricality.

“Theatricality, the spectacular, can reveal how gender performance and building interact

since it foregrounds the externalized vision and does not make the claim of a “true” self

representation. (…) Masks, costumes and disguises are theatrical terms important in a queer

context, where gender performances are understood as drag.” (Bonnevier 375)

If we consider buildings as an extension of dressing the body, and as a representation of a

specific corporeal model, architecture becomes not only a spatial enclosure but also a set

of surface signs. Following this same logic Bonnevier develops the concept of ‘cross-

cladding’, the cross-dressing of architecture. This term is meant to link “the theatrical

performance of gender and sexuality with the masking and dressing of architecture” (277).

Just like Butler’s example of the drag queen, architecture can take on a subversive role

that reveals its underlying heteronormative structures. Bonnevier focuses on modernist

domestic architecture, because the modernist house is such an emblematic typology linked

to the monogamous heterosexual family. The three projects discussed in Bonnevier’s book

are all made by lesbian women, and they subvert the normative structure of the house into

a queer domesticity. Apart from the analyses themselves, the very structure of the book

reveals the queer intentions of the author. Bonnevier presents her research as a series of

lectures, and the book is written in the form of a screenplay. This way she also questions

and critiques the dominant practice of architectural theory and writing itself, and literally

‘performs’ her book. This experimental approach is an example of a queer method,

developed specifically to queer architectural discourse and research from the inside.

3.4. Queer(ing) Heterotopias: Framework for Analysis

In order to understand how power relations can be deconstructed in space and in

architecture, I used the example of Lefebvre’s spatial trialectics, and Foucault’s

heterotopias. In this chapter I will argue that in order to use these concepts to deconstruct

heteronormative power structures, we have to define what I will here call ‘queer

heterotopias’. I will use heterotopias, instead of trialectics, for reasons that I explained

earlier, but I am keeping in mind the idea of critical thirding. I will explore the

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possibilities of interpreting ‘queer space’ and ‘queer architecture’ as heterotopias. Based

on this definition, I will investigate how my conclusions about heterotopias can be applied

in a queer context. Finally I will propose a set of principles that will constitute a

methodology for analyzing Diller Scofidio & Renfro’s projects in the next chapter.

Queering Heterotopias

Let’s start by looking once more at the definition of heterotopias: “Heterotopia are

spaces in which an alternative social ordering is performed. These are spaces in which a

new way of ordering emerges that stands in contrast to the taken-for-granted mundane

idea of social order that exists within society” (Hetherington 40). So first of all,

heterotopias essentially disrupt normalized assumptions. Queer space is defined in a very

similar way, since the visible presence of queers is said to destabilize the

heteronormativity of space: “this heterosexing of space is a performative act naturalized

through repetition -and destabilized by the mere presence of invisibilised sexualities”

(Bell and Valentine “Introduction, queer space”).

Second, heterotopias are places of otherness, of difference, the “sites of all things

displaced, marginal, novel or rejected, or ambivalent” (Hetherington 16). They are sites

where this ‘other’ is put to work to disorder the normal, the ‘inside’. Queer theory also

chooses the specific ‘outside’ position of minority sexualities, to challenge the basis upon

which certain sexualities were defined as normal. Again here I want to stress the way in

which heterotopias also disrupt binary thinking in space, by defining a third option. We

also find this tendency to disrupt (spatial) binaries in defining queer space, and more

particularly queer architecture. Bonnevier’s analysis for example, explicitly sets out to

redefine gendered oppositions such as interiority/exteriority and structure/decoration (17-

19, 47, 57). Queer theory in general also sets out to avoid binary structures, by rejecting

the male/female, masculine/feminine and heterosexual/homosexual opposition.

Furthermore, heterotopias have a utopian dimension; they reflect a striving for a

new and alternative ordering of society. As this ideal is never achieved, new unexpected

orderings are created (Hetherington 67). In a queer context, it is clear that the ideal

ordering queer theory (and indeed queer activism) sets out to achieve -the abolition of all

identity categories- is probably unachievable in practice. And as Butler has argued,

sometimes queer can be used as an identity category to obtain political change. But for

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queer to be useful “it will have to remain that which is, in the present, never fully owned,

but always redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage (…)” (Butler “Critically

Queer” 19). Thus ‘queer’ might be fixed temporarily but only to be redefined over and

over again afterwards. Related to this is the experimental nature of both heterotopias and

queer spaces. They function as laboratories for trying out new ideas about the organization

of societies.

Finally, it is worth noting Hetherington’s stipulation that heterotopias can only be

defined as such when taking into account the materiality, social practice and the events

located at a given site (8). Bonnevier uses almost exactly the same description in her

definition of ‘enactment’. According to her, it is the ‘interconnectedness of material

container, the setting, the deeds and the actors” that allows us to see buildings as queer

performative acts (16). This usage of performativity also echoes Butler’s emphasis on

citation. Queer spaces and queer architecture do not exist in themselves, but are always

linked to the dominant organization of space, which they subvert in order to create

something new. This resembles Foucault’s description of heterotopias as being counter-

sites, in which “all the real arrangements, all the other real arrangements that can be found

within society, are at one and the same time represented, challenged and overturned” (“Of

Other Spaces” 332).

I argue that this points to the possibility of establishing a connection between

queer spaces and heterotopias. To explain this further, I will go over Foucault’s principles

of heterotopology again, replacing his examples with a possible queer example or a queer

interpretation. First of all, heterotopias of deviation refer to sites where people whose

behavior is deviant to the norm are placed. Here I will propose ‘the closet’ as an example.

Although homosexuality is no longer against the law, nor considered a disease, the

psychological confinement to ‘the closet’ works in a similar way to the prison or the

asylum. Both aim at making the deviant subject invisible, by removing (part of) him/her

from society, or from the public eye at least. Their functioning is largely based on

surveillance, where the closeted person is constantly aware of his/her every move.

Second, heterotopias function differently depending on the given time and place. In a

queer context this could refer to the fluidity and the instability of the queer subject. Also,

queer space is conceptualized differently in different cultures around the world. For

instance this is visible in “Queers in Space” which takes into account local effects in

analyzing queer communities. Third, heterotopias are capable of “juxtaposing in a single

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real place different spaces and locations that are incompatible with each other (Foucault

“Of Other Spaces” 334). Here I propose cruising grounds as an example, because queers

often take an existing space, like a park or public toilets, and use them for a different

purpose, without changing the site itself. In this way two incompatible activities, family

leisure and illicit sex (in the case of the park) take place in one location. Thus depending

on the activity taking place, a space can take on different meanings. Fourth, heterotopias

break with traditional time, either by accumulating it or by being absolutely temporal.

Here especially the temporal has a very queer dimension. Gay prides for example, have

the effect of temporarily queering the street. Also more individualized acts, like public

display of affection, have this effect. Fifth, heterotopias are both isolated and penetrable,

but never freely accessible, access is restricted. In Foucault’s words: “One can only enter

by special permission and after one has completed a certain number of gestures” (“Of

Other Spaces” 335). Here I want to refer to the kind of space Valentine describes in

"(Re)Negotiating the ‘Heterosexual Street’ Lesbian Productions of Space”, where specific

dress codes, name-dropping of queer artists or other markers, allow queers to establish a

temporary connection. Through the queer gaze, a space is opened up that escapes the

heterosexual street. In a more literal sense, specific clubs or bars may only be accessible

to a queer public. Finally, heterotopias either expose every real space, here -parallel to

Foucault’s example of the brothel- we might consider the gay bath house, where unlimited

sexual relations are possible; or they create a space that is other. Such a space might be a

lesbian or gay community, where an effective utopia is materialized.

Framework for Analysis

Heterotopias deconstruct power relations because they create alternate orderings

that disrupt the existing normative order. They reveal how the ‘other’ is produced and

they use that knowledge to imagine new possibilities. To analyze how architecture

deconstructs heteronormativity in space, I propose queer(ing) architecture. I want to refer

once more to Derrida’s remarks on architecture and deconstruction: “Architectural

thinking can only be deconstructive in the following sense: as an attempt to visualize that

which establishes the authority of the architectural concatenation in philosophy” (Derrida

303). In what follows I will describe five strategies, five characteristics of queer(ing)

architecture. These five elements will form the basis of my further investigation, in the

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sense that I will use them as a guideline for tracing the queer in the architectures of Diller

Scofidio & Renfro. ‘Queer(ing)’ refers to the multiple nature of this inquiry. On the one

hand, my goal is to find out how queer can be used as a design strategy, how architects

can actively work to design buildings that subvert and deconstruct power relations in

space. On the other hand, I hope this analysis will shed some light on how architecture as

a discipline can be queered.

First Principle. Queer theory aims at destabilizing naturalized heterosexuality, and

the dominance of the heterosexual matrix. In architectural terms, heteronormativity is

spatialised through a series of binaries that are based on a male and heterosexual corporeal

model. A queer architecture challenges and deconstructs these ‘architectural binaries’ -

such as form/content, site/design, plan/construction, ornament/structure, and

nature/culture- and exposes their gendered and heterosexualized nature. This

deconstruction can be done through a process of critical thirding, where a ‘third’ concept

undermines the dominance of the other two terms.

Second Principle. Queer(ing) architecture means looking for different ways of

doing and seeing architecture, outside of the rigid framework of architectural theory, and

architectural knowledge production in general. This involves exploring new ways of

talking and thinking about architecture as well. It involves seeing the building itself as a

queer performative act, much like Bonnevier defined it. A performative architecture

means an unstable, non-static architecture. It also considers building a reiterative practice,

capable of both reflecting existing power structures, as constituting power relations in

space. The queer architect is not afraid of working outside of his/her comfort zone and

exploring options along interdisciplinary boundaries.

Third Principle. A queer position means an outsider position. As Elisabeth Grosz

puts it: “this is the rare and unexpected joy of outsideness: to see what cannot be seen

from the inside, to be removed from the immediacy of immersion that affords no

distance” (“Architecture” xv). This outside architecture not only creates the possibility for

minorities to be spatially represented, but also reveals what is hidden in all the other

spaces. This architecture explores how dominant spaces are not neutral, but the

representation of a specific subject. A queer architecture is constantly looking for

strategies to question gender norms as they are inscribed in architectural space. As

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architect-outsider, the queer architect should always be on the lookout for new angles, and

different positions.

Fourth Principle. Queer architecture explicitly sets out to reveal and challenge

power structures, more specifically it tries to trace how control is exercised over bodies in

architecture and how the body is produced as a specific kind of body. This can involve

investigating how specific bodies are discriminated in space, and how constructions and

representations of sex and gender influence the type of architecture that is produced. In

any case, paying special attention to the body is explicitly or implicitly part of the

architectural approach. Especially relevant here is the way in which the queer architect

incorporates his/her own position, and how (s)he creates awareness about how that

position influences the resulting designs.

Fifth Principle. Queer architecture breaks down heteronormativity by facilitating

spatial subversive acts. This can be either through the temporary presence of queers, or

through more permanent structures that mark a territory as non-heteronormative. It

produces holes in the homogeneous fabric of heteronormative space, where things

function differently. Specific symbols and materials may be used and added to existing

structures, or the very structure of existing typologies may be subverted into a whole new

form. In many cases, queering focuses on domesticity, but other architectures, such as

public institutions or public places should also be considered.

4. Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) is a New York based multidisciplinary

architecture firm, with projects all over the world. Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio

(D+S) started the firm in 1979. Since 2004 Charles Renfro is the third partner7. In 2013

the book “Diller+Scofidio and Renfro: Architecture After Images” was published, the first

attempt at an overview of all their most important projects since the firm started. When

they started out in the seventies, D+S shook the architectural world with their new,

sometimes confusing, and definitely provocative approach to architecture. They barely

7 In projects dating from before 2004 I will refer to the architects as D+S, in projects after 2004 I will refer to the architects as DS+R. However, Charles Renfro joined the office in 1997 already and he was particularly involved in the Brasserie and the Blur Building.

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realized any architectural projects in the traditional sense in these early years, but instead

produced a variety of works such as installation art, performances, theatre stage designs,

furniture, etc. And despite starting out as an architecture firm without architecture they

gradually managed to establish themselves at an international level, without losing the

experimental and interdisciplinary aspect of their architecture.

I choose their work in particular for a number of reasons. First of all, the evolution

from highly conceptual work to large public buildings shows how they translate theory

into practice. In the early projects, they deal very explicitly with questions about the body,

gender, power relations and surveillance in architecture. This allows me to first explore

their definition of architecture on a conceptual level, before looking at their buildings.

Second, they constitute anything but a traditional architecture firm. As for example

Venturi and Scott Brown, to whom I referred earlier, there is quite a history of married

couples working together in architecture. Historically this was often the only way for

women to work in a high level position (Rendell 228). But in the case of D+S, it is

Elisabeth Diller who takes the lead. As Dimendberg notes, she is almost always the one

talking, whereas Scofidio remains more in the background. Moreover, they expanded the

office with a third partner, who is arguably today’s most well known out gay architect.

Their ways of breaking with the idea of a marital professional unity, while only a minor

characteristic of their work, does make them the ‘odd (wo)man out’ in the architecture

world.

I have selected nine projects to analyze, all realized between 1987 and 2004. These

projects include installations, one of their books and some of their more architectural

work. First of all I want to explore the evolution from experimental projects to

architecture, in order to investigate how a queer theory of architecture can be turned into

practice. Tracing this evolution is also important because part of my interpretation relies

on the idea that queer(ing) architecture means constantly repositioning limits, and

reinventing architecture itself. The projects are not dealt with chronologically, but they are

clustered in thematic groups that represent important themes in their work. This also

allows me to trace how a particular idea evolved as the projects became more concrete.

The first three projects, “Flesh”, “the withDrawing room” and “the Slow House” deal in

particular with domestic norms. The following three projects, “Soft sell”, “Para-site” and

“Facsimile” deal above all with issues of surveillance and visual control, and are more

focused on the public realm. In “Blur”, “The High Line” and especially in “the Brasserie”

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theatricality plays an important role. Obviously I do not attempt to make an all-

encompassing description of their work. Rather, by touching upon various projects, some

in more detail than others, I want to explore the possibility of a queer pattern running

through their work. Sometimes this queer motive is more explicit, more at the surface,

other times, subtler. The goal is not to ‘prove’ that one particular building is queer -such

an approach would be a reduction of both their work and my concept of queer(ing)

architecture -rather, I argue that it is this assemblage of a variety of particular pieces and

elements in their practice and in their architecture, which together make their work a

queer(ing) architecture.

Flesh: Architectural Probes

To start, I want to look at “Flesh: Architectural probes”, published in 1994. This

book is their first monograph, and brings together all of their earliest projects. As I already

mentioned, DS+R has always been a multidisciplinary office, focusing not only on

architecture but also on art and performance. In an interview in 2003 Diller explains:

Of course, many of our early works where without regulatory, budgetary, and programmatic

constraints typically associated with architecture. And we used an array of media and

dwelled on seemingly extra-architectural themes such as tourism, globalization, conventions

of domesticity, and visuality, but the work has always been about space. (Diller and Scofidio

“Parallax Practice” 65)

These early works laid the foundations for their later success and allowed them to explore

their theoretical position. In a way, Flesh functions as a conclusion and a reflection on the

dominant themes in their early work.

Another reason for choosing this specific book is its explicit interest in how the

body is represented in architecture. The intention of the book is made clear from the start:

the cover of the book is a photomontage of Diller’s right buttock, inscribed with the word

‘Flesh’, and Scofidio’s left buttock (Dimendberg 88) (Figure 1). On the first page the

footnote next to the title reads: “the outermost surface of the ‘body’ bordering all relations

in ‘space’” (“Flesh” 1). This exploration of the intersections between body and space is a

common thread in all of the selected projects. With these projects they redefine

conventions of architectural design and representation, which they critique for ignoring

the body: “The problem, rather, has been on the reluctance of contemporary architectural

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practice to regard the body and space as interdependent constructs, inseparable from the

cultural forces which have shaped them” (“Flesh” 39). Thus in a way the book reflects

upon a new corporeal model for architecture as well as on the corporeality of the architect.

This involves not only determining their point of view on architecture, but also

experimenting with the very definition of architecture. So we cannott say they make

architecture and/or art and/or performance, but we must say that they use art and

performance to remake what architecture is. As Diller explains: “We are interested in a lot

of things, from performance to construction, and it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of

difference what it’s called” (qtd in Wood 1). This is my first important point in how they

queer architectural practice. They examine the limits of architecture -and of art for that

matter- by creating projects that slide between architecture, art and performance, and

question what architecture is.

As previously mentioned, “Flesh: Architectural Probes” is their first monograph,

but it is far from a monograph in the traditional sense of the word. An architectural

monograph is normally used to present an architecture firm to possible clients by giving

an account of their realized projects. Although they do describe some of their projects, this

book does something else. It is more like a story about architecture, loosely divided into

eight themes blending in together as one narrative. The projects are used to illustrate the

story, and the book puts them in the bigger picture of their architectural theory. Similar to

the way they use art and performance to create architecture, they remake the concept of

the monograph to present their position towards architecture. Every theme describes a

character in play (deviants, neurotics, neighbors, sinners, custodians, tourists, homebodies

and insomniacs), linking back directly to the different bodies at work in architecture.

Flesh, as they define it “is a surface controlled by both private and public interests on

which the rights of property are continuously mediated by the restriction of propriety”

(“Flesh” 36). This political, social body has been neglected in architecture, and limited to

a biological, ‘formal’ body. A critical architecture must recognize that the body is a socio-

political construct, as much as space for that matter. Consequently, “(…) space is already

constructed before ‘it’ (architecture) gets there -coded legally, politically, morally and

socially” (“Flesh” 39). This interdependence between the body and space refers to the

performativity of architecture. As they note: “The performance of banking is as

thoroughly inscribed in the space of the bank, as the performance of domesticity is in the

home” (“Flesh” 39). Throughout the book they explore different body/space relations and

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inscriptions. They focus a lot on domesticity, and on normalized lines of vision. This

domestic space regulates normative gender and sexuality, and their projects attempt to

deconstruct these norms by deconstructing the spaces that help construct them.

This repositioning of limits is also clear in the layout and structure of the book.

Where the monograph traditionally functions as a portfolio, a clear overview of an

architect’s realizations, this type of reading is made impossible here. The main narrative is

constantly interrupted by secondary texts and series of images, or mixed with dialogues

and lectures, breaking with linearity and forcing the reader to constantly shift position.

Sometimes literally running through the text, other times interrupting it for twenty pages,

there is no ‘one’ story, no one way their narrative can be read. The projects are never

presented as finished wholes, easily understandable. You have to choose what to read

first, turn back pages or fast forward to keep up, and establish the complete picture

yourself. Four of the projects I will discuss are also featured in the book, and I will use the

architect’s description to analyze them. From the chapter ‘Neurotics’ I discuss the

withDrawing room, from ‘Homebodies’ I discuss the Slow House, from ‘Insomniacs’ I

discuss Soft cell, and from ‘Custodians’ I discuss Para-site.

withDrawing room

The second project I want to discuss here deals with the boundaries between the

public and the private and focuses on the normative codes of domestic space. As I pointed

out earlier, the modern house lays out the structure of the nuclear family in space, and

therefor reflects norms of gender and sexuality. This happens for example by appointing

specific rooms to either men or women, thus fixing their role in the house in space. The

withDrawing room (1987) traces the different levels of control in the home, and the

different rules and regulations that govern bodies, objects, actions and spaces in the home.

Each ‘category of control’ has a specific governing body, a different penalty for

transgression, and takes place on a specific ‘surface’ of the house. The first one is the

category of property rights, governed by law, punished with fines or imprisonment. They

occupy the border between public and private, the building envelope. The second one is

the category of the rules of etiquette, governed by custom, punished with social

estrangement. They take place at the dining table. The third one is the marriage contract,

governed by conscience or the other, and punished with psychological punishment. It

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takes place in the conjugal bed. The last one is vanity, governed by guilt and punished

with shame. It takes place in the mirror (“Flesh” 61-62). The title of the installation first of

all refers to the verb ‘to withdraw’, suggestion retracting oneself from the public or

referring to the act of taking back something that was given. Yet as Dimendberg notes,

another interesting reference here is the eighteenth century withdrawing room, where

women would withdraw to allow the men to discuss politics, or smoke and drink (45).

This historically gendered space is replaced here by a unisex one, yet notions of gender

and domesticity clearly remain present in the work.

The withDrawing room is an installation in a century-old wood-frame house in

San Francisco, the residence and gallery of sculptor David Ireland. “Domestic mise-en-

scènes are located along a series of fluctuating vantage points -they are either subjective,

perspectival views, or orthographic ones” (“Flesh” 62). Each one of the domestic

governing principles described above is examined in the space of the house (Figure 3).

Without describing everything I will just discuss some important aspects. First of all, the

entire project materializes what they call ‘objective views’; architectural views normally

characteristic of plans, sections and elevations, drawings used to communicate

architecture (Figure 4). This way D+S invert the role of the architectural drawing, which

is to simulate the real and to capture the real in an objective quantifiable way. Instead they

recreate these objective views of the representational drawing in space and therefore they

stimulate the ‘unreal’, which they define as “that which is lost in the process of de-

abstraction (building)” (“Flesh” 62). In other words these socially, culturally and

politically charged domestic spaces are built as ‘objective views’, and this reversal

emphasizes the fact that they are taken for granted and challenges their apparent

neutrality. The project thus controls the gaze of the visitor, and turns it into a queer view

of domestic space. When looking around this ‘home’ you do not only see how social

convention is represented in domestic space, but you also see how architectural drawings

represent these conventions, or in other words how architecture in drawings relates to

buildings in space. The importance of the architectural drawing in the performativity of

architecture is an important theme in their work and will be discussed further in my

discussion of the Slow House.

Another worthy of note here is their installation of the bedroom (Figure 2). “The

conjugal bed is cut in half along the axis of sexual contact and hinged together at the

headboard -pinned at the precise center point of the intersecting walls” (Diller and

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Scofidio “Flesh” 100). The two parts of the bed can be moved around, sliding them

further away or closer towards each other. This movement creates different gradations of

intimacy between the occupants. “The bed is negotiated nightly -even hourly- by the

occupants, who are free to chose location and position, and preference of partner or prop”

(Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 100). This installation plays with the notion of the double bed

as the ultimate domestic norm, the fusion of two married bodies and the joint rights of

property and propriety over the body of the other (Diller and Scofidio, “Flesh” 102). This

split bed does a number of things that I consider queer. First of all, in the text explaining

the project, they give an account of the way the image of the double bed was constructed

in modern times, by showing video stills of early twentieth century bedrooms with two

single beds. In other words they show how the image of the conjugal bed was constructed.

Secondly, the installation seems to propose a new flexibility in regulating desire, intimacy

and sexuality within the couple and suggests sexual interactions outside the monogamous

norm. But at the same time, it exposes and questions the battle over power within

marriage by literally building a mechanism to fight out control over each other’s bodies.

This way it critiques the marriage contract as a device of power and control. “(…) the

proximity of the beds at any moment would describe the current state of amorous relations

between the husband and wife, a ‘conjugal barometer’ gauging their victories and defeats

in a relentless ‘civil war’: marriage” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 102).

Slow House

The next project I want to discuss is the Slow House, which is definitely the

most architectural project in the book. The Slow House is a vacation house designed for a

Japanese art collector. It was supposed to be built in the Hamptons, Long Island, but the

project was stopped after the foundations were laid, because of the client’s financial

difficulties. Instead, it continued as a theoretical project, an exercise in exploring the

concept of the vacation house. It was this theoretical project, consisting of a series of

models and drawings, that won a prize form the journal “Progressive Architecture” in

1990 (Figure 5). In the same year, D+S staged a lecture/performance at Columbia

University in which they presented the Slow House (Wood 1). This brings me to my first

point: as in Bonnevier’s book, the architectural reflection here is literally performed,

theatrically staged. What their performance does is show the performativity inherent in the

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project itself, and in any architectural representation for that matter. In 1992 the project

was continued in the form of an exhibition titled “The Desiring Eye: Reviewing the Slow

House”. The Slow House is thus a building, performance and exhibition/installation at the

same time, representing architectural theory, practice and performance. As D+S explain:

“The Slow house is a probe into the domesticated eye on vacation. The intention is to

examine and reconfigure relations between the body and conventions of domestic space

with particular emphasis on issues of leisure” (qtd in Wood 3). So once again, the

conventions of domestic space and the bodies in that space are being questioned in this

project.

The concept of ‘the view’ plays a central role in the project. They distinguish three

categories of ‘scenic escape’ that are represented in the Slow House: the car-windshield,

the television screen, and the picture window. More specifically “The Slow House is

simply a door that leads to a window: physical entry to optical departure” (Diller and

Scofidio “Flesh” 225). The body on vacation is staged, starting from the commute

between the city and the countryside. The house itself, shaped as a long curved wall,

continues this path, and culminates in the scenic view (Figure 6). There is no direct visual

connection between the door and the window. Instead “the house is a mechanism of

arousal, eliciting an optical desire and feeding it, slowly” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh”

225). What is interesting is how this movement through different views essentially stages

leisure as the passage from city to country, or from culture to nature. Only, the Slow

House does not simply stage it, but also questions this division between nature and

culture, since “the picture window constructs nature and domesticates it” (Diller and

Scofidio “Flesh” 223). In other words, the view is a commoditized artifact; it is not nature

but a socially constructed way of looking at nature. “The Slow House can be understood

as a complex instrument of vision, employing mechanisms of desire and denial. ‘Nature’

and ‘artifice’, normally thought to be oppositional, are put into a fluid exchange” (Diller

and Scofidio “Flesh” 1994).

The Slow House emphasizes this artificial view in the setting of the actual living

room window. On the left side, a TV screen is suspended in front of the window. Apart

from regular channels, this screen is also part of an internal network. On the roof, a

camera films the same view and transmits it live onto the TV screen, in front of the ‘real

view’. With the remote control the camera can pan, zoom, record, and playback the view

on the TV screen over the actual view at any given time, in any given order. “The TV

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screen electronically reconstitutes the portion of the image that it blocks. The ‘view’ is

thus grafted together in two representational modes, though the horizon lines are out of

register” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 226). This broken horizon is the only thing the

viewer cannot control; it can never be fixed. This installation shows that the view

considered natural is no less constructed than the television screen. More than that, they

consider the picture window more advanced technology than the TV screen “in that its

socially and economically driven mechanisms are virtually invisible, leaving only a

simple frame” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 248). The queer view staged in the Slow

House forces the viewer, the inhabitant, to consider how his eyes are conditioned to see

what they see, and forces him to realize that there is no natural view. The architecture

reveals its own constructed nature. The model of the Slow House also reflects this

shifting, distorted view. “The slow house overflows with hinges and mirrors -not as an aid

to ergonomy but as a reflection on our pivoting world view” (Van Toorn 174).

It is important to focus on the graphics they use to present their project and on the

performative nature of drawing. Wood explains that the architectural drawing is generally

considered to be one step in the production of buildings. Yet some architects argue that it

is the only part of architectural production that is completely controlled by the architect

(Wood 4). The drawing does not just translate ideas into projects, but the projects and

ideas are created in the act of drawing. Drawing is considered architectural language,

which “contains a communicative ambivalence that shifts depending on the intention of

the architect, the stage of the architectural project, and the particular convention applied”

(Wood 4). The drawings I will use to illustrate this are the ten sectional drawings of the

slow house called X-rays. First of all the term X-ray has a specific importance here. The

X-ray is used to visualize the parts of the body that are invisible without technology. “The

X-ray drawing is a form of super-vision that sees which should really be hidden” (Wood

5). First of all they follow a graphical logic analog to that of the medical X-ray image,

where the inside of the section is black, and the structural and physical elements are white.

This inverts the drawing conventions normally used on sections, where the elements that

are being cut are colored black and the inside, empty space, is colored white. Even more

interesting is what the X-rays reveal. Usually the section cuts through the building on

strategic points, revealing three-dimensional information invisible on a plan. Here, the X-

rays cut through the building ten times, in an equidistant pattern, displaying a number of

domestic ‘scenes’ (Figure 7). “For Diller+Scofidio the house hides everyday

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performances that they wish to display. However, the effect is to turn this hidden

domesticity into a voyeuristic display” (Wood 5). Every X-ray has a title that is a one-

sentence anecdote such as “Long, slick and slender, tickles where it’s tender. What is it?

A whip” or “A husband keeps his lover’s clothes in the closet, yet his wife suspects

nothing. Why? His lover is a man” or “What swallows flesh at night and spits it out in the

morning? The front door” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 234). Indeed the house is not seen

here as an architectural object, but instead “the home, in this view from Diller+Scofidio, is

a world of dysfunction, desire, and dependency, all conditions normally ignored by

architects when they draw” (Wood 5). They challenge drawing as a neutral tool of

translation, as well as its representation of a supposedly neutral architecture, void of the

body, gender and sexuality. Instead the drawing reveals a performance, a scene of

domestic life. The X-rays all display a number of bodies in the house (Figure 8). Several

X-rays display people having sex, while others are casually sitting somewhere else in the

house, as is the case in “A woman asks her psychiatrist, ‘My husband only seems to want

to use the dining room table for sex. What should I do’ The psychiatrists responds, ‘I

would stop eating in bed” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 235). This ‘sex-show’ as Wood

calls it, discloses everything the architect attempts to repress from the house: the

gendered, sexual body of him/herself, and the people living in it.

Soft sell

Soft sell is a video installation D+S made in 1993 in the notorious 42nd street in

New York (Figure 9). The area is known for its numerous theaters and it was the center of

the entertainment industry in the early 20th century. But apart from that it is also known

for its commercial sex and drug markets. Since the seventies authorities have made

several attempts to clean up the area and remove the sex shops. The project took place in

the same year as the new rehabilitation plan was announced, which intended to replace the

sex industry establishments with restaurants, stores, rock palaces and entertainment

centers. As Diller and Scofidio describe it, “The project takes issue with the production of

‘desire’ in relation to several forms of ‘urban currency’ specific to the site: bodies, real

estate and tourism” (“Flesh” 252).

The project consists of a pair of gigantic female lips projected onto the

entrance door of The Rialto, an abandoned porn theater, reciting numerous solicitations to

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passersby -Hey you, wanna buy a new body? Hey you, wanna buy a new life style? Hey

you, wanna buy some motherly love? (…) (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 251, 254, 255). On

each of the four door panels, there is an adjective, generally considered immoral

(Shameless, Sinful, Savage, Scandalous) and associated with “selling flesh” (Figure 10).

The panels switch from translucent to transparent, hiding and revealing a glimpse through

the glass, and playing on the concept of the peep show. “Revealed behind each aperture is

a jeweler’s box, voided of the promised ‘object of desire’, but displaying instead another

single-word slogan, printed inside of its lid” (Diller and Scofidio “Flesh” 253). These

alternative adjectives (Discrete, Innocent, Genteel, Virtuous) represent moral principles.

The project touches upon a number of themes, linked to queer strategies. First

of all, although their intervention is purely art installation, the main focus of the project is

the city, the public domain as a social and economic product. The commercialized city

sells different commodities and adapts itself to the different markets of desire. Although

42nd street is being developed in order to replace unwanted economic activity (sex

industry) by new ones (luxury housing and shops), the marketing strategies remain the

same. Soft sell explores the moral connection between pleasure and degeneracy in the

context of the regulation of the city. Certain markets, however lucrative, are morally

rejected, in favor of others, which claim moral principles. The city regulates which desires

are accepted (luxury) and which ones are rejected (sex outside of a monogamous

heterosexual relationship). It shows us how the body is politically regulated and how this

regulation imposes a norm of morality in public space. In this way, the project explores

the hypocrisy, or perhaps better, the inter-changeability, of the ‘negative’ and ‘positive’

adjectives.

Para-site

DS+R’s engagement with bodies under surveillance and the production of a

specific corporeal model for architecture is perhaps most explicit in Para-site. This

installation took place in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1989. The architects

introduce technological ‘parasites’ in the building, with the objective of turning the gaze

to the museum itself. Seven surveillance cameras in three locations register the

movements of visitors, and project this as a live-feed onto screens set up in the gallery

room (Figure 13). The aim is to question the different constructed views of the museum

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institution: “Para-site situates itself between the institutionalized eye of the museum

visitor, looking, and the institutional eye of the museum, looking back” (Diller and

Scofidio “Flesh” 164). This investigation into the construction of gazes is site-specific,

since just like the biological parasite, their interventions are latched onto existing

infrastructures. Yet the parasite is also a metaphor for a new level of complexity, for a

symbiosis between two ‘organisms’ that is more than just the sum of both. In this respect,

the installation is also a probe into the effects of new technologies on the conception of

the body; the cameras show perspectives that cannot be obtained by walking through the

building and they function as a sort of body prosthetics (Figure 11). Diller explains that

Para-site proposes an “architectural environment for the bio-technological body” (qtd in

Dimendberg 53), an architecture that can represent a new posthuman corporeal reality.

This architecture virtually connects spaces and events that are physically

disconnected, thus interfering with the existing lines of vision incorporated in the material

structure of the building. By introducing this mode of deferral, of confusion, the project

deconstructs normalized modes of vision:

It complicates the visitor’s gaze by adding extra relays in the chain of scopic circuits already

at work in the space of the exhibition: closed circuits, interrupted circuits, overlapping

circuits, open circuits. The self-consciousness of looking, at looking, produces a feedback in

which the museum itself becomes a museological object of contemplation. (Diller and

Scofidio “Flesh” 198)

Their use of camera surveillance works as a way of revealing the fact that surveillance and

control over bodies is intrinsic to architecture. When they note that: “Predicated on the

notion (from Burroughs) that the machine can be best understood by observing its modes

of dysfunction, Para-site slips into the museological apparatus to get a better look,

viewing its glitches from the inside” (“Flesh” 198), Foucault’s description of Bentham’s

Panopticon is not far removed. The installation confronts visitors with the way their view

and movement is directed through architecture.

In the gallery room, seven screens are suspended from the ceiling and the walls.

Several chairs face the screens and represent a fictive viewer -the viewpoints from the

chairs can never be physically achieved. Four central monitors face an upside down chair

that uses the ceiling as its floor. On the suspended chair, an excerpt from “the Parasite” by

Michel Serres is set in relief, in such a way that it would be printed in the flesh of whoever

would sit on it (Figure 12). As they describe: “The word is made flesh” (“Flesh” 165). The

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chair quotes their most important theoretical reference, while simultaneously reflecting on

the status of theory and knowledge. It refers to how the body is culturally inscribed both

through knowledge produced by institutions such as the museum, and through

architecture. Visitors entering the gallery room can observe the movement of people

through the museum on the monitors. The visitor is thus on the one hand put in a position

of visual control over the museum apparatus, but at the same time confronted with his/her

own domination by those cultural systems. Important however is that there is no all

encompassing view in the room, it is impossible to see everything at the same time. As

Dimendberg explains: “If Para-Site explored surveillance, it also investigated the limit of

total seeing: the blind spot” (55).

Facsimile

In 2004 DS+R realized an art installation on the façade of the George R. Moscone

Center, a convention center in San Francisco. The project consists of a five by eight meter

video monitor attached to the building. The monitor glides over two rails and slides along

the contour of the glass façade (Figure 14). On the back of the screen, a camera films

whatever is going on inside the reception room on the second floor, and transmits it live

onto the screen (Figure 15 and 16). These images are alternated by live feed from a

second camera that is positioned on top of the structure and that films the skyline of San

Francisco. A third series of images is also displayed onto the screen, but these are fictional

pre-recorded scenes of a hotel room, an office and a lobby (Figure 17 and 18). The

recordings are meticulously staged to match the movement of the screen, so that they are

indiscernible from the actual live images.

As the architects explain: “as such, the apparatus could be seen as a scanning

device, a magnifying lens, a periscope, and as an instrument of deception substituting

impostors for actual building occupants and spaces” (Diller Scofidio + Renfro). Similar to

Para-site, a technological intervention functions as a probe into the building. Yet this time

it functions more like the X-ray vision of the Slow House: used to reveal to the public

what is normally hidden. The convention center is hardly accessible to public, so

passersby are usually unaware of what goes on inside its walls. The privacy of the interior

is subverted in two ways: by displaying the activities going on inside the building, and by

displaying the view from the building to the outside. People watching the screen do not

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only see what goes on inside, but also how the inside looks out. The video monitor

dissolves the (im)permeability established by the architecture of the building. In a normal

situation, only certain people would be allowed access to the building. The reference to

‘impostors’ therefor does not only refer to the ‘fake’ pre-recorded images, but also to the

unwanted public eye infiltrating into the building.

This probe into the interior of the convention center also theatricalizes daily

activities and turns them into spectacle. By adding pre-recorded scenes, the architects

question notions of what is live and what is performed. In a way the installation blurs the

lines between what is real and what is staged and at the same time it emphasizes the

enacted nature of any human activity. As Dimendberg notes:

The architects constructed a machine for revealing opacity and undecidability as general

conditions of viewing architecture and images in an age when the definition of media is

rapidly shifting. Not knowing the status of what one views on the screen becomes a positive

virtue, the first step toward knowledge. (104)

In other words, the confusion generated by the installation reveals that the real is also

enacted. On top of that, it shows that architecture itself is staged, is enacted. It becomes

part of the theatrical act.

At this point I want to look a little closer at the title of the work. ‘Facsimile’ refers

to a reproduction that is as accurate as possible, in such a way that it may be hard to

distinguish the copy from the original. Though originally mainly used to refer to

manuscripts and artworks, in a contemporary context facsimile, or fax for short, can also

refer to electronic copies made with a scanner or a computer. The title refers to the fake

scenes that merge perfectly with the live feed and produce the effect of confusion about

what is real. But the title is also interesting in relation to the theatrical effect of the

installation. As I have explained, performativity is a repetitive act that produces the idea

of a natural substance. It is exactly in repetition that difference and divergence becomes

possible8. When we look closer at the pre-recorded images we see that they consist of

series where an identical space, like the hotel room is repeated over and over with a

different activity each time. These scenes depict “simultaneous repetition and change”

(Bonnevier 49). Lined up together, they invoke the idea of reiteration and performativity

8 This process is referred to by Butler as ‘social iterability’ drawing on Derrida’s notion of language iterability.

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in architecture itself; they show architecture as a stage for any human activity. By

combining real and pre-recorded scenes the idea of an original is rejected and replaced by

a performative model, which denies the existence of any substance behind the repetition.

At the same time it shows DS+R’s recurrent interest in the social aspect of architecture as

an essential part of understanding spaces. The architecture of the repeated rooms is

charged with different meaning, depending on the event that takes place inside it.

Blur building

In 2002 D+S realized a pavilion for the world exhibition in Switzerland; a giant

cloud floating over the nearby lake (Figure 20). In a speech called “Architecture Is a

Special Effects Machine”, Diller explains that the objective of this project is to critique

the “oversaturation of emergent technologies” and the “insatiable appetite for visual

stimulation” in world exhibitions. As an ironic subversion of this need for display and the

focus on progress, they instead decide to use complex technology to create nothing; they

deploy high technology to make something low definition. The water of the lake is pushed

through a set of 35000 fog nozzles to create mist, and a wheather station constantly

measures temperature, humidity, and wind and sends it to a central computer that controls

the system. The result, as Diller explains, is a “formless, featureless, depthless, scale less,

massless, purposeless, dimensionless” building that challenges how dependent people are

on vision (“Liz Diller”. Inside there is absolutely nothing to see, and the mist makes it

very difficult to navigate, since there are no reference points (Figure 21). The combination

of the lack of vision with the background noise of the fog nozzles has the effect of

completely blocking out the body’s system of orientation9. Contrary to the focus on

surveillance in Para-site and Facsimile, here supervision is replaced by no vision at all.

The experience of walking through the Blur Building is one of dispersion and

alienation, and the building seems to neutralize or even undo every cultural

contextualization, leaving only the individual him/herself floating in nothingness (Figure

19). This is enhanced by the fact that everyone is wearing the same raincoat, so that

recognizing other people also become impossible. The Blur Building levels out any

9 For an impression of the Blur Building’s inside I refer to Elisabeth Diller’s presentation on Ted Talks. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6ZbC53tVc from 3’27’’ to 4’39’’.

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difference between people, and any cultural meaning imposed on the environment. In fact,

we can hardly speak of a building anymore, since this project obliterates almost every

material element. The cloud also evokes associations with virtual reality, where

everything is connected without actually having a physical, tangible space. This way the

Blur Building makes the real seem virtual and gives the virtual a material space. But what

is interesting is that despite and maybe because of containing nothing, it instead becomes

what Diller calls a “meaning machine” (“Liz Diller”). The Blur Building neutralizes

material reality, and everyone walking through it can work out for him/herself what it

means.

Originally, the design for the Blur Building involved a series of technologically

mediated ‘content’ with LED panels transmitting messages to the visitors. Building on

this, D+S designed ‘braincoats’ to be handed out to everyone visiting the pavilion (Figure

22). On their website the description reads: “The ‘braincoat’ is a smart raincoat that, in

combination with a proxy-communications network, creates a new form of ‘social radar’”

(“Diller Scofidio + Renfro”). Visitors would fill out a simple questionnaire when entering

the Building, containing of questions such as ‘Sinner or Saint’, ‘Beauty or Beast’, ‘One

love or Two’, ‘Back Door, Front Door, Do Not Enter’, etc.” From the answers a specific

electronic profile is composed and embedded in the coat. When visitors walk through the

building, their character profiles are compared when they pass one another, and the

braincoat lights up:

“The chest panel of the braincoat displays a diffused colored light, the color indicating the

degree of affinity or antipathy, much like blushing from embarrassment or blanching from

shock. (…) A small vibrating pad is located in the rear pockets. When two perfectly matched

visitors encounter one another in the fog, a vibration excites the buttocks.” (Diller Scofidio

& Renfro)

Because of budgetary problems, this part of the project was never realized. With the

braincoat the Blur Building would have been more like cruising grounds where one goes

for finding the ideal partner, one the condition that the ‘perfect match’ would be made

without visual information and without any control over age, gender, looks, etc. This high

tech locating service also bears similarities to recent smartphone applications such as

Grindr, where gay men can locate other gay mean in their vicinity based on an online

profile. But even without the braincoat the effects of the Blur Building are just as strong.

The building creates a space that is not real space at all. By representing nothing, the Blur

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Building turns the gaze towards all other spaces, and puts their emphasis on visual

representation into focus by blurring vision inside the cloud. In a way, this leaves a space

free from (visual) control and an architecture where all power relations are deconstructed

or at least completely subverted.

The High Line

The next project I want to discuss is one of their most recent realizations, and

perhaps also one of their most well known projects. The High Line is a 1,5 mile long

public park on an abandoned elevated railway in New York. The first two sections of the

project were realized in 2009 and 2011; the final section is currently under construction.

DS+R’s design maintains the overgrown character and uses the specific microclimate of

this reclaimed ruin as an esthetic principle. The pavement consists of prefabricated

concrete planks with open joints (“Diller Scofidio + Renfro”). The open joints stimulate

wild growth, foliage that would usually be considered weeds and avoided at all cost.

Throughout the park, hard materials blend in with soft green patches, and the entire plane

is conceived as one surface that is constantly changing. Slabs protruding from the floor

form benches along the path (Figure 23). The High Line plays with the notion of culture

versus nature and introduces a new ecology into the city. Where architecture is usually

considered the victory of culture over nature, in this project the stature of what we

consider ‘nature’ is not very clear. Instead of building a controlled natural environment,

as is usually the case with parks, the architects use the existing organic structure and

simply make it accessible. The architects call this strategy “agritecture”, something

between agriculture and architecture, something between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’.

This idea of letting nature have its way, and of stimulating evolution beyond urban

planning is continued in the organization of functional elements along the path. Through

subtle transformations to the linear walkway, different zones are created where activities

can take place. These activities are not set, but instead the spatial layout is made as to

stimulate spontaneous action. At 23rd Street for example, seating steps are placed in front

of a wall, which can function as a grandstand (Figure 26). At other points, a simple grass

plane or a sundeck with lounge chairs and a water basin create specific spaces for leisure

activities. In an interview Diller explains “We like to think of architecture as kind of going

halfway there, and the public comes the other half and kind of completes the work” (“Liz

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Diller + Ric Scofidio”). This queer view on architecture is very present in the High Line,

where they seem to deliberately leave open different possibilities, different outcomes, and

different interactions with the public. They are asking for people to claim this space, and

give it meaning. The architect is more like a facilitator, than an actual creator. This

approach resonates with many of the interpretations of queer space we have seen, where

queer means: “in the process of, literally, taking place, of claiming territory” (Reed 64).

Another theme I want to discuss here is the relation between the High Line and the

rest of the city. Apart from creating claimable spaces, the architects also add a number of

interventions that stimulate communication between the city and the elevated walkway. In

a number of places DS+R add windows to the city, where exchange becomes possible.

The High Line in this respect functions as a sort of second route, an alternative path

through the city where one goes to look at the city. By creating a physical distance, with a

visual connection, visitors can look at the city from a distance, as outsiders. This is for

example very clear in Tenth Avenue Square, where a seating platform cuts into the

structure of the railroad, only to end in a large panoramic window looking out onto the

street below (Figure 24). As Dimendberg explains: transparency places what we see in

quotation marks (189). The window displays nothing but the traffic below; there is

nothing to be seen. Yet exactly this absence of content stimulates looking closer at spaces

that are taken for granted. What is important, however, is not only to see, but also to be

seen (Figure 25). As Charles Renfro explains: “The High Line, for instance, makes a kind

of live movie of 10th Avenue, with the people elevated above the street, along with the

pedestrians below, observing each other in equal measure, an ostensibly endless

voyeuristic scene” (“Naughty Architect”). Neither one of the viewers has visual

dominance over the other, one is always both audience and on display oneself. Thus again

seeing/being seen is put into a new, queered perspective.

Apart from the spatial interventions, the reflection on the city also has an important

temporal dimension. As Scofidio explains, the goal is “to decelerate the visitors’ urban

pace” (qtd. in Dimendberg 189). Despite its linear form, the High Line doesn’t just serve

to get from point A to point B. In a less extreme way than the Blur Building, the High line

lifts people out of the everyday tempo of the city, into what they call “the slow

otherworldly landscape above” (“Diller Scofidio + Renfro”). This slow movement again

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reflects a queered view on ‘nature’10. The slow transformation into an urban wilderness

that the High Line had already undergone because of its abandonment is simply being

continued. The city as represented by the High Line does not represent the rational, the

cultural, the organized, but represents movement, growth, displacement and forever

changing viewpoints and positions.

Brasserie

The restoration of the Brasserie is on of D+S’s first architectural projects, in a

more traditional sense. The Brasserie is located in the Seagram Building, a modernist icon

designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1958. There are two restaurants in the building, the

Brasserie and the Four Seasons, both designed by Philip Johnson. In 1995 the Brasserie

was destroyed by a fire, at which point Diller and Scofidio were appointed to do the

restoration. The restaurant reopened in 2000. The Seagram building is above all known as

a glass skyscraper but the base of the building, where the Brasserie is located, is devoid of

any natural light or any visual connection to the street (Dimendberg 139) (Figure 31). This

in contrast to the Four Seasons, which is located at the other side of the building and has a

glass façade. The Four Seasons was originally conceived as the more luxurious version of

the Brasserie and the architecture of the two spaces clearly expresses this high class/low

class opposition11. To challenge this construction, D+S introduce a mediatized connection

between the restaurant and the street, thus subverting the interior/exterior relation. A

camera at the entrance makes a snapshot of anyone passing through the revolving doors,

and this blurred image is displayed on one of fifteen screens that are suspended over the

bar (Diller, Scofidio and Renfro “Diller Scofidio + Renfro”). When a new image arrives,

the older ones move one screen to the right, until they disappear from the last monitor

(Dimendberg 139).

This electronic intervention serves as a critique of the hierarchical relation between

the two restaurants, since the rigid modernist design makes it impossible to open up the

Brasserie to the street through an architectural intervention. Yet perhaps more

importantly, the video monitors are also part of the way the Brasserie theatricalizes the

10 For a detailed investigation of intersections between Queer Theory and Ecology I refer to Tim Morton’s « Queer Ecology » 11 Ironically, both restaurants are in fact connected by a common service area (Dimendberg 138).

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moment of entering. The floor level of the restaurant is situated one half level below street

level and it is reached through a central staircase that acts as the second phase of this

theatricalization (Figure 27). As D+S explain: “a glass stairway of unusually gradual

proportions prolongs the descent and deposits each patron into the center of the dining

room” (“Diller Scofidio + Renfro”). The arrival of a new guest is first announced on the

screens, at which point the visitor descends the stairs as if entering a stage. The angle of

the stairs directly influences the movement of the body, and makes whoever enters aware

of the act of ‘making an entrance’. This way, the architects use the visual impenetrability

of the building to stage the act of entering a restaurant and to evoke, similar to the Slow

House, a mechanism of arousal. Not only is whoever enters made aware of being seen;

anyone present in the restaurant is also stimulated to look.

Another reason why this project is interesting is the intricate detailing of the

interior. Working with a more comfortable budget, this project reveals how DS+R’s

queered architecture runs through into the smallest detailing. In particular I want to draw

attention to the materialization of the interior. In the project description we read: “the

gutted shell is resurfaced with thin liners of varying materials that sometimes lift away to

become structural, spatial, and functional elements” (“Diller Scofidio + Renfro”). For

example the pear wood ceiling turns downward into a wall division while the floor turns

upwards, folding into a bench until overlapping with the wall, without ever touching it

(Figure 32). On the side of the main dining area separate booths are formed by a series of

tilted wall panels looking like matrasses, which serve as seating and are made of

Naugahyde, a famous American brand of artificial leather (Figure 30). An interesting

detail that Dimendberg mentions is that this material is strongly associated with American

lower middle class, and specifically with supposed cultural ignorance and conventional

morality (139). Again this plays on the class division spatialised by the distinction

between the two restaurants. A steel frame supports these slabs and forms the bench on

the other side of the matrass wall. In the backroom a glass panel is tilted against the wall

and used as a structure for a bench, playing with the association of glass and fragility

(“The Brasserie”). In the void between the existing wall and the glass panel there are

several objects that are visible through the glass wall (Figure 29). Because the panel is

made of lenticular glass, the objects are only visible completely when facing the wall

perpendicularly (Figure 33). From the side they appear somewhat blurred (“The

Brasserie”).

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This architecture of surfaces is present throughout the entire restaurant. The

traditional distinction between structure and decoration is deconstructed and queered.

Different elements are introduced as new skins to the raw architecture of the place, but

they cannot be reduced to just decoration. Instead they can be structural, functional and

decorative at the same time. Especially considering the association of structure with mind

or depth and decoration with body or surface signs, here the architects present an exterior

with depth, a body that is at the same time mind. On top of that, the architects play with

the culturally associated meaning of materials and critique the rigid modernist esthetic of

the Seagram building. As a final subversion, the women’s and men’s toilets, though

physically separated, are connected visually by a semi-transparent glass wall (“The

Brasserie”). A single washbasin protrudes into both restrooms, giving the impression of

standing next to each other while washing hands (Figure 28). Again perverted lines of

vision take over from cultural norms, where the most protected architectural gendered

division is opened up. Every part of the Brasserie, from the tilted walls, over the

theatricalized entrance to the voyeuristic restrooms, suggests bodies in motion, looking

and being seen by others in a grand performance of dining. The restoration of the

Brasserie can be understood as a careful re-dressing of the existing architecture, recalling

the notion of ‘cross-cladding’ as developed by Bonnevier. It uses the modernist division

between high and low class and between structure and decoration, and turns it around into

something entirely different.

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5. Conclusion

The goal of this dissertation was to explore a new way of approaching architecture,

from the specific perspective of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities. I have

called this queer(ing) architecture, reflecting the possibility of queer as a design strategy

on the one hand, and queering architecture as a discipline on the other hand. The reason

for developing such an approach is first of all the growing visibility of queers in our

society and the fact that these non-heteronormative subjects seek different spatial

representation. More importantly this queer approach also reflects on heterosexual

constructs by zooming in on those aspects of society that are so naturalized that they have

become invisible. Power structures at work in society are always also present in any form

of cultural production, including architecture. Understanding how heteronormativity -one

of the most important regulatory systems- is represented spatially is essential in order to

redefine architecture. Queer, in this respect, has been used to explore deviant genders and

sexualities, but it also refers to ambiguity and subversion in a more general sense. In what

follows I will give a short overview of the most important conclusions of the theoretical

part of this thesis. After that I will discuss more comprehensively how Diller Scofidio +

Renfro exemplify queer(ing) architecture as I conceive it.

In the first chapter I explored definitions of space, power and architecture based on

the work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault. I concluded that power is clearly

implicated in space, but the relation with architecture, or more even, the relation with

architectural design is more complex than a simple division between freedom and control.

What became clear, however, is that architecture cannot be considered solely on a

material basis. In order to understand power relations played out in buildings, we have to

consider the complex process of interaction between the intentions of the architect, the

material reality of the building and the actions played out inside its walls. To explore the

deconstruction of power relations I used Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopias’.

Heterotopias are useful here because they reveal how difference can be used as a strategy

for displacing normalized assumptions. Another important characteristic of heterotopias is

that, apart from revealing an alternative alignment of materiality, social practice and

event, they also always turn the gaze onto all the other ‘regular’ spaces to explore how

‘other’ was defined in the first place.

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To develop the concept of queer(ing) architecture, I proposed aligning heterotopias

with existing notions of queer space in order to define specific heterotopias that challenge

heteronormativity as a dominant order. Queer space in geography has been largely defined

based on the way queers experience and create space. Although a similar approach is still

relevant, I have focused on a more systematic interpretation, based on Katarina

Bonnevier’s definition of queer architecture. I concluded that queer space and heterotopias

both disrupt normalized assumptions and take difference as a starting position to defy

otherness. Both also have an important utopian dimension in that they function as social

experiments, and both take into account the interaction of materiality, social practice and

events. Based on the queer reading of heterotopias, I proposed five principles of

queer(ing) architecture.

In the fourth chapter I analyzed nine projects of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. To show

how their architecture illustrates this concept of queer(ing) architecture, I will go over

each of the five principles from chapter three, and explore how DS+R’s projects relate to

it. In this way, I will summarize the most important themes in their work. At the same

time, this overview serves to further explore the five principles. Where the theoretical part

served mainly to re-conceptualize what we understand by architecture -to queer the

architectural discipline, DS+R’s work shows us more clearly how this can additionally be

used as a design strategy. The first principle of queer(ing) architecture states that a queer

architecture challenges and deconstructs ‘architectural binaries’, as I have called them, to

expose their gendered and heteronormative nature. We find this strategy in various

projects by DS+R. The withDrawing room for example questions the relation between

drawing and building, and reverses them. Thus DS+R question the neutrality of the

drawing, by revealing that architectural expression is set in a social context, where

designing, in this case, a house, is never free from cultural prescriptions about

domesticity. In the Slow House the architects use a similar approach in their x-ray

drawings. As such, instead of revealing objective information about the architecture as

material structure, they reveal information about the architecture of the house as a

performance of domestic life. In several projects, DS+R deploy technical interventions to

change lines of vision and to reposition the definition of inside and outside. This is

especially present in Para-site, Facsimile and The Brasserie. In the Brasserie, the division

between ornament and structure is also deconstructed through the use of structural

ornaments.

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The second principle reads that queer(ing) architecture means exploring new ways

of seeing and doing architecture. This involves considering architecture as non-static,

performative and capable of both reflecting existing power structures and constituting

power relations in space. DS+R have worked on the borderlines of architecture since they

set out, and this contributes a lot to their queer approach. As we have seen in the Slow

House, for example, a single project can at once be a built structure, a performance or an

exhibition. In their definition, architecture does not necessarily mean building. This also

points to the fact that the architects never consider just the material aspects of architecture,

but they are always also thinking about how social relations and subjects are implied. In

the High Line, for example, they hardly build anything. In fact the only thing they

construct is the possibility of something taking place. This approach also clearly questions

power relations in an urban context, since large planning projects usually try to control

space instead of giving it over to the public. Finally, their focus on theatricality, especially

in Facsimile and the Brasserie, reveals an interest in the performative nature of

architecture.

The third principle focuses on the importance of an outsider position, in order to

see things differently. By removing oneself from the center of things, it becomes possible

to explore how dominant spaces are not neutral, but the representation of a specific idea or

subject. Queer architecture uses difference to challenge gender norms as they are

inscribed in architectural space. The involvement of DS+R with issues of gender and

sexuality is present in several projects. Sometimes this is more evident at the surface, as in

the withDrawing room, and sometimes more in the details, as in the toilets of the

Brasserie. In one interview, Diller explains that they try to “challenge everyday

conventions of space, so obvious we’re blinded by their familiarity” (“Liz Diller + Ric

Scofidio”). To do this, they position themselves on the edge of architecture in various

ways. Renfro describes this as “sort of working outside the standard tactics of the

profession, and working outside of polite subject matter. (…) tackling subjects that

architects don’t handle”. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that, despite being on

the outside themselves, they use this stance for different purposes. In several projects, they

use their architecture to put other people in this outsider position. In the Blur Building for

example, the nothingness created forces people to think about the meaning of space. This

is also very present in the High Line where passersby are invited to sit on the benches and

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stare through a number of ‘windows’ created by the architects. These techniques allow

DS+R to turn mundane urban scenes, such as the passing traffic, into dramatic display.

In the fourth principle I refer to the importance of the body in queer(ing)

architecture. More specifically queer architecture sets out to trace how control is exercised

over bodies in architecture and how the body is produced as a specific kind of body.

Corporeality and a focus on the body in architecture is present in all of DS+R’s projects.

To begin with, as I explained in my analysis of “Flesh: Architectural probes”, they

devoted an entire book to this theme, and all of the projects described in the book reveal

their interest in the body. A number of projects explore the way bodies are controlled by

space, such as Soft sell or Para-site for example. Yet despite their interest in surveillance,

DS+R are also particularly sensitive to the way architecture appeals to the senses. Diller

calls architecture “a special effects machine that delights and disturbs the senses” (“Liz

Diller”). This is perhaps most clear in the Blur Building, where all the senses are

disturbed. But also in all the other projects, they always explore ways of seeing and being

seen as an essential aspect of directing bodies.

Finally, the fifth principle states that queer architecture breaks down

heteronormativity by facilitating spatial subversive acts or by creating holes in the

homogeneous fabric of heteronormative space, where things function differently. Again

the focus on lines of vision is important. As Renfro explains it is all about “Breaking

down the physical barriers through glass and transparency, but also digitally and through

media, providing glimpses into places that are usually not glimpsable. In that regard, we

encourage people to behave badly” (“AD Interviews: Charles Renfro”). There is always a

sense of voyeuristic display in their projects, related to the desire to see or to be seen. In

the Slow House, this is achieved through the specific shape of the building, whereas in

Para-site and Facsimile, for example, a technical intervention turns the invisible visible. In

the toilets of the Brasserie, a simple translucent wall stimulates visual connection. In the

Blur Building and The High line, physical distance creates a gap between ‘regular space’

and the space of that specific project. This is particularly explicit in the Blur Building

since all the characteristics of a normal building are negated.

I have tried to show how DS+R approach architecture differently, and how this

new approach can be interpreted as queer(ing) architecture. Of course this is only one

interpretation, and due to the complexity of their work, the projects could probably be

65

understood very differently in a different context. I want to conclude that their architecture

embodies an important difference to the architectural canon, both on a conceptual level

and in the way they build. DS+R question the meaning of architecture in everything they

do, and they open up space for questions that are usually ignored by architects. As a final

anecdote I want to refer to a lecture about the renovation of the Lincoln Center called

“What They Forgot to Teach You in Architecture School”. In this lecture, Elisabeth Diller

made a fifteen-slide PowerPoint presentation to explain their project. Yet instead of just

giving one presentation, she developed ten personalities, ten different versions of herself,

to explain the project, with the same slides, in ten different ways (Hetherington 172-173).

The Lincoln Center, which I have not discussed here due to the limited space, was one of

their largest and most complex assignments so far, and involved various clients and

institutions. Despite reflecting the complexity of the project and of the role of the architect

as a manager of interests, Diller touches upon something else here. She performs her

architecture in ten different ways, and by repeating the same PowerPoint over and over

she emphasizes that there is no ‘truth’ behind meaning. Different subjects will see

different architectures, and architecture is never neutral or objective. It is, above all, a

cultural product set in a context of social relations and norms. Yet with the right approach,

it is exactly this possibility to slide between different meanings that allows for an

alternative architecture to be thinkable.

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