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Trans-Spaces:

Reviewing the Application of Queer Theory and Gender Studies in the Design of Transitional Spaces.

This literature review will examine and analyse the existing contemporary literature relevant to applications of queer theory and gender studies in the architectural discipline, whilst identifying a further need to focus on transitional spaces. The aim in applying queer theory and gender studies as a theoretical approach in the design of transitional spaces is to create public accessibility and inclusivity. The discussion will summarise and critique queer and gender-diverse approaches to architecture, and the design of public-facing transitional spaces, before justifying the need for further research.

Debates, Controversies and Foundations:

Early applications of feminist and queer theory in the late 20th Century focused on cis-women, lesbians and gay men - such as in the 1999 text Gender Space Architecture, Betsky’s Queer Space, and Sander’s Stud - inadvertently excluding gender-diversity (Betsky, 1997; Borden et al., 1999; Sanders, 1996). There was a shift in seminal formulations of a distinctly trans-theory by Halberstam and Nagoshi & Brzuzy, theorising broader representations of transgender lives (Halberstam, 2005; Nagoshi et al., 2014). Crawford attempted to remedy “architectural theory’s marginal treatment of transgender” lives, with hesitancy amidst debate regarding the theorisations of lived-experiences subject to “erasure, murder, violence and ridicule in public space” (Crawford, 2016; Moore & Castricum, 2020). Furman and Mardell’s archival examination of criminal records further highlights the erasure of queer spatial history and need for safety (Furman & Mardell, 2022). Queer theory and gender studies is inherently politically charged, foregrounded in the debate of public bathrooms as an intersection of architecture and gender-diversity; with practice-based interventions such as ‘Stalled!’ attempting to find gender-neutral solutions (Jess Berry et al., 2020; Sanders, 2017). Literature further debates the risk of elevating the fluidity of queer people to unrealistic levels of ability to challenge structural institutions, underpinned by the paradoxical nature of a queer methodology (Crawford, 2016; Jobst & Stead, 2023). The literature presents a post-modern understanding of a queer methodology, encompassing non-normative sexualities, trans-, gender-diverse and gender-non-conforming identities, with ‘queer’ shifting from a noun, into a verb; ‘to queer’ or ‘queering’ meaning “to unsettle established relations and norms” of society and the architectural discipline (Jobst & Stead, 2023). It is commonly argued queering involves challenging and rethinking conventional disciplinary methods and approaches; seen in the use of experimental writing, case-studies, archival and practice-based research.

Queering Architecture: Gender Performativity

Judith Butler - considered a founder of gender studies - first introduced the theory of gender as a continual social performance in 1990, resulting in a paradigm shift (Butler, 2006). Butler rejected gender as a fixed natural reality; finding gender is constructed by repetitive acts which create reality; upheld by institutions of patriarchy and biological essentialism (Butler, 2006). Laqueur further supported Butler, finding ‘biological sex’ lacked empirical evidence and perpetuated the oppression of women as less than, or opposite to men (Laqueur, 1992). Ahmed’s later dissertation on queer phenomenology found lived experiences to be performed by the orientation of bodies in space, “shaped by histories,” the repetition of interactions, and the spatial production of “straight tendencies,” or cis-heteronormativity, foregrounding discussions of gender performativity within architecture (Ahmed, 2006).

Within literature there is acknowledgment of architecture as an upholder of normative gender and sexuality, with debate regarding architecture’s repetitive performance of “longstanding essentialism,” and the further need for queering to subvert social constructions (Angelopoulou, 2017). The much-cited thesis Behind Straight Curtains first explored the performance of gender in architecture through a theatrical interpretation of case-studies (Bonnevier, 2007). Caldwell and Smitheram find that if gender is performed; then a space free from institutions, and experienced as queer is also performed through a “collaboration between bodies, materials and forces” (Caldwell & Smitheram, 2023). Canl1 further envisions space as “constantly being reperformed,” with the ability to subvert “gender-charged” power structures by instead performing queer modes of being in a “dissident form of world-making” (Canl1, 2023). It is generally agreed that architecture is subject to and maintains the continual social performance of gender, with queering aiming to dismantle cis-heteronormativity and patriarchy associated with constructions of binary gender.

Resistance to Binary Oppositions and Cis-Heteronormativity

Eve Sedgwick, regarded as a pioneer of queer theory, supports Butler’s theory of gender performativity finding the performance of normalised binary categorisations of sexuality and gender underpin Western society, highlighting socio-political fragmentation due to regulation within institutions such as architecture, leading to marginalisation’s of queerness and gender-diversity (Butler, 2006; Sedgwick, 1990). A queering of architecture aims to resist authoritative binary definitions of sexuality and gender, and associated cis-heteronormativity, leading to the deconstruction of various binaries - from Halberstam’s theorising of queer time as moving “beyond the binary division of flexibility or rigidity” and resisting “institutions of family, heterosexuality and reproduction,” to Herring’s challenging of the urban and rural binary, or “metronormativity,” present within discussions of queering cities (Halberstam, 2005; Herring, 2010).

Ahmed suggests the bodily occupation of space reproduces and affects the performance of social binaries, with spaces historically orientated around a standardised straight cis-body; proposing queering can radically “reorder” these standards to form new modes of inhabitation (Ahmed, 2006). Vallerand further explores the performance of social binaries in domesticity, using case-studies to reveal a coinciding spatial binary of private and public; proposing a “blurring” can resist binary gender roles within the home; supported by Queering the Interior (Gorman-Murray & Cook, 2020; Vallerand, 2020). Gough further explores gay clubs as case-studies, proposing a “transing of gender” and architecture can deconstruct essentialist binary definitions of gender and sexuality, and subsequent constructed architectural boundaries (Gough, 2017). Further literature supports this queer deconstruction of architectural boundaries alongside social binaries in considering the wall as a spatial binary. Canl1 makes the comparison between the division of space with walls, to the barriers faced by queer identities, supported by Crawford arguing “the demarcation of spatial boundaries plays out disproportionately on transgender people and others” (Canl1, 2023; Crawford, 2016). Caldwell and Smitheram, in their practise-based research, theorise the wall as a political force used to “control and orientate our bodies” and “divide people up;” denoting ideas of access and belonging, whilst speculating a blurring of “social and spatial binaries,” within a “nesting of scales” using alternatives, such as the curtain (Caldwell & Smitheram, 2023).

Embodiment of Queer and Gender-Diverse Lived Experiences

Gender performativity and resistance to binary oppositions and cis-heteronormativity in a queering of architecture is commonly underpinned by the embodiment of queer and gender-diverse lived and bodily experiences. Early theorisations of trans-theory, such as that of Halberstam and Nagoshi & Brzuzy, emphasised “the significance of the transgender body” as fluidly embodying resistance to normalised social binaries; foregrounding the self-construction of identity as core to challenging social constructions (Halberstam, 2005; Nagoshi et al., 2014). Canl1 and Ahmed consider the spatial embodiment of socially-constructed binaries to be through the “lived experience of inhabiting a body” in space; with interactions between objects, such as skin and surface, contributing to the normalised exclusion of ‘othered’ bodies (Ahmed, 2006; Canl1, 2023). Canl1 further finds this co-creation of normative identity and space can become “penetrable, diffusive and processual” in a reimagination of architecture as the embodiment of queerness, therefore in a constant state of becoming and transformation (Canl1, 2023). Crawford supports this discussion considering archival narratives of queer “agency, experiences and resistances to human actors” embodied within modernist architecture, examining the “fluidity of the trans body” as a “model” for the transformation of architectural conventions (Crawford, 2016). This concept is reinforced in Angelopoulou’s interdisciplinary case-study research, speculating the queering of architecture is through destabilising acts of “dis/continuity” in the design process, found in the medical transformation of transgender bodies, or “trans-modification,” relating surgical cuts, to cuts in architectural drawings, software and structures (Angelopoulou, 2017). It is widely debated that it is the embodiment of queer and gender-diverse narratives of lived experience within the transgender body and its uses of space that challenges conventions of architecture, gender, and sexuality leading to both bodily and architectural transformations.

Transitional Spaces:

Existing literary discussions of transitional spaces are foregrounded by movement and negotiation of behaviours through and beyond the public and private binary, heralding the queer deconstruction of social binaries. Kimmel’s case-study research employs a critical lens to analyse the social and spatial “requirements and impacts of” of transitional spaces, namely the threshold (Kimmel, 2021). It is accepted that the threshold links “public space with publicly accessible buildings,” acting as a spatial boundary creating “material enclosures” navigating tensions within society enacted between the interior and exterior, whilst aiming to resist the “homogenisation of space” (Kimmel, 2021; Lathouri, 2019). Lathouri’s archival research further finds - using a political lens to propose contemporary applications - that transitional spaces deal with “the space-in-between,” interacting with boundary thresholds and generating liminal experiences of “interiority and proximity” that negotiate individual and collective modes of being and usage (Lathouri, 2019). Similarly, Kimmel finds as “enhancers of social interactions” demarcating “broader socio-political contexts in public and private space” - transitional spaces have the ability to “orchestrate different behaviours” related to status, power and control; delineating experiences of segregation and marginalisation, whilst contributing to the “publicness” of adjacent spaces as reflections of social conditions (Kimmel, 2021). Lathouri further argues transitional spaces are “a condensed expression of human life itself” as they reconsider the relationship between human agency and social structures and construct social reality (Lathouri, 2019). There is agreement that the “recalibration of boundaries” within transitional spaces becomes a socio-political site of resistance, constructing “alternative social…patterns” related to public “access and visibility,” finding a greater impact upon marginalised “communities that are usually invisible” with encounter and connection encouraging sociability, diversity, and “public life” (Kimmel, 2021; Lathouri, 2019).

Queering Transitional Spaces: Liminality: Subverting Binaries

Literature regarding transitional spaces find them to be “small theatres of social life,” performing social constructs of gender and sexuality within liminal movement between binaries such as the public and private (Kimmel, 2021). It is further theorised that transitional spaces negotiate the individual and collective, with queer spatial embodiments establishing self-constructed experiences as integral to the subversion of socially-constructed norms (Lathouri, 2019; Nagoshi et al., 2014). Therefore, the queering of transitional spaces can be justified in the connection between transitional spaces’ theorised liminality and queer approaches to subverting spatial and social binaries. Moore and Castricum further suggest queering architecture requires “looking inside the liminal spaces between the repressive binaries we are forced into by hetero and cisnormativity” proposing a need for further practise-based speculation of transitional spaces as a microcosm of social institutions such as gender and sexuality (Moore & Castricum, 2020).

Transformative Potential

The ability of transitional spaces to modify behaviours; found by Kimmel, can be linked with the transformative potential of body and architecture in mutual co-creation; found in the consideration of lived experiences and bodily occupations in queering architecture (Kimmel, 2021). Canl1 considers the “transformative potential of queerness” in its fluidity; akin to Kimmel and Lathouri’s consideration of transitional spaces as sites of change, with the ability to encourage alternative modes of usage and sociability, such as a queer experience (Canl1, 2023; Kimmel, 2021; Lathouri, 2019). Canl1 further contemplates the domestic corridor as a transitional or “liminal space between worlds” where transformation takes place, arguing the “in-betweenness” creates possibilities heralding Lathouri and Kimmel’s findings that transitional spaces are “sites of intimacy, socialisation and interaction” (Canl1, 2023; Kimmel, 2021; Lathouri, 2019). The justification for the application of queer and gender-diverse approaches in transitional spaces can be found in Canl1’s finding that marginalised people reside in transitional spaces as they are in a “constant state of displacement,” finding comfort in decentralised and destabilised public places where boundaries and identities are blurred, such as transitional spaces (Canl1, 2023). However, contemporary literature is yet to take the consideration of the transitional space out of the domestic and into the public scale, with a queering lending itself to the blurring of scales as seen in Caldwell and Smitheram (2023). Crawford’s proposal of “transing” justifies the further speculation of a queer transformation in the public realm, considering the collaboration and movement that can happen “across bodies, buildings and milieus” in an act similar to that theorised by Lathouri as experiences of movement transform relationships and boundaries within transitional spaces (Crawford, 2016; Lathouri, 2019) There is a present lack of explicit consideration of queer lived experiences and gender-diverse bodies in transitional spaces, therefore, research is required regarding the processes involved in designing transitional spaces as the site of queering and transformative potential.

Inclusivity and Accessibility

A need to focus on the design of transitional spaces with a queer and gender-diverse approach persists; with an aim to foster “inclusive, participatory, safe and accessible” public spaces, as suggested by Contentious Cities, consistent with debates regarding the embodied transformative potential of queer lived experiences, and the advent of liminality within transitional spaces to subvert spatial and social binaries (Jess Berry et al., 2020). Kimmel’s consideration of status, power and control within transitional spaces and the focus on “publicness” indicates an awareness of accessibility and inclusivity issues and need for further application of queer and “gender-sensitive participatory design” processes; such as that used by Kalm and Bawden as “an equalising force used to create spaces…of inclusion” and address power dynamics (Kalms & Bawden, 2020; Kimmel, 2021). Jobst and Stead establishes a connection between queering and concepts introduced by Kimmel, in the advocacy of queering the interior and exterior binary as a “container of private and public voids” which provides visibility and access to spaces where sexuality and gender “resides and enacts itself” without delving further or explicitly exploring transitional space design (Jobst & Stead, 2023; Kimmel, 2021).

There is a clear need to apply queer and gender-diverse approaches to the design of transitional spaces in processes and practices beyond the bathroom and domestic applications; to foster inclusivity and accessibility foregrounded by safety, visibility and participation that starts with queer and gender-diverse lived experiences and extends to all marginalised communities in their transformative potential and subversion of binaries.

References: Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/monograph/book/70074 Angelopoulou, A. (2017). A Surgery Issue: Cutting through the Architectural Fabric. FOOTPRINT, Trans-Bodies / Queering Spaces(21), 25–50. https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.11.2.1899 Betsky, A. (1997). Queer space: Architecture and same-sex desire (First edition). William Morrow and Company, Inc. http://www.gbv.de/dms/weimar/toc/198223609_toc.pdf Bonnevier, K. (2007). Behind Straight Curtains: Towards a queer feminist theory of architecture [KTH]. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-4295 Borden, I., Penner, B., & Rendell, J. (1999). Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. Taylor & Francis Group. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unisa/detail.action?docID=169967 Butler, J. (2006). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203824979

Caldwell, A., & Smitheram, J. (2023). Blurring Binaries: A Queer Approach to Architecture through Embodied Connection. The International Journal of Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design, 17(2), 151–167. https://doi.org/10.18848/2325-1662/CGP/v17i02/151-167 Canl1, E. (2023). Notes from transient spaces, anachronic times: An architextural exercise. In Queering Architecture: Methods, Practices, Spaces, Pedagogies. Bloomsbury Visual Arts. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350267077 Crawford, L. (2016). Transgender Architectonics: The Shape of Change in Modernist Space. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315550039 Furman, A. N., & Mardell, J. (Eds.). (2022). Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQ+ Places and Stories. RIBA Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003297499 Gorman-Murray, A., & Cook, M. (Eds.). (2020). Queering the Interior. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003086475 Gough, T. (2017). Trans-architecture. FOOTPRINT, Trans-Bodies / Queering Spaces(21), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.11.2.1900 Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unisa/detail.action?docID=2081650 Herring, S. (2010). Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism. New York University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unisa/detail.action?docID=866116

Jess Berry, Timothy Moore, Nicole Kalms, & Gene Bawden (Eds.). (2020). Contentious Cities | Design and the Gendered Production of Space | Jes (1st ed.). https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003056065/contentious-cities-jess-berry-timothy-moore-nicole-kalms-gene-bawden Jobst, M., & Stead, N. (Eds.). (2023). Queering Architecture: Methods, Practices, Spaces, Pedagogies. Bloomsbury Visual Arts. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350267077 Kalms, N., & Bawden, G. (2020). Lived experience: Participatory practices for gender-sensitive spaces and places. In Contentious Cities. Routledge. Kimmel, L. (2021). Architecture of Threshold Spaces: A Critique of the Ideologies of Hyperconnectivity and Segregation in the Socio-Political Context. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003133889 Laqueur, T. (1992). Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press.

Lathouri, M. (2019). IMAGINING THE SPACE-IN-BETWEEN: The Elaboration of a Method. Arhitektura, Raziskave, 2019, 173-191,268. Moore, T., & Castricum, S. (2020). Queering architecture: Simona Castricum and Timothy Moore in conversation. In Contentious Cities. Routledge. Nagoshi, J. L., Nagoshi, C. T., & Brzuzy, S. (2014). Gender and Sexual Identity: Transcending Feminist and Queer Theory. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8966-5 Sanders, J. (Ed.). (1996). Stud: Architectures of Masculinity. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003014720 Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet (Updated ed. / preface by the author.). University of California Press. Vallerand, O. (2020). Unplanned Visitors: Queering the Ethics and Aesthetics of Domestic Space. McGill-Queen’s University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unisa/detail.action?docID=6944697

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