Making Homes, Building (Self-)Identities: Queer ... - MAFIADOC.COM

Making Homes, Building (Self-)Identities: Queer Subversions of Domestic Space, 1994-2014

Olivier Vallerand School of Architecture, McGill University, Montreal August 2014

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture © Olivier Vallerand 2014

You always seemed so sure That one day we'd be fighting In a suburban war - Arcade Fire, 2010 We exist - Arcade Fire, 2013

pour ceux qui doivent encore se cacher

Table of contents Abstract

iii

Résumé

iv

Acknowledgements

v

List of figures

x

Introduction. Between the Domestic and the Public

1

Methods

14

Outline

17

Chapter 1. Living in a Binary World? Understanding the Domestic through Gender and Sexuality Separate Spheres: Privacy and Publicity in Feminist Domesticity Studies Gender and the Architectural Profession

22 24 35 39

Queer Space Theories: Deconstructing Spatial Binaries Queering Architectural Discourse

45 55 59

Chapter 2. Bodily Exhibitions: Making Queer Space Theory Visible

66

Bridging the Fields: Working at the Intersection of Art and Architecture

66

Building Queer Space disappeared and the Queer Potential of a Minor Architecture The Collective Experiment of the Storefront for Queer Space

72 72 75

Investigating Domesticity at the Museum House Rules: Reinventing Social Architecture The Un-Private House: Privacy and the Media

90 91 98

BOOM: Actualising a Queer Architecture? Chapter 3. Living Pictures: Mark Robbins Drags the Home into the Gallery

113 128 i

Mark Robbins and the Body in Architecture

130

Households: Undermining Interiors Representations

132

Chapter 4. A Queer Modern Home: Dorit Margreiter and the Toxic Titties (Re)construct the Family in Motion 154 10104 Angelo View Drive: a performance / a video / an installation

156

The SheatsMachine for Living, Machine for Looking

167 177

How Do You Read a Queer Feminist Take on a Mid-Century House?

182

Chapter 5. Perfect Homes / Queer Homes: Elmgreen & Dragset Destruct(ure) the Domestic

192

From Powerless Structures to the Welfare State: Elmgreen & Dragset and the Political

193

Inventing a Private Life: Elmgreen & Dragset and the Domestic The One & the Many The Collectors Post-script: Tomorrow

206 208 211 226 237 243

Conclusion. A Queer Use for a Queer Place

255

Bibliography

265

ii

Abstract This dissertation is an examination of queer critiques of domestic spaces. How do these critiques, building on feminist practitioners and theorists, highlight assumptions present in mainstream domestic representations and the ways in which these representations reinforce certain normative constructs? Archival material, interviews and installation visits are used to analyse exhibitions and installation projects that blur the traditional borders between architecture and art: exhibitions curated by queer space theorists and practitioners (Queer Space and House Rules, both 1994) and art projects by Mark Robbins (Households, 2002-06), Dorit Margreiter and the Toxic Titties (10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004), and Elmgreen & Dragset (The One & The Many, 2010-11; The Collectors, 2009; Tomorrow, 2013). The projects chosen, inspired in part by the emergence of queer theory in the late 1980s, address issues of normative domesticity through an emphasis on the tensions between private and public, and traditional and non-traditional family units. These questions are highlighted in these projects by the shift in context that transforms everyday domestic environments, often assumed to be neutral containers and havens for private lives, into objectified art pieces presented in (public) gallery spaces; this shift emphasizes the normative aspects of most domestic architecture. This study is completed by an analysis of two architectural projects, Elm studio-house in Berlin (the Pumpwerk Neukölln, 2006-08) and the BOOM retirement neighbourhoods in Palm Springs and on the Costa del Sol (unbuilt). The two projects are attempts to implement some of the queer critiques discussed into actual buildings; the architects and artists involved faced various challenges in this move from installations to built environments that echo the resistances associated to traditional notions of domesticity. iii

Résumé Cette thèse porte sur les critiques queers des espaces domestiques. Comment ces critiques, inspirées par des praticiennes et théoriciennes féministes, soulignent-elles les présupposés présents dans les représentations de la domesticité ainsi que les façons par lesquelles celles-ci renforcent certaines

: des expositions espace queer (Queer Space, 1994; House Rules, 1994) et des projets artistiques de Mark Robbins (Households, 2002-06), Dorit Margreiter et les Toxic Titties (10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004) et Elmgreen & Dragset (The One & the Many, 2010-11; The Collectors, 2009, Tomorrow

queer à la fin des

les tensions entre le privé et le public et entre les conceptions traditionnelles et non-traditionnelles de la famille. Ces questions sont soulignées par un déplacement de contexte qui transforme des environnements domestiques associés au quotidien, souvent considérés comme étant des enveloppes neutres prot

deux projets architecturaux, la maison-atelier de Elmgreen & Dragset (la Pumpwerk Neukölln, 2006-08) et les développements pour retraités BOOM (non construites). Ces deux projets sont des queers dans des bâtiments habitables; les architectes et artistes impliqués se sont heurtés à des défis divers qui montrent les résistances associées aux conceptions traditionnelles de la domesticité. iv

Acknowledgements Although the dissertation is in the end only a pile of paper in an immaterial cloud in an increasingly digital world

or a combination of 0s and 1s floating

it is also a lengthy process involving

hundreds of people rendered invisible by the word processor. The following paragraphs attempt to make all of them visible; as I am sure I will forget someone, if you are not named here but are reading these lines, it is probably because you deserve to be thanked. Most obvious of all are the three wonderful people who followed me throughout the dissertation writing as my PhD committee: Annmarie Adams who shepherded me from t with her invaluable insight and experience and taught me an incredible amount about how to be a good and invested teacher; Nik Luka who brought his amazing and varied knowledge and dedication to interdisciplinarity; Amelia Jones who constantly challenged me with her sharp understanding of the complexity of the intersection of art, architecture and identities. I also had rich interactions with many other people at McGill, but the term working as teaching assistant with Christina Contan Wambui Kinyanjui, David Krawitz, and Marcia King, made the journey much easier than it could have been. At the beginning of the journey, before coming to McGill, Georges Teyssot and GianPiero Moretti particularly influenced my understanding of architectural education and theory

Nik Luka, David Theodore, Martin Bressani, Natalie Oswin and Christopher Reed provided invaluable comments and questions at my defence that should open up new paths for future intellectual adventures. v

I had a wonderful time discussing and sharing my experience and research with my colleagues across th as it is now without the help of Julia Tischer, Frederika Eilers, and Philam Nguyen with whom I spent the first few months trying to figure what I was doing here. The research conducted for this dissertation would not have been possible without the architects, artists, and organizations who have contributed tremendous help through their documentation, interviews and interest in my work. I thank Ingar Dragset, Michael Elmgreen, Jan Sauerwald, and Anja Schiller at Studio Elmgreen & Dragset; Nils Wenk; Jürgen Mayer; Mark Robbins; Joel Sanders; Heather Cassils and Clover Leary of the Toxic Titties; Erica Freyberger and Eva Franch I Gilabert at the Storefront for Art and Architecture; Anette Østerby at the Danish Agency for Culture; Elena Cazzaro at Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee / Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia; Louise Shannon at the Victoria & Albert Museum; Gordon Brent Ingram; Benjamin Gianni; and Matthew Hoffman and Matthias Hollwich at HWKN / BOOM.

Journal of Architectural Education volume 67,

Interiors:

Design, Architecture and Culture volume 4, issue 2 (2013). I have also had the privilege of presenting and discussing my ideas at various conferences. I greatly thank the organizers, other panelists and participants at Cambridge Talks V: The Body in History / The Body in Space, Harvard University (2011); the 2011 UAAC-AAUC Annual Conference, Carleton University; The Body: New Paradigms, Perspectives, and Practices Graduate Student Conference, Institute for Gender, Sexuality vi

and Feminist Studies, McGill University (2011); the 2012 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, New York; the 12e colloque étudiant Artefact, Université Laval (2012); Queer Places, Practices, and Lives Symposium, Ohio State University (2012); the 2012 UAAC-AAUC Conference, Concordia University; the Martlett Symposium, Cornell University (2012); the 2013 UAAC-AAUC Conference, The Banff Centre; and The Crypt(ic) graduate student conference, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University (2014). Rich discussions in the Designing Diversity, Memory and the City, and Encountering Borders Institute for Public Life of Arts and Ideas have also helped test and develop some ideas. Thanks to Julia Tischer and Frederika Eilers for organizing the first one and letting me in on the second and to Vladimir Mikadze for reaching out to me to help him with the third one. I also had a very interesting intellectual exchange with Stéphanie Dadour who shares my interest in subversive domestic experimentations. I have had the magnificent chance of not only learning during this PhD how to do great research, but also of learning how to be a good teacher with the help of wonderful students at McGill (and, at the risk of repeating myself, the incredible experience of learning from Annmarie and Christina), Laval (grâce aussi à mes co-enseignants Denise Piché et Émilie Pinard), and UQAM. I also thank John Bass and Sherry McKay for welcoming me at UBC, even if it did not work in the end. See you next time! The research has been funded by a Bourse de doctorat en recherche from the Fonds québécois de recherche

Société et culture (2010-2013), a Schulich Graduate Fellowship from McGill University

(2010-2011), and a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council vii

of Canada (2012-2014). Additional funding for research travel and presentations has been provided by two Graduate Research Enhancement and Travel Awards, a Graduate Travel Fund Award, and a

My dissertation is also greatly influenced by my involvement in community groups fighting for a better life (and visibility) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer youth: Arco Iris, le Groupe Gai -Québec, and GRIS-Montréal. I am particularly thankful to the team at GRIS-Montréal for giving me the challenging responsibility to be their research coordinator for the past five years. This experience, and associated research experiences with Maria Nengeh Mensah, Janik Bastien-Char helped me learn much about doing interdisciplinary team research. Merci aussi à mon cher ami montré

-Ève Manseau-Young, Stéphan La Roche, Alain Leclerc ont eu à vivre mon quotidien pendant une partie de mes années montréalaises. Je les en remercie immensément! Merci à mes très très chers amis Christian, 1xManu, 1xLaurie, 1xGuillaume, François, les Marguerites, la Meute, Émilie, Amélie, Steve, Benoît, Alessandro et N passer à travers ces années de recherche et écriture en solitaire. Thanks also to everyone on Facebook who read through my constant reminders that I was writing a dissertation, but who also helped with cues and new ideas.

viii

Merc

-André. Un immense merci à

Merci. Thank you.

Post-scriptum: thank you to all the musicians and artists who, without knowing it, made this so much more fun (and provided nice quotes to end and begin this pile of paper). As Pat

ix

List of figures Figure 1.

Philip Johnson. Glass House, 1949, New Canaan, CT. Credit: Arnold Newman / Getty Images. ............................................................................................. 3

Figure 2.

Jürgen Mayer. Housewarming: Guest Book, 1996. Credit: Jürgen Mayer H. ................ 74

Figure 3.

Queer Space exhibition poster, 1994, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York. Image courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture. ..................................... 78

Figure 4.

Queer Space exhibition, 1994, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York. Credit: REPOhistory. ................................................... 80

Figure 5.

Queer Space exhibition, 1994, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York. Credit: Gordon Brent Ingram. .......................... 83

Figure 6.

Mark Robbins and Benjamin Gianni. Detail from Family Values (Honey, I'm Home), 1997. ............................................................................................................. 86

Figure 7.

bell hooks, Koning Eizenberg Ar House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Credit: Mark Robbins, bell hooks, Koning Eizenberg Architecture. ................................................. 94

Figure 8.

House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Credit: Mark Robbins. ............................................................................................... 95

Figure 9.

House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. Credit: Benjamin Gianni and Scott Weir. ................................................................................................................. 97

Figure 10.

Joel Sanders, Architect. House for a Bachelor, unbuilt, 1998, Minneapolis. Credit: Joel Sanders, Architect.............................................................................................. 104

Figure 11.


Figure 12.


Figure 13.

House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. Credit: Joel Sanders and Jonathan Crary. ....................................................................................................................... 108

Figure 14.

BOOM Palm Springs, completion on hold. Credit: BOOM Communities. ............ 119

x

Figure 15.

Joel Sanders Architect. The Commons site plan (assisted living and common areas at the top), BOOM Community, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Joel Sanders Architect. .................................................................................................... 122

Figure 16.

Joel Sanders Architect. The Commons, dwellings plans, BOOM Community, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Joel Sanders Architect............................................................................................... 122

Figure 17.

Joel Sanders Architect. The Commons, exterior view of shared areas, BOOM Community, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Joel Sanders Architect. ..... 123

Figure 18.

J Mayer H. Puzzle.Buzz, BOOM Community, interior view of residences, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: J Mayer H. ............................................ 124

Figure 19.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Waves, BOOM Community, townhouses, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Diller Scofidio + Renfro........................................... 125

Figure 20. ................................................................ 134 Figure 21.

Mark Robbins. Summer Places & Households, 2003-4, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Credit: Mark Robbins. .......................................................................... 137

Figure 22.

Selection of photographs by Julius Shulman (clockwise, from top left: Stahl Residence, Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, CA, May 9, 1960, architect: Pierre Koenig (officially titled Case Study House No. 22 (Los Angeles, Calif.): iconic girls; Bailey House, Case Study House #21, Los Angeles, CA, 1958, architect: Pierre Koenig; Spencer Residence, Santa Monica, 1950, architect: Richard Spencer; Alexander Twin Palms House #2, 1957, Palm Springs, architect: William Krisel). Credit: Julius Shulman Resources, The Getty Research Institute. ............................. 138

Figure 23.

David Hockney. Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (1963). ................................................ 139

Figure 24.

Claes Oldenburg. Bedroom Ensemble, 1963. Credit: Claes Oldenburg / National Gallery of Canada. ................................................................................................... 140

Figure 25.

Dan Graham. Alteration to a Suburban House, 1978. Credit: Dan Graham. ............. 143

Figure 26.

Dorit Margreiter & The Toxic Titties. 10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004, film still. Credit: Dorit Margreiter / the TOXIC TITTIES (Heather Cassils, Clover Leary, Julia Steinmetz). ....................................................................................................... 157

Figure 27.

The Toxic Titties. IKEA Project, 2001, video still. Credit: the TOXIC TITTIES (Heather Cassils, Clover Leary, Julia Steinmetz). ...................................................... 162 xi

Figure 28.


Figure 29.


Figure 30.

Dorit Margreiter & The Toxic Titties. 10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004, views of the installation in two configurations. Credit: Dorit Margreiter / the TOXIC TITTIES (Heather Cassils, Clover Leary, Julia Steinmetz). ...................................... 166

Figure 31.

John Lautner. Sheats-Goldstein Residence, 1963/1979-current, Los Angeles, CA. From left: lower level plan; main entry level plan; section. Credit: John Lautner Foundation. ............................................................................................................. 169

Figure 32.

Film stills from A Single Man, directed by Tom Ford, 2009. .................................... 173

Figure 33.

Feature on John Lautner's Elrod House in Playboy November 1971 issue ................ 181

Figure 34.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Powerless Structures, Fig. 122 (Two Doors), 2000; Powerless Structures, Fig. 123 (One Door Two Handles), 2000; Powerless Structures, Fig. 129 (Corner Door), 2000; Powerless Structures, Fig. 133 (Triple Door), 2002. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / Galleri Nicolai Wallner. ........................................................ 200

Figure 35.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Powerless Structures, Fig. 44, 1998. Credit: Pez Hejduk / Elmgreen & Dragset. ................................................................................ 200

Figure 36.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Cruising Pavilion/Powerless Structures, Fig. 55, 1998, Marselisborg Forest, Århus. Credit: Bent Ryberg / Planet Foto (exterior); Elmgreen & Dragset (interior). ................................................................................................ 201

Figure 37.

Elmgreen & Dragset. How Are You Today, 2002, Galleria Massimo de Carlo. Credit: Thor Brødreskift. ......................................................................................... 207

Figure 38.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Celebrity The One & the Many, 2010-2011, ZKM. Credit: Didier Leroi / www.vernissage.tv. ............................................................................. 210

Figure 39.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Virtual Romeo. Photo from original installation in This is the First Day of my Life, 2007, Malmö Kunsthall. Credit: Galerie Perrotin..................... 210

Figure 40.

The Collectors, 2009, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions. .............................................................. 213 xii

Figure 41.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009. Danish Pavilion plan, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / Danish Arts Council / Nordic Committee. .............................................................................................................. 214

Figure 42.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, Danish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists. ...................................................................................................................... 215

Figure 43.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists. ...................................................................................................................... 216

Figure 44.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009. Nordic Pavilion plan, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / Danish Arts Council / Nordic Committee. .............................................................................................................. 217

Figure 45.

Elmgreen & Dragset with script by Trevor Stuart. Real Estate Agents, 2009, Danish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Screenshots from How Are You, directed by Jannik Splidsboel, 2011. ........................................................................ 219

Figure 46.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, Danish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists. ...................................................................................................................... 220

Figure 47.

The Collectors, 2009, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Flickr user Halvor Bordin...................................................................................................................... 221

Figure 48.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, (with Simon Fujiwara. Desk Job, 2009 (left), and Nina Saunders. Payload, 2009 (right)), Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists. ...................................................................................................................... 225

Figure 49.

Floor map of Level 3, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Victoria & Albert Museum. .................................................................................................................. 228

Figure 50.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Olivier Vallerand / the artists and Victoria Miro, London. ................................................... 229

Figure 51.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, plan, 2013, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: the artists and Victoria Miro, London. ..................................................................... 229

xiii

Figure 52.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, (with Omnes une manet nox (The Same Night Awaits Us All), bed for Louis Vuitton, 2012), Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / the artists and Victoria Miro, London. .......................... 232

Figure 53.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, (with Table for Bergman, 2009), Victoria & Albert Museum.. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / the artists and Victoria Miro, London. ................................................................................................................... 233

Figure 54.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, (with model for Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, 2012 (left), and found objects with High Expectations, 2010 (right)), Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / the artists and Victoria Miro, London. ................................................................................................................... 233

Figure 55.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Anders Sune Berg/the artists and Victoria Miro, London. .................................................... 236

Figure 56.

Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, (with Tom of Finland. Untitled, 1979; Tearoom Odyssey, c. 1968; Black Magic, 1984; No Swimming, from the AMG Series, 1965; The Loggers, from the AMG Series, 1974; David, a Beauty, 1989; , 1981), Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: photo by Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and Elmgreen & Dragset; works by Tom of Finland Foundation...................................................................... 240

Figure 57.

Wenk und Wiese Architekten. Pumpwerk Neukölln, plans, 2007-2008, Berlin. ........ 247

Figure 58.

Wenk und Wiese Architekten. Pumpwerk Neukölln, section, 2007-2008, Berlin. Credit: Nils Wenk.................................................................................................... 248

Figure 59.

Wenk und Wiese Architekten. Pumpwerk Neukölln, attic lounge, 2007-2008, Berlin. Credit: Udo Meinel. ..................................................................................... 250

Figure 60.

Pumpwerk Neukölln interior with Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Berlin, 2011. Credit: Giorgio Possenti. ................................................................................ 251

Figure 61.

Elmgreen & Dragset. Image from Gayhouse, 2011. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset. .... 251

xiv

Introduction. Between the Domestic and the Public Apart from a few remarkable exceptions, architects have continued these past 20 years to ignore the epistemological transformations and the critical turn taking place in contemporary queer, transgender, and crip movements, and, indulged by the most dramatic amount of capital flowing between Dubai transformation of sexual and somatic politics were just a minor detail within a new peak of architectural production at the global scale. As a result of this negation, feminist and queer architectural practices are today still posed in terms of female architects or discussed in shy or embarrassing debates hnson or Paul Rudolph. - Beatriz Preciado, 20121 Every gaze is potentially indiscreet, but when it penetrates domestic interiors it becomes intrusive, a violation, even a rape. - Georges Teyssot, 20132

When asked to describe my dream house as a child, I always depicted a glass house. I soon learned,

architecture school would later teach me that some of the best known houses of the twentieth 1), followed that exact rule.3 I was told that a glass house would not protect my privacy as a house

1

Beatriz Preciado, "Architecture as a Practice of Biopolitical Disobedience," Log, no. 25 (2012).

2

Georges Teyssot, A Topology of Everyday Constellations, Writing Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013), 258. developed from an article initially published in Log, no. 18 (2010). 3

Terence Riley points out in the catalogue for The Un-Private House, the exhibition he curated in 1999 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that this transparency is now happening in an urban setting, using as examples Bernard reception of the Farnsworth House, Riley compares it with contemporary example interest in the glass house and its spatial conditions is, paradoxically, an indication of how much culture has changed great public resistance for the simple fact that it was assumed one could see in as easily as see out. This visual accessibility flew in the face of accepted notions of privacy at the time. At the end of the twentieth century, it might even be said that th Terence Riley, The Un-Private House (New York: The Museum of Modern Art & Harry N. Abrams, 1999), Exhibition catalogue, 16;33. As will be analysed in the

1

should, that it would expose me to the gaze of others. Years later, starting a PhD in architecture, my

oppositions of inside and outside, open and closed, private and public, etc. Whereas my early architecture school education reiterated these oppositions, I have since found texts, installations, and built projects that question their relevance. They suggest that these binary points of view do not reflect the fluid complexity of actual spaces and are often based in normative understandings of social issues. Sometimes these challenges have translated from theory to practice to transform built spaces, but more often they have only been temporarily highlighted through exhibitions and installations that insert representations of domestic spaces, usually assumed to be private, in the public space of the gallery, as discussed in this dissertation.4

disserta point of view of privileged historians, architects, and clients, has been questioned by other commentators. 4

ords of this proposal, I need to briefly define how I use it. Starting from the Oxford Dictionary broad sense to avoid the often made conflatio Building from feminist theorists, private and public are discussed in this dissertation as a binary opposition historically as an ideal type has traditionally been associated and conflated with: the domestic, the embodied, the natural, the family, n, unwaged labour, reproduction and immanence. The public as an ideal type has traditionally been the domain of the disembodied, the abstract, the cultural, rationality, critical public discourse, citizenship, civil society, justice, the market Nancy Duncan, "Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces," in Bodyspace : Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Nancy Duncan (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 128. For further discussion of changing understandings of concepts of private and public, see chapter 1.

2

Figure 1. Philip Johnson. Glass House, 1949, New Canaan, CT. Credit: Arnold Newman / Getty Images.

As architectural historian Alice Friedman has shown in her analysis of modern houses, including the Glass House and the Farnsworth House, the domestic environment and challenges to its normative traditions are closely linked to beliefs about gender and sexuality.5 I initially came to question private and public oppositions through my interest in sexuality and its relation to space; they are, however, inextricably linked with many other aspects that impact design decisions and use of spaces. I firmly believe that using these oppositions to understand spaces prevents transformations of design paradigms that could improve the well-being of many people who do not or cannot correspond to 5

Alice T. Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern House : A Social and Architectural History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 130-31.

3

the typical user targeted by normative designs. The research project at the heart of this dissertation is thus a review of queer critiques to make them more widely known as well as an effort to assert the potential of a queer perspective on architectural design, history, theory, and education: a politically responsible approach that can create more inclusive, more integrated and safer buildings and neighbourhoods for everyone. Few built examples of an architecture designed with a queer approach exist; my dissertation thus examines how queer critiques of domestic spaces, and most particularly of their representations and discussions, are represented in artworks and installations. How do mainstream domestic representations assume and often reinforce certain normative constructs? How are understandings of architecture, and more particularly acknowledgment of its normativity, dependent on both discursive and physical contexts? How do late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century art practices highlight (and critique) (hetero)normative aspects of architecture? How do they interact with non-traditional architectural experimentation? How is the domestic understood when restaged in a museum or in a public space? How does the idea of the domestic vary for different groups? How do experiences of space, and critiques that sometimes follow, vary according to sexual orientation, gender, race, or class? How can queer theory inform architectural discourse and understandings of architectural space? As I discuss in chapter 1, I see queer critiques in architecture as a continuation and broadening of feminist critiques that first highlighted how the division of private and public spaces in architectural design and history was intrinsically linked to gender divisions in society and therefore to gendered understandings of space. The word queer is complex and loaded with varying meanings according to 4

who uses it: while for some it is synonymous with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans without problematizing what is meant when these words are used to categorize people, for others it is a political term that reflects challenges to essentializing identity politics. These various understandings of the word queer are matched by divergent understandings of queer space; I focus on critiques that think about the blurring of traditional gender divisions in domestic spaces, in line with queer theory aspects of identities impact our use and design of spaces. Furthermore, I develop my own thinking and discussion of these questions from a queer approach that analyses objects here domestic spaces, filmic and photographic representations of such spaces, and spatial installations and subversions

as

events linked to their social, cultural and political contexts, not just depending on them but shaping them. I discussion. This is in order to bring forward an important series of works that have been seldom discussed in architectural history, even though they formed an important stream of theoretical thinking in the 1990s, developing the social background of postmodernism often hidden in architectural discourses by a focus on formal language inherited from architectural historian Charles ovement.6 I answer my research questions by focusing on a series of exhibitions and installation projects that blur the traditional borders between architecture and art. As I discuss extensively throughout the dissertation, the relation between architectural domesticity and codes of normative gender and

6

acts of modernism and postmodernism in The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, First ed. (New York: Rizzoli, 1977).

5

with self-identifications7 makes these codes systematically embedded in any design for dwellings. The context of art museums and galleries appears to create a more welcoming space for such discussions, as will be investigated. The cases studied, exhibitions curated by queer space theorists and art projects by Elmgreen & Dragset, Mark Robbins, and Dorit Margreiter & the Toxic Titties, develop queer and feminist critiques that challenge ideas of domesticity. The projects chosen, realized in the 1990s and 2000s in relation to the emergence of queer theory in the late 1980s, address issues of normative domesticity through an emphasis on the tensions between private and public, and traditional and non-traditional family units. The artists and architects studied come from diverse backgrounds and have not addressed queer theory from the same context: Robbins developed an architectural and artistic practice on the East Coast of the United States, with already an interest in gay issues in the 1980s, as queer theory was emerging; Margreiter included feminist points of view in her work from the beginning of her career in Austria in the 1990s, while the Toxic Titties formed as a feminist- and queerElmgreen & Dragset included elements of their experience as a gay couple in their work from the beginning of their careers in mid-1990s Northern Europe, but only got in contact with queer theory

7

-

attribution of cert by the online Oxford Dictionary

-

or not, but also to underline the indeterminacy of the characteristics that emerge from these acts and decisions, characteristics that can change and evolve depending on context, in opposition to the determinacy and essentialism For a discussion of the relation between identity, identification and visual culture, see Amelia Jones, Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts (Abingdon, UK & New York: Routledge, 2012).

6

in the late 1990s, after their work was linked to queer theory by American critics following the international recognition their early career quickly achieved. Despite these differences, I discuss them together as they all present queer-informed challenges to typical representations of domestic spaces, although each is understanding queer in a different way. The projects studied take various forms, from photographs to installations, but they are all representations of domestic spaces in a public space, as well as projects where artists investigate architectural spaces and codes or architects work with media usually associated with art. These works experiment with the limits of disciplines and blur traditional boundaries between art and

discussed as art projects even if they completely transform space on an architectural scale. This tension between the traditionally understood significance and meanings of varying disciplines and media is used in the examples studied to underline how domestic space must be understood beyond private/public oppositions. The critiques are highlighted in these projects by the shift in context that transforms everyday domestic environments, often assumed to be neutral containers and havens for private lives, into objectified art pieces presented in (public) gallery spaces. They also harken back to early feminist critiques that identified the links between normative views of gender and sexuality and understandings of architecture in terms of the constructed opposition between private and public, as will be discussed in chapter 1. However, as the dissertation will show, such questions are hard to translate into actual designs. Over a century of feminist designs have, for various reasons, seldom succeeded in creating examples that changed mainstream designs; queer projects have not been built 7

in sufficient numbers to be noted and recognized.8 Although attempts will be made in chapter 2 and 5 to understand the potential transformations that could be brought to architectural practice,

representations of domestic spaces as modes of expression for political commentary on design and for progress towards a renewed design ethics. 8

Discussions of what characterize a feminist architecture and a queer architecture will be developed more specifically in chapter 1. While there are no fully encompassing definitions for either, the complicated meanings of queer (as a word and as a theory) make a definition of a queer architecture even more difficult than one for a feminist architecture. In addition to feminist-oriented readings of architecture (for example Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1981); Diana I. Agrest, "Architecture from Without: Body, Logic, and Sex," in Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1991); Beatriz Colomina, ed. Sexuality & Space, Princeton Papers on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992); Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze, and Carol Henderson, eds., Architecture and Feminism, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); Sherry Ahrentzen, "The F Word in Architecture: Feminist Analyses in/of/for Architecture," in Reconstructing Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices, ed. Thomas A. Dutton and Lian Hurst Mann (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Sherry Ahrentzen, "The Space between the Studs: Feminism and Architecture," Signs 29, no. 1 (2003); Dörte Kuhlmann, Gender Studies in Architecture: Space, Power and Difference (London & New York: Routledge, 2013).), a few specifically feminist-oriented practices have appeared with changing goals and processes as feminism itself was changing. Early examples such as Catherine Esther Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science; Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes (New York & Boston: J.B. Ford And Company & H.A. Brown & Co., 1869). have been identified as proto-modern attempts to rethink how the home can better served the needs of women, while still keeping women in the house. Later examples, identifying that changing the built ften focus instead on the processes to better reflect -hierarchical, collaborative, a focus on participatory design methods (valuing non-architects as much as trained professionals), the use of non-traditional representation methods, with often a clearer political position than almost any other architectural practices. Feminist-oriented practices also often deliberately choose to work on spaces that have traditionally been ignored by the male-led architecture profession. See for example -1981), Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative (1980-1995), muf architecture/art (since 1994). Dolores Hayden, "What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work," Signs 5, no. 3 (1980); Matrix, Making Space: Women and the Man Made Environment (London: Pluto Press, 1984); Matrix, A Job Designing Buildings: For Women Interested in Architecture and Buildings (London: Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, 1986); Janie Grote, "Matrix: A Radical Approach to Architecture," Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 9, no. 2 (1992); Katherine Shonfield et al., This Is What We Do : A Muf Manual (London: Ellipsis, 2001); Doina Petrescu, Altering Practices : Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (London; New York: Routledge, 2007); Lori A. Brown, ed. Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture (Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011); Despina Stratigakos, "Why Architects Need Feminism," Places(2012), http://places.designobserver.com/feature/why-architects-need-feminism/35448/. As for queer examples, chapter 1 and the development of the dissertation show how difficult to define they are. The few examples identified by historians are often unsatisfying as they focus mostly on identity (buildings designed for gay or lesbian clients or by gay or lesbian architects).

8

The decision to mostly avoid analysing specific built domestic spaces in this project is both an attempt to circumvent the limitations of basing observations on only a few spaces, accessible for analysis and thus already detached from ordinary domestic spaces, and a desire to contribute new viewpoints to the discussion of queer space in architecture which has up to now often concentrated on identifying characteristics of queer space from the study of exemplary houses or sexualized spaces, as will be shown in chapter 1. I instead approach my research by looking at the potential of queer critiques for the field of architecture broadly understood, to build from queer space theory to understand how the assumed public/private dichotomy is performed and challenged, and how it affects a variety of subjects.9 The intersection of architecture and other disciplines underlines how

informing representations, structures, and beliefs. This normativity is played out in variety of spheres the artists and architects studied have themselves addressed this

but I focus here on the diverse

ways in which domestic environments are shaped by normative constructs of gender and sex roles. How such environments are designed, discussed, and represented reiterate these constructs; while everyone is living through these normative constructs, they particularly impact people of marginalized, minoritized or non-normative sexual orientations, gender identities, and household

9

I must recognize, however, that three of the four artists and architect I am studying are gay men. I have attempted to find a more varied range, but I could not find many women developing similar critiques in large-scale installations. I hypothesize that women might still have less access to the installations and to the art world network that renders them possible. Works by women artists Iris Haüssler or Rachel Whiteread for example have challenged assumed ideas about domesticity, but as they did not relate or build from a queer framework, they could not be included here. See for example Iris Häussler, "He Named Her Amber," ed. The Grange / Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011); Chapter 4 of Shelley Hornstein, Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place (Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011); Rachel Carley, "Domestic Afterlives: Rachel Whiteread's Ghost," Architectural Design 78, no. 3 (2008); Hayward Gallery, Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture (London: Hayward Publishing, 2008), Exhibition catalogue.

9

organizations. I particularly focus on how these self-identifications are displayed through these design decisions, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not. While most queer space studies in architecture have lesbian people, I instead argue that the potential of a theory of queer space is in rethinking how domestic spaces can be designed to allow everyone to better manage how their self-identifications are expressed through their living environments and who has access to them, to create a stronger awareness of the blurring of private and public that can occur in any domestic space. In a similar way to feminist design methods that are not focused on designing only for women but instead take into account the needs of everyone

and particularly women who have traditionally been ignored

queer design methods are not only for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans or queer people, but are instead -identifications on their own terms. The installations and exhibitions studied in this dissertation have never been studied together and their common social and political implications have thus been somewhat ignored. My dissertation is a chance to build on the theoretical work that emerged from 1990s queer space exhibitions and installations to envision them as a coherent group of related works. Most discussions of queer space theory in architecture occurred among a relatively small group of architects and architectural historians in academic circles in New York and Princeton, but some thinkers associated with feminist and queer theory (outside of the architectural discipline), such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,

10

Elizabeth Grosz or Diana Fuss, also participated in exhibitions and collections of texts.10 The main case studies of my dissertation followed this early wave to present refreshed discourses that brought complementary backgrounds and theoretical frameworks to the critique, even if, apart from Mark Robbins, they did not have direct links to the 1990s projects outside of shared preoccupations. The works of Margreiter and Elmgreen & Dragset have been extensively exhibited and published in

been less discussed. None of them have, however, been much analysed in academic research, in part because their work is relatively recent.11 In addition to presenting a scholarly analysis of their work, the dissertation also challenges and seeks to have an impact on architectural history by building on knowledge situated in three specific bodies of literature: queer space theory (discussed in chapter 1), theories of domesticity (chapter 1), and texts addressing the intersections of art and architecture (chapter 2). If the literature on queer space theory is relatively limited and the writings on the intersection of art and architecture are more focused on a general overview of the fields, rather than theoretical analysis, the literature on the domestic realm is staggering in its scale, covering popular From Bauhaus to Our House

Home:

A Short History of an Idea (1986) and countless home and decoration magazines, the writings of

10

See for example Beatriz Colomina et al., Queer Space (New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994), Exhibition catalogue; Michael Moon et al., "Queers in (Single-Family) Space," Assemblage, no. 24 (1994); Elizabeth Grosz, "Bodies-Cities," in Sexuality & Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina, Princeton Papers on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992); Diana Fuss and Joel Sanders, "Berggasse 19: Inside Freud's Office," in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). Discussions with Diana Fuss also helped Joel Sanders develop his thinking about gender and space that led to, among other things, the collection of essays and works Stud: Architectures of Masculinity (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). Joel Sanders, phone interview with author, February 26, 2014. 11

The high profile commissions of Elmgreen & Dragset since the mid-2000s have started to change this situation in their case and their work is much more discussed today than the other artists and architects discussed here.

11

numerous architects, such as Andrea Palladio, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson or Peter Eisenman, who shaped their careers by writing about and building houses, exhibitions about houses or exhibition houses in countless museums, and scholarly research discussing domesticity very broadly or in very precise ways.12 To avoid becoming lost in generalities, my literature review focuses on understanding how feminist (and, later, queer) critiques challenged traditional definitions of domesticity in terms of normative binaries omnipresent in Euro-American architectural discourses, most importantly in the opposition of private (conflated with domestic, assumed to be feminine and often vernacular) and public (assumed to be masculine or associated with institutions and high-style architecture) (see chapter 1). While most of these critiques have targeted the social normativity of domestic spaces, some architectural historians and architects have also demonstrated how physical design decisions are shaped by these oppositions and have argued that they do not reflect the fluid complexity of actual exuality and gender studies, were eventually articulated in the mid-1990s in North America into a queer space

12

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981); Witold Rybczynski, Home : A Short History of an Idea (New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1986). A very limited sample of architects writing on their own house designs (and their relation to architectural design in general): Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri Dell'architettura (Venetia: [s.n.], 1616); Le Corbusier, Une maison - un palais : "à la recherche d'une unité architecturale", Collection De L'esprit Nouveau (Paris: Les éditions G. Crès, 1928); Peter Eisenman, House X (New York: Rizzoli, 1982); Philip Johnson, "House at New Canaan, Connecticut," Architectural Review, September 1950. As for the p is already sufficient to demonstrate the importance of the house in architectural discourse. See, for example, the exhibitions houses by Marcel Breuer (19 Riley, The Un-Private House. Barry Bergdoll et al., Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008).) in combination with further prefabricated exhibition houses by Kieran Timberlake Architects, Lawrence Sass, Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier, Leo Kaufmann Architects, and Richard Horden.

12

theory that is, however, much less developed in its visibility and diversity of subjects in architecture than in other fields such as geography. I believe, like these queer historians and theorists, that the critiques of binary understandings can help create better environments by acknowledging how the gendering and sexualisation of space marginalizes many people at the benefit of those in power. Many of the challenges developed by queer space theorists in the mid-1990s have been formulated through installations and exhibitions at the intersection of art and architecture disciplinary challenges brought by this juxtaposition

building on the

which were then sometimes developed into

theoretical texts (see chapter 2). My dissertation investigates how the theoretical critiques presented in the installations relate to the actual built environment and how they hope to change how domestic spaces are designed and used. The dissertation, then, is not an attempt to define what differentiates art from architecture or installations from buildings. Other scholars have discussed the topic on numerous occasions, from art historians such as Rosalind Krauss to architects like Carole Lévesque. I start instead with the premise that any work not designed to be lived in is driven by a rhetorical impulse of discovery that reveals existing conditions of spaces we inhabit, as Lévesque or Sarah Bonnemaison and Ronit Eisenbach have shown.13

13

Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," October 8(1979); Carole Lévesque, À propos de l'inutile en architecture, Ouverture philosophique (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2011); Sarah Bonnemaison and Ronit Eisenbach, Installations by Architects : Experiments in Building and Design (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009).

13

Methods For me, one of the most engaging problems in architectural history is to understand the social experience of architecture. -Dell Upton, 198414

The methodology engaged in the dissertation is rooted in the work of a group of architectural historians who not only look at buildings, but also at the social context in which these buildings have appeared and the relationship between buildings and their social and physical environments. 15 The questions investigated here ask for a broader view that moves away from buildings towards a more encompassing understanding of architecture, of how space is manipulated by architects and artists.

or as approach.16 but events, [...] understood as the force of 17

The projects are analysed through two lenses: by understanding how they deconstruct space through representations of common assumptions about domesticity; by analysing how the projects are presented in art or architectural discourses, be it by their own authors or in mediated scholarly and

14

Dell Upton, "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Places 2, no. 2 (1984): 59.

15

One of the first major publications to do so in architectural history, and to also consider equally everyday buildings and public institutions, is Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 16

Amelia Jones, Body Art: Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 55.

17

John Paul Ricco, The Logic of the Lure (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), xx.

14

these projects or differing readings of the works in reviews) are of crucial importance to understand the impact of labelling something public that is usually perceived to be hidden or private. Unlike much of the existing architectural research on the relation between body, sexuality and space, exemplified by many of the essays in the Beatriz Colomina-edited Sexuality & Space (1992),18 I wish to avoid a psychoanalytical understanding of architecture. If the approach is arguably justified for projects interested in an architecture explicitly informed by psychoanalytical models, such as Sylvia Form Follows Libido (2004),19 I believe it otherwise does not fully or satisfyingly address the material, embodied dimensions of the relation of bodies and space, as well as often leaving aside the political dimensions of sexuality and gender.20 Some psychoanalytical theories address important elements that touch on spatial issues, but they must be used in complement and with as much care as other theories. Most of the projects studied for the dissertation are temporary installations and exhibitions that no longer exist except in archival material. In most cases, the main primary sources used are thus interviews with the artists and curators involved and the archives of the creators and of the institutions where they were exhibited. The artists and architects studied have all expressed the importance of the political in their work; the interviews are a rich source to investigate their

18

Colomina, Sexuality & Space.

19

Sylvia Lavin, Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2004). 20

Architect Sharon Haar and art historian Christopher Reed noted (and criticized) in 1996 that, after the mid-1990s, -profile architectural theorists reinvigorated discussions of domesticity through their use of feminist psychoanalytic and critical the Sharon Haar and Christopher Reed, "Coming Home: A Postcript on Postmodernism," in Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Christopher Reed (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 270-71.

15

intentions and understand how they position themselves in their social context. Contemporaneous reviews, news reports, and discussions of their work are also analysed to better understand their reception and context. For the main artists and architect studied (chapter 3, 4 and 5), I was able to experience at least one project in one of the ways they had envision people would experience them: for Mark Robbins, I accessed Households through the monograph version of the project; for Dorit Margreiter & the Toxic 10104 Angelo View Drive in two settings presenting varying -only at the SBC Gal

At Home

with the Toxic Titties on DVD; for Elmgreen & Dragset, I visited the Tomorrow exhibition three times at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013 and I had access to all of the accompanying material (small art works, calendar, etc.) for The Collectors. In all cases, I also consulted the official catalogues. By contrast, the earlier 1990s exhibitions were only accessed through catalogues and archival materials. The varying means through which I have been in contact with the projects studied have influenced my reception of them. For example, my visits of the Tomorrow exhibition and 10104 Angelo View Drive installation allowed me to physically and sensorially experience the spaces created The Collectors or Households were only accessed through material artefacts, focussing my analysis on their readings by others and on the archival representation of the works by the artists and the institutions commissioning the projects. Personal interactions with the artists and architects I was able to meet and interview added important elements of analysis unavailable elsewhere, but might have 16

unavoidably influenced my reading and understanding of the works studied. As my project is importantly about representations of domestic spaces, I have focused on mediated presentations and representations of the works themselves and how they highlight varied reactions to these representations of spaces, but my own experience of the works, entangled with my own personal

of these reactions.21

Outline The organization of the dissertation follows two parallel but interwoven paths. The first thread presents a history of queer space theory through its materialisation in installations and exhibitions. This thread connects the whole dissertation as each chapter discusses projects that move forward in time and thus reflect changing critiques of domesticity. The second thread focuses in each chapter on individual case studies to investigate an aspect of the representation of domesticity in art and architecture, as described in the outline below. The research is structured to gradually move from more theoretical and representational critiques towards attempts to integrate these critiques in the design of lived spaces. It begins by providing a historical and contextual background for feminist and queer critiques of architectural domesticity, then discusses projects addressing two-dimensional representations of the home, followed by an analysis of performances and three-dimensional constructions. These discussions are interspersed with examination of actual lived spaces designed or used by the architects and artists studied. Although emphasis is on one case study per chapter,

21

Amelia Jones discusses the problematized readings of temporary art works, and especially performance works, in ""Presence" in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation," Art Journal 56, no. 4 (1997).

17

parallel experimentations analysed in previous chapters or taking place contemporaneously are also discussed. Chapter 1 focuses on th discourses. In architecture, once queer space theory emerges, discussions of gender and sexuality are most often linked closely, thus bringing together feminist and queer critiques. Furthermore, since queer theory, and consequently queer space theory, evolved in part from and reacted to feminist theory, the chapter starts with feminist questionings of binary oppositions between femininemasculine and private-public inherited from and North America after the Second World War to describe nineteenthThe emergence of separate spheres theory its use by feminist architectural historians have exposed how these oppositions are typically constructed in relation to gender and sexuality. The first historians focused on illustrating how public and private are gendered as masculine and feminine, how this division impacts women

and later discussing impacts on men

and how it marked the

development of the architectural profession, of architectural discourses, and of architectural history. Later research challenged the oppositional understanding to suggest that thinking of space in more fluid terms could also offer rich potential. From this body of existing knowledge, I emphasize the need to acknowledge the normativity of the Euro-American tradition of the home, and of much literature about it, following the prescriptive design of most built projects. The chapter then presents an overview of the work of thinkers associated with queer space theory and shows how they

ture and queer sex space theory, or Henry 18

-closet are presented and will be further defined, developed, and engaged through the dissertation. The core of the dissertation begins with chapter 2 looking historically at the emergence of queer space theory in architectural discourse in the early 1990s, following the presentation in chapter 1 of the varying streams of queer space theories across disciplines. I focus in chapter 2 on how queer space theory in architecture emerged in a unique way and both architectural design and architectural history/discourse is most explicitly developed in a series of exhibitions curated by queer space theorists. The best known of these exhibitions are the Queer Space exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (1994), disappeared at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago (1996), and the House Rules exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts (1994). The chapter also discusses the Un-Private House exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (1999) as a counter-example conceptually organized around ideas similar to the ones brought forward by queer space theory, but channelling them in a formalist discourse that erases the social and political aspects of most projects. Chapter 2 ends by pointing to potential design directions inspired by or following the questions opened up by the exhibitions with a discussion of the BOOM neighbourhoods currently being designed for non-heterosexual retirees. At work on these projects are many architects, including some involved in early queer space exhibitions.

space of the gallery through photographic representations of domesticity, using American architect Households project (2003career, Households presents a large number of subjects perceived as queer. Unlike his earlier projects, 19

however, Robbins juxtaposes in Households

-

formal resolution (full-scale photographic reproductions montaged to remind viewers of panel paintings), the work raises questions about the public meanings of domestic spaces and, by extension, about assumptions on how dwelling and dweller relate, assumptions made by trying to -identifications. Chapter 4 questions again the representation of domesticity in a formal art context, but in contrast

of an overtly queer subversion of domestic space. Here what is being represented is already constructed as a subversion of the original space, the John Lautner-designed Sheats-Goldstein Residence in Los Angeles. The chapter discusses how Vienna-based artist Dorit Margreiter and Los Angeles-based queer feminist artists-

10104 Angelo View Drive (2004)

underlines the tensions between the original intentions behind a nuclear family house, its current

film by Margreiter, the work draws from recent scholarly discussions of the normative aspects of homes, and in this case more specifically modernist houses, challenging the assumptions linked to

Chapter 5 moves away from representations of existing domestic space to focus on the creation of imaginary domestic spaces in the public realm. It discusses three large-scale exhibitions by Elmgreen & Dragset, but focuses mainly on two: The Collectors, their transformation of the Danish and Nordic Pavilions for the 2009 Venice Biennale where they imagined and designed two domestic spaces, a family space and a gay bachelor pad; and Tomorrow (2013), their remodelling of galleries of 20

the Victoria & Albert Museum in London into a luxury apartment for a dying gay architect. The installations illuminate assumptions about privacy and the public, domesticity and the institution, identity and built space, and links between art and architecture. The artists question what is assumed as family space and confuse accepted symbols of domesticity by putting them out of context and blurring the usual limits and barriers between private and public acts/spaces. The chapter ends with a

in which the questions brought forward by representations of queer domesticity can inform the -house is also linked to existing discussions of queer s House (1949) by Alice Friedman (1998),

(1999).22 While designed in different social contexts, these projects nevertheless are informed by shared impulses to rethink relationships between the private and the public in domestic environments.

22

Alice T. Friedman, "People Who Live in Glass Houses: Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, and Philip Johnson," in Women and the Making of the Modern House : A Social and Architectural History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998); Katarina Bonnevier, "A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray's E.1027," in Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture, ed. Hilde Heynen and Gulsum Baydar (London & New York: Routledge, 2005); Annmarie Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001," Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 17, no. 1 (2010); Timothy M. Rohan, "Public and Private Spectacles / Paul Rudolph: Casa Rudolph, New York 1977-1997," Casabella 63, no. 673/674 (1999).

21

Chapter 1. Living in a Binary World? Understanding the Domestic through Gender and Sexuality If orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence, of how we inhabit spaces, and who or what we inhabit spaces with. - Sara Ahmed, 200623

Discussions of how gender and race relate to the profession and to studies of architecture, including

professional debates in the past thirty years, even if they are still not enough discussed. 24 Sexual orientation and sexual identity have, however, been much less discussed, probably because they are usually less visible and thus do not have such systematically discriminatory consequences. The rise of identity politics and the subsequent development of queer theory have had, however, an influence on the emergence of research on the intersection of sexuality and design. However, as Annmarie Adams 23

Sara Ahmed, "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 4 (2006): 543. Ahmed has also developed the argument made in this shorter article in a book: Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2006). 24

See for example Kathryn H. Anthony, Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001); Ellen Perry Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid, Architecture: A Place for Women (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Denise Scott Brown, "Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture," in Architecture: A Place for Women, ed. Ellen Perry Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Anne Vytlacil, "The Studio Experience: Differences for Women," ibid.; Bradford C. Grant, "Accomodation and Resistance: The Built Environment and the African American Experience," in Reconstructing Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices, ed. Thomas A. Dutton and Lian Hurst Mann (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Jack Travis, African American Architects in Current Practice (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991); Ahrentzen, "The F Word in Architecture: Feminist Analyses in/of/for Architecture.", or Annmarie Adams and Peta Tancred, Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). for a more detaile under-representation of gender and race in architectural history and education has also been discussed, for example in the Journal of Architectural education September 1993 special issue on gender and multiculturalism in architectural education (Linda N. Groat, "Architecture's Resistance to Diversity: A Matter of Theory as Much as Practice," Journal of Architectural Education 47, no. 1 (1993); Sherry Ahrentzen and Kathryn H. Anthony, "Sex, Stars, and Studios: A Look at Gendered Educational Practices in Architecture," ibid.; Mark Paul Frederickson, "Gender and Racial Bias in Design Juries," ibid.) or in Meltem Ö Gürel and Kathryn H. Anthony, "The Canon and the Void: Gender, Race, and the Architectural History Texts," ibid.59(2006).

22

argues, although the discussion of architecture in relation to queerness holds great potential, relatively few scholars in architecture have explored it.25 Queer issues have thus been even more ignored by architectural discourses than feminist challenges to traditional architectural history, theory, and design that have been present for a longer time, as shown by reviews such as Sherry Ahrentzen's "The Space between the Studs" (2003),26 even if these challenges also have a relatively limited visibility compared to more mainstream hot topics such as the digital.27 The following chapter attempts to challenge accounts of the complex history of the home, widely explored, but often dominated by widespread normative discourses, by taking up the critiques of domesticity brought forward by feminists and queer theorists. The chapter begins with a discussion of the questioning of binary oppositions between feminine-masculine and private-public inherited -

acknowledge the normativity of much literature on the home, following the prescriptive design of most built projects themselves. This normativity most often presents itself in a focus on formal separations between the private and public realms instead of questioning what constitutes privacy, how we understand the family, how gender and sexuality are constructed through space, and what

25

Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001," 82.

26

Ahrentzen, "The Space between the Studs: Feminism and Architecture."

27

The 1990s and 2000s saw the rapid rise of an interest in the digital in mainstream and academic architectural

and articles (Aileen Smith, "New Media / Digital Architecture: A Selective Bibliography," (London: Architectural Association Library, 2005).). The large number of books devoted to digital works as well as their enthusiastic titles see for example Will Jones, Unbuilt Masterworks of the 21st Century: Inspirational Architecture for the Digital Age (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009). relation between digital culture and architecture, see Antoine Picon, Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010).

23

impact these understandings have on the built environment and discussions of it. The chapter continues with a discussion of the emergence of queer theory and its relatively limited influence on architectural discourse and theory through queer space theory. It focuses particularly on the will be further defined, developed, and engaged with through the dissertation. It ends with a discussion of

marginalisation of people outside of the majority, queer space discourses in architecture too often focus on gay white, often wealthy, male.

Separate Spheres: Privacy and Publicity in Feminist Domesticity Studies Understanding the role of gender and sexuality in relation to architecture and space necessitates a deconstruction of binaries that are omnipresent in architectural discourses. As architect Joel Sanders suggests, the opposition of public and private is grounded on a prior spatial dualism, that of inside es reconsolidate cultural gender differences by 28

Much discussion of

domesticity, at least in an American sphere of academic discourse, is similarly marked by the specter of separate spheres theory, either working within its influence or trying to argue against it. The term

ideology of gender relations that holds that men and women occupy distinct social, affective, and occupational realms. According to this separate spheres metaphor, there is a public sphere inhabited

28

Joel Sanders, "Introduction," in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 17.

24

29

Although the idea of separate spheres first

developed as a social and political idea, because it is a spatially constructed metaphor, it deeply shapes many discussions and understandings of space and architecture, and of the roles and places of architects, interior designers, and clients. Linda Kerber, in her discussion of century women

one of the only classic texts examining the situation of women in American society

widely read in the early twentieth century World War.30 circle of domestic interests and duties and [forbidden] to step b

31

resonated with these

discourse.32 In their introduction to No More Separate Spheres! (2002), Cathy Davidson and

29

Cathy N. Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher, "Introduction," in No More Separate Spheres!, ed. Cathy N. Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher, Next Wave: Women's Studies Beyong the Disciplines (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002), 7. 30

Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," ibid., 30.

31

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1945)., quoted in ibid. Kerber, however, underlines in an endnote the fact that de Tocq etc.). 32

particularly domestic spaces. An important literature exists, however, on the place of a private-public dichotomy in the Catharine R. Stimpson, Women and the American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Linda McDowell, "Towards an Understanding of the Gender Division of Urban Space," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1, no. 1 (1983); Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Leslie Kanes Weisman, Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992); Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Susan J. Drucker and Gary Gumpert, eds., Voices in the Street: Explorations in Gender, Media, and Public Space, Communication and Public Space (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1997); Liz Bondi, "Gender, Class, and Urban Space: Public and Private Space in Contemporary Urban Landscapes," Urban Geography. 19, no. 2 (1998); Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (New

25

ly that de Toqueville's separate spheres discourse might have had special appeal in the post-World War II era and may have been less convincing as a way to describe what actually happened in the nineteenth century than as an explanation for what was happening, ideologically, in the American 1950s as white, middle-class women (who had the vote, could hold elected office, and had worked in factories and boardrooms during the war) were being encouraged to return to their domestic roles as wives of returning GI

33

Kerber further argues that,

-war women in The Feminine Mystique (1963), historians such as Barbara Welter, Aileen S. Kraditor, and Gerda Lerner argued ad to be understood not only by way of events, but through a prism of ideology as well, and that this argument was congruent with a Marxist conceptualization of a -historical defeat of

management losing its public character to become a private service.34 This Marxist understanding of

York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Kristine B. Miranne and Alma H. Young, Gendering the City: Women, Boundaries, and Visions or Urban Life (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Amy Bingaman, Lise Sanders, and Rebecca Zorach, Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis (London & New York: Routledge, 2002). Susan Drucker and Gary Gumpert also underline the ambiguous state of new spaces such as shopping malls, often seen as Susan J. Drucker and Gary Gumpert, "Shopping Women, and Public Space," in Voices in the Street: Explorations in Gender, Media, and Public Space, ed. Susan J. Drucker and Gary Gumpert, Communication and Public Space (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1997), 127. divisions are socially constructed, arguing that they too often exclude sexuality and sexual practice. ("Sexing the City," in Cities of Difference, ed. Ruth Fincher and Jane M. Jacobs (New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1998).) 33

Davidson and Hatcher, "Introduction," 9-10.

34

FriedrichBetty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963); Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quarterly 18(1966); Aileen S. Kraditor, ed. Up from the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968); Gerda Lerner, "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson," Midcontinent American Studies Journal 10(1969); Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972), 120;37. all quoted in Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," 33.

26

the home as a place of struggle between the sexes underlines much feminist writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s.35 Geographer Gillian Rose similarly notes that, in Marxist critique, the social relations of production and reproduction are understood to occur in different spaces and to be structured through them, but relations of both class and gender intersect in those spaces. [However], reproduction is not explained with reference only to patriarchy, nor production to capitalism; nor is gender confined to uction of gender identity focusing on reproduction physical, material and ideological feminist geographers persuasively reveal the connections between the supposedly 'separate' spheres of private domesticity and public labour.36 Separate spheres theory thus not only taints understandings of domestic space, but also of public space. For example, Linda McDowell points out that the ideology of a private sphere beyond the reach of capitalism has led to the exclusion from analyses of the city of women's domestic labour and privatized consumption.37 Whereas the first stage of the development of the metaphor focusses on identifying separate spheres cal experience, the second stage, in the later 1970s, is an attempt to refine the definition to introduce more liberating possibilities through the development . Historian Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, for example, discusses how the Victorian conception of a

35

Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," 31-33.

36

Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 120. Inside quote by Sophie R. Bowlby, Jo Foord, and Linda McDowell, "The Place of Gender in Locality Studies," Area 18, no. 4 (1986): 330. 37

McDowell, "Towards an Understanding of the Gender Division of Urban Space," 62. discussed in Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge: 121.

27

children and shared strong emotional, and often erotic, ties. Smithchallenges contemporary rigid distinctions between heterosexuality and homosexuality. 38 In

physical space, suggesting that the simplifications of the traditional male-public/female-private 39

Freedman understands

the separate spheres as empowering women: a separate female sphere can be a space where women are free to create their own forms of personal, social, and political relationships, without seeing themselves as inferior to men. She points out as evidence the building of separate institutions

40

From an architectural point of view, Freedman, however, discusses more the activities

taking place in these spaces, rather than the characteristics of the physical space. She thus still builds on a mostly metaphorical understanding of space. Pioneering feminist architectural historians such as Dolores Hayden and Gwendolyn Wright have focused on rethinking how domesticity was discussed to acknowledge how social issues were an Moralism and the Model

38

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America, ed. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). (Initially published in the inaugural issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.) 39

Estelle Freedman, "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930," Feminist Studies 5, no. 3 (1979)., discussed in Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," 50-51. 40

Freedman, "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930," 517.

28

Home (1980) and Building the Dream (1981) the complex symbolism associated with the Victorian houses designed to be at once unique and easily recognizable to express a social status, creating a point where public and private are deeply intertwined.41

The Grand Domestic Revolution

physical space of the house and sought to redesign it to socialize domestic work and create more gain challenging the constraining view of women as prisoners of a separate sphere.42 43

Architectural historians such as Annmarie Adams and

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz have also analysed more closely how public and semi-public buildings, such as university buildings, were not only gendered as social institutions, but also in their design, transposing characters usually associated to the domestic, seen as feminine, to public spaces.44

41

Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913 (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981), 113. 42

Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities. Kerber, however, points out that, in the footsteps of Hayden, historians such as Ruth Schwartz Cowan have argued that with the result that the home became a place of leisure for men while it stayed a place of labour for women. Other historians, such as Faye E. Dudden, argued that domestic space was pervaded by class considerations, with the mistress staging the space of her servants in relation to her own space. (Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," 51.) 43

Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities: 164-67. Shannon Jackson, Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 155.) She also discusses how Hull House constructed a sort of queer domesticity through the presence of unmarried, nonbiological mothers in family politics and through the constant integration of living and working, and with them the spheres of privacy and publicity. (ibid., 164-87.) 44

Annmarie Adams, "Rooms of Their Own: The Nurses' Residences at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital," Material History Review / Revue d'histoire de la culture matérielle 40(1994); Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, "Designing for the Genders: Curricula and Architecture at Scripps College and the California Institute of Technology," The Pacific

29

implications of using a physical metaphor. She does so in a discussion of recent feminist work, defining physical w fact that women, if seen as controlled by men in their use of and movement in space, still have actual control over their physical space, as illustrated by a more recent generation of historians. For example, Adams argues in her analysis of a post-war suburban Eichler home that women resisted the prescriptive power of the design, especially in relation to design elements that constructed the housewife as a guardian watching over the house and the children at all times.45 Kerber also does not satisfyingly identify the traps of discussing in metaphorically physical terms a social dichotomy that happens within physical space, risking an equation of social space with physical space that is often not as clear as it first appears. The first two stages identified by Kerber in the development of the metaphor are marked by a generalized ignorance of the implications of race and class on these spheres. Davidson and Hatcher

woman is distinct from and even opposite to man contributing to identity are left aside and forgotten when trying to understand the operations of gender.46 In partial response, Kerber identifies a third stage that attempts to apply the concept to the

Historical Review 54, no. 4 (1985); Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginning to the 1930s (New York: Knopf, 1984). 45

Annmarie Adams, "The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia," in Gender, Class, and Shelter: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture V, ed. Elizabeth Collins Cromley and Carter L. Hudgins (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995). 46

Davidson and Hatcher, "Introduction," 10-12.

30

to a single generation of civilization, looking back for example at Hannah distinction between the private and public realm in classical Greek thought47 or understanding de

parate world.48 Once again, however, none of the writers brought forward by Kerber discuss the architectural and physical aspects of these spheres. In a parallel discussion, architect Pauline Fowler does, however, discuss Arendt's understanding that

concepts of work (seen as static, public, permanent) and labour (seen as processal, private, impermanent), form the philosophical basis for mainstream architectural theory, using architectural historian Kenneth Frampton as her main example.49 many hierarchical dichotomies prevalent in the Western metaphysical tradition. Dualities such as masculine/feminine, rationality/intuition, culture/nature, spirit/flesh, and public/private are not accorded equality, but rather, one term attains pre-eminence over the other, relegating it to inferior 50

In her view, Frampton builds on this understanding and argues that domestic buildings are Women in

American Architecture

The Grand Domestic Revolution (1981) who first sought to

47

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

48

Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," 37-38.

49

Arendt, The Human Condition. discussed in Pauline Fowler, "The Public and the Private in Architecture: A Feminist Critique," Women's Studies International Forum 7, no. 6 (1984): 450. 50

Fowler, "The Public and the Private in Architecture: A Feminist Critique," 449.

31

challenge the value traditionally assigned by architects to public buildings over private homes.51

who share h 52

space, use of space, functional relationships

She suggests that

feminist approaches to architecture must overturn this hierarchy. Collections of essays such as Hilde Negotiating Domesticity (2005) exemplify how these challenges have since been developed. 53 Aaron Betsky further suggests that the erosion of strict divisions between public and private opens up the possibility of a queer space, allowing him to place historically the earliest proto-

tral institutions for

54

The understanding of domestic space as feminine permeates many feminist critiques, for example -geographers' particular masculinity is established through their assumption that all space is white, bourgeois, heterosexual masculine public space. They deny other possibilities, including an Other; the domestic is not addressed as the Other of public space

it is

51

Susana Torre, Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective / a Publication and Exhibition Organized by the Architectural League of New York through Its Archive of Women in Architecture (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1977); Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities. discussed in Lynne Walker, "Home Making: An Architectural Perspective," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (2002): 823. 52

Kenneth Frampton, "Labour Work & Architecture," in Meaning in Architecture, ed. Charles Jencks and George Baird (London: Barrie & Rockliff, The Cresset Press, 1969); Kenneth Frampton, "That Status of Man and the Status of His Objects," Architectural Design 52, no. 7/8 (1982). discussed in Fowler, "The Public and the Private in Architecture: A Feminist Critique," 451-53. 53

Hilde Heynen and Gulsum Baydar, eds., Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture (London & New York: Routledge, 2005). 54

Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, 1st ed. (New York: William Morrow, 1997), 27-28.

32

55

She further argues that, for white feminists, one of the most oppressive aspects of

everyday spaces is the division between public space and private space.56 Although the critique is needed and legitimate and represents a welcomed call for the recognition of the importance of studying the everyday57 and the domestic, it still builds on a separate spheres approach without really challenging its binary understanding of space. This understanding of domesticity and interior design in terms of binaries has, however, lately been increasingly challenged. For example, Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart note in their introduction to Rethinking the Interior (2010) studies, however, suggest that Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts interiors are not either masculine or feminine, public or private, but rather both masculine and feminine, public and private; neither masculine nor feminine, public nor private; or at some moments/to some extents/from some 58

Similarly, Lynne Walker proposes to add a

new layer to the meaning of the gendered city by challenging common understandings of West End 55

Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge: 39-40.

56

Ibid., 17.

57

The development of cultural landscapes and vernacular studies in architecture (with figures such as John Brinckerhoff Jackson and Dell Upton at the forefront) a Henri Lefebvre, Critique De La Vie Quotidienne, vol. 1 (Paris: L'Arche, 1958); Henri Lefebvre, Critique De La Vie Quotidienne, vol. 2. Fondements d'une sociologie de la quotidienneté (Paris: L'Arche, 1968); Henri Lefebvre, Critique De La Vie Quotidienne: Pour Une Métaphilosophie Du Quotidien., vol. 3. De la modernité au modernisme (Paris: L'Arche, 1981).) have led to a growing interest of architectural theorists and practitioners towards the study of the everyday, as exemplified by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, eds., Architecture of the Everyday, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997). Households project, a project that will be thoroughly purportedly extra-ordinary people

homosexuals

the project offers a view of marginalized domesticity and Steven Harris, "Everyday Architecture," in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), 4.) Robbins and Gianni further point out in their own essay that their project underlines how the everyday differs from the statistics it engenders and that the data reveal as much about the viewer as the subjects it depicts. (Mark Robbins and Benjamin Gianni, "Family Values (Honey, I'm Home)," ibid., 218.) 58

Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart, "The Victorian Interior: A Collaborative, Eclectic Introduction," in Rethinking the Interior C. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts, ed. Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart (Farnham, Surrey & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 14.

33

Victorian London as the masculine domain of public life. She suggests that independent middle-class 59

high -garde modern artists and architects asserting their accomplishments through contrast with domesticity.60 The separation between public and private has, however, also been discussed in relation to avant-garde domestic architecture. Beatriz Colomina has contributed to a rethinking of this separation when analysing the importance of publicity and mass media not only in the diffusion of modern architectural works, but also in their construction and design. She points out, among other things

house as public to underline the split between looking and seeing, between outside and inside.61 Alice Friedman has similarly discussed the importance of (assumptions about) gender and sexuality in the

demonstrates how Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson blur the limits of interior and exterior in diverging ways, putting into built forms different ideas of privacy that Friedman argues are inextricably linked to sexuality.62 The understanding of domesticity in terms of public and private is far from being only historical. Descriptions of contemporary architecture use the binary constantly, 59

Lynne Walker, "Home and Away: The Feminist Remapping of Public and Private Space in Victorian London," in New Frontiers of Space, Bodies and Gender, ed. Rosa Ainley (London & New York: Routledge, 1998). 60

Christopher Reed, "Introduction," in Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Christopher Reed (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 7. 61

Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity : Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994); Beatriz Colomina, "The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism," in Sexuality & Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina, Princeton Papers on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992). 62

Friedman, "Women and the Making of the Modern House."

34

The Un-Private House exhibition (1999) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Riley builds on

private, [that it] defines a technological polis based partly on a revolution of social relations in the 63

oikos

to group together a series of project that, in his view, are no longer

dependent on an understanding of the household as separate from the public realms. However, if a few of the houses presented do question notions of gender and sexuality, especially in projects for single men or women that disrupt the traditional family model, such as Simon Ungers and Thomas -

64

most are only superficial

experiments in integrating electronic media technologies in the home that, according to Riley, contribute to an erosion of the politics of privacy. The focus here is definitively on a formalist view of the public/private binary, of its acceptance or rejection, and therefore its consequences on people living in those buildings are never discussed. Gender and the Architectural Profession The association of domesticity with the feminine through separate spheres theory has led to the relegation of a large number of early women designers and architects to the design of interior, domestic spaces.65 But as architectural historian Jasmine Rault argues,

63

Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Review, no. 80 (1985): 67. quoted in Riley, The Un-Private House: 15. 64

Riley, The Un-Private House: 20.

65

See for example Gwendolyn Wright, "On the Fringe of the Profession: Women in American Architecture," in The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, ed. Spiro Kostof (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Peter McNeil, "Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, C. 1890-1940," Art History 17, no. 4 (1994); Adams and Tancred, Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession: 37-43; Penny Sparke, "Elsie De

35

being denied access to institutional architectural training and capitalising on associations between women, femininity and domestic space, interior design allowed many women the only opportunity to take part in early twentieth-century as the sheer volume of modernist architectural theory, with its utopic and revolutionary tenor, points to there being more at stake in debates about buildings, furnishings and their design than style alone.66

attempted a socialization of the domestic to gain control of space, Rault argues that modern domestic spaces represented an important opportunity for women to engage in modern

heterosexually healthy bodies, and as such needs to be understood as engaged in the constitution of 67

definitions of health since the nineteenth century.68 The modern project of producing healthy bodies was also the project of regulating and producing sexuality and as such, Rault argues, women needed to take part in the design of interiors if they wanted to be part of that power negotiation. Further research has been done in recent years on the contemporary and historical conditions that support or

Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905-15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator," in Women's Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, ed. Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke (London & New York: Routledge, 2003). Joel Sanders has also discussed how this gendering of the profession, created by profound social anxieties about gender and designers were perceived. He suggests that the current gradual acceptance of the fluidity of gender identities will eventually lead to architects and decorators to embrace the best features of both worlds. (Joel Sanders, "Curtain Wars: Architects, Decorators, and the Twentieth-Century Domestic Interior " in Joel Sanders: Writings and Projects, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2004).) 66

Jasmine Rault, "Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects," in Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, ed. Alla Myzelev and John Potvin (Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 189-90. 67 68

Ibid., 191.

Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité Gallimard, 1976).

́ de savoir, Bibliothèque Des Histoires (Paris:

36

Designing for Diversity (2001) or, in Canada, Annmarie Adams and Peta Designing Women (2000).69 Recent feminist architects have further attempted to push the boundaries of architectural practices. For example, muf architecture/art, a London-based practice in which architects and artists have collaborated since 1994, address the social, spatial and economic infrastructures of the public realm through innovative client/users/professionals relationships with a particular focus on creating equal access for everyone using a space.70 men in the design of space is also implicitly

canon. In Women and the Making of the Modern House assumptions about how men and women should behave in their daily lives

often play a role in

architectural design, particularly in domestic architecture, since these values shape both the explicit 71

She extends the argument to sexuality to

underline the possibilities for men or women outside the (hetero)norm to create or sustain the of rethinking domesticity to change tr architects and their women clients shared the conviction 69

Anthony, Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession; Adams and Tancred, Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession. See also Chris Booth, "Breaking Down Barriers," in Changing Places: Women's Lives in the City, ed. Chris Booth, Jane Darke, and Susan Yeandle (London: Paul Chapman Publishing, 1996); Duncan McCorquodale, Katerina Ruedi, and Sarah Wigglesworth, "Desiring Practices," ed. Arts Council of England (London: Black Dog Publishing, 1995); Francesca Hughes, The Architect : Reconstructing Her Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996); M. L. Durning and Richard Wrigley, Gender and Architecture (Chichester; New York: Wiley, 2000). 70

Shonfield et al., This Is What We Do : A Muf Manual; Brown, Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture. See also the approach taken in their website http://www.muf.co.uk/ to present their collaborators and projects. 71

Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern House: 129.

37

that the essence of modernity was the complete alteration of the home

its feminism with the forces of change thus propelled these projects into uncharted realms of k a dilemma that, for many of them, could be resolved only by seeking new roles for women and by redefining the terms of domesticity itself.72 Modernity thus found a particularly appropriate space to do so when reacting to unconventional living arrangements. This situation lead to the design of architectural avant-garde icons such as the Mies van der Rohe designed house for Edith Farnsworth in Plano, Illinois, or the house built by Gerrit Rietveld in Utrecht for Truus Schröder-Schräder and her three children. Both houses, while dissimilar, present influential challenges to traditional understandings of the physical limits within interior spaces and between interior and exterior. If Friedman focuses on the importance of women clients in relation to male architects, Rault points out the importance of not forgetting the place of women designers in shaping architectural analysis of gender and sexuality in relation to redefinitions of space, that many prominent early twentieth century women designers mobilized the queer pleasures of the visible invisibility in their interior designs as an aesthetic of obscurity and discre were so many women working on new domestic design and decoration while also working out new s.73 While

72

Ibid., 16.

73

Rault, "Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects," 189.

38

neither Friedman nor Rault argue that women designers or clients inevitably create queer spaces, they suggest that many women pioneers making their mark in these fields were often also challenging other societal values and that their design were thus informed by these challenges. Because of both the predominantly masculine state of architecture and design professions and the vast majority of clients being male, early women designers were relatively few; their success was often linked to the part they played in networks of women challenging male power and presence in public life. Aaron Betsky similarly concludes his Building Sex (1995), in which he presents a history of the connections between architecture and sexuality where he argues that separate spaces have been constructed and formalized by men for women,74 by arguing for the creation of a space of doubt, a

75

binary models will be further discussed in the next section.

discussions. Its emergence follows and reacts to some of the feminist critiques identified in the previous section; it represents a direct attempt to offer an alternative to visions of sexuality and gender as binaries. Initially used pejoratively, the term has been reclaimed positively since the 1980s by those who were previously targeted to define an identity category, an activist/political movement, 74

Aaron Betsky, Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: William Morrow, 1995), xvi-xvii. 75

Ibid., 199-201.

39

and an academic theory. The differences and similarities between these uses underlie often divergent

The first use, and most generalized in popular discourse, is queer as an umbrella term for a variety of identity categories understood in opposition to heterosexually-based identities. It includes, among others, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and transgender. The term is also sometimes used as an additional term to refer to people who refuse to identify with these categories, with the variation

physically or mentally. The understanding of queer as an umbrella term is common within discussions in Architecture the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, assuming that readers will associate the presence of users perceived as gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans (through their 76

Although the mainstream use

of the term sometimes positions queer beyond traditional identity categories, it does not encompass

activists attribute to it. Its use in contexts such as the reality television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003-2007), which built on the stereotypes associating gay men with superior tastes in fashion, design, style, and culture, exemplifies the often limited meaning of the word. A second use refers to the radical queer activist movement. Active since the mid-1980s, it emerged in parallel to, and in large part prompted by the critical reclamation of the term queer. Reacting to a 76

Jacob Ward, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," Architecture 2002, 72-81.

40

perceived weakening of the 1970s homosexual liberation and lesbian feminist movements, the queer movement was initially also fuelled by critiques of both conservative and normative gay thinking and governmental, media, and community handlings of the AIDS epidemic. Their agenda revolved around the socio-

n of traditional

gender identities. Their belief in challenging oppressive normativity has pushed most queer activists towards a broadening from gender and sexuality issues to an anti-capitalist, anti-oppression position. Early manifestations of the movement evolved from the short-lived Queer Nation organization, founded in 1990 by New York AIDS activists,77 which still inspires similar groups and actions today. In terms of spatial thinking, Tim Davis argues that queer activists try to move beyond a politics of spatial concentration, of physical gay spaces, to challenge the heterosexist assumption in a diversity 78

A subsequent understanding of queer emerged in the late 1980s with the development of queer theory.79 The term was coined by Teresa De Lauretis in her introductory essay to the "Queer

77

Susan Stryker, "Queer Nation," in glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, ed. Claude J. Summers (Chicago: glbtq, Inc., 2004). 78

Tim Davis, "The Diversity of Queer Politics and the Redefinition of Sexual Identity and Community in Urban Spaces," in Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, ed. David Bell and Gill Valentine (London & New York: Routledge, 1995), 293. Davis echoes here what many sociologists have argued: that the notion of community should not be used to define spatially-bounded networks. See for example Barry Wellman and Barry Leighton, "Networks, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Approaches to the Study of the Community Question," Urban Affairs Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1979); Irwin Altman and Abraham Wandersman, Neighborhood and Community Environments, Human Behavior and Environment (New York: Plenum Press, 1987); Andrée Fortin et al., Histoires De Familles Et De Réseaux : La Sociabilité Au Québec D'hier À Demain (Montréal: Éditions Saint-Martin, 1987). 79

For a deeper introduction to queer theory, refer to Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

41

Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities" issue (1991) of the feminist journal Differences80 to describe a radical reconsidering of sexuality outside the prevailing dichotomy of the heterosexual matrix, to use

reacting to gender studies and gay and lesbian studies, philosophers, literary theorists and historians

sexuality, opened up a new way of thinking about gender and sexual identification and performance.81 The influence of Foucault, most importantly his work after the first volume of The History of Sexuality (1976, translated into English 1977),82 is of particular importance to queer theory in its attempt to think beyond identities (understood as categories of individuals) and acts (in this case sexual practices) towards unspecified and unspecifiable forms of relationality.83 Queer

ng on performative

84

Queer theory is thus less a

80

Teresa de Lauretis, "Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Studies: An Introduction," differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991). 81

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1st ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 1990); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990); David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). inspired by Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 3 vols., Bibliothèque Des Histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 19761984). and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Gender and Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 82

Although theory. See Lynne Huffer, Mad for Foucault : Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 83

Ricco, The Logic of the Lure: 18.

84

The argument was initially presented in Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988). and then developed in Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

42

discourse around an identity than a critique of conventional identity politics. This understanding has allowed Halperin to define queer as dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an 85

a definition which has since been much cited and has opened the door to work that goes

beyond the realm of sexuality and gender.86 Ahmed further insists that meanings of the word queer, which after all are historically related even if irreducible to each other. This means recalling what makes specific sexualities describable as queer in the first place: that is, 87

This political and ethical tension creates queer theory as

coming never arriving, just as much as it is a matter of being both out in and out of the academy at 88

The potential of this last understanding of queer is thus immense as it refuses, at least

theoretically, binary concepts, discarding a clean separation between homosexuality and heterosexuality, between feminity and masculinity, and, by extension, between understandings of space as feminine or masculine. I do not believe, however, that it dismisses completely the idea that space is gendered. It suggests instead that we need to look at the gendering and sexualisation of spaces as a process beyond the materialisation of essential characteristics.

85

Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography: 63. in Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 43. and in Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001," 82. 86

This opening of queer theory outside of sexuality and gender is being currently discussed by Heather K. Love in her attempts to place queer theory in a genea theoretical articulations by queer theorist Michael Warner (her research has yet to be published). 87

Ahmed, "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology," 565.

88


43

they attempt to demonstrate and challenge how identities are constructed as binaries through a heterosexual matrix of gender, they often rely themselves on binary assumptions and categories

uential collection of essays on lesbian and gay studies, Inside/Out 89

reliance on discourses that present space in oppositional terms (inside/outside, public/private, monumental/domestic, vernacular/high architecture), this title is also problematic. Beyond this problem, I believe queer theory has a potential to revisit these assumptions in more nuanced ways. As such, it can offer renewed discussions that approach architectural spaces as created by more than formal and programmatic decisions, as formed by a networks of relations between designers, clients, permanent and temporary users, and their social, political and historical contexts. This is the understanding of queer that has inspired the richest and most interesting academic discussions of queer space (theory), as will be shown in the next section.

89

Diana Fuss, "Inside/Out," in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York and London: Routledge, 1991); Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," ibid. Interestingly for the context of this literature review, Fuss has also published a series of essays of famous writers and the relation of their work to their interior, arguing that their domestic spaces shaped who they were. (Diana Fuss, The Sense of an Interior: Four Writers and the Rooms That Shaped Them (New York & London: Routledge, 2004).) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In the essay, Butler questions how she can write for a collection that asks of her to identi which she is trying to deconstruct.

44

Queer Space Theories: Deconstructing Spatial Binaries Definiti discuss the sometimes divergent understandings of queer space. In architecture, queer space discourses emerged relatively late compared to other fields such as geography, in a similar way to

symptomatic of the conservatism of the architectural profession that not until the mid-1990s did architects begin to engage the issues of identity that were central to postmodernism in the broader 90

A number of theorists and historians have since attempted to classify diverse approaches

to the notion of queer space, most of them from outside architectural theory and history, however, as relatively few scholars in architecture have explored the theme.91

90

Haar and Reed, "Coming Home: A Postcript on Postmodernism," 270.

91

Although this classification covers various sources, it was initially inspired by Richard Borbridge, "Sexuality and the City: Exploring Gaybourhoods and the Urban Village Form in Vancouver, Bc." (University of Manitoba, 2007). and developed in Olivier Vallerand, "Homonormative Architecture & Queer Space: The Evolution of Gay Bars and Clubs in Montréal" (M.Arch. research project, McGill University, 2010). A partial bibliography of queer space discourse and theory in architecture, interior design, and geography includes Henry Urbach, "Peeking at Gay Interiors," Design Book Review: DBR 25(1992); Henry Urbach, "Spatial Rubbing: The Zone," Sites, no. 25 (1993); John Paul Ricco, "Coming Together: Jack-Off Rooms as Minor Architecture," A/R/C, Architecture, Research, Criticism 1, no. 5 (1994); David Bell and Gill Valentine, eds., Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (London: Routledge, 1995); Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (New York: Routledge, 1995); Christopher Reed, "Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment," Art Journal 55, no. 4 (1996); Henry Urbach, "Closets, Clothes, Disclosure," Assemblage, no. 30 (1996); sections of Sanders, Stud: Architectures of Masculinity; Betsky, Queer Space; Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter, eds., Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997); John Paul Ricco, "Fag-O-Sites: Minor Architecture and Geopolitics of Queer Everyday Life" (Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998); David Bell, Jon Binnie, and Ruth Holliday, Pleasure Zones: Bodies, Cities, Spaces, 1st ed., Space, Place, and Society (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001); Ricco, The Logic of the Lure; John Potvin, "Vapour and Steam: The Victorian Turkish Bath, Homosocial Health, and Male Bodies on Display," Journal of Design History 18, no. 4 (2005); Katarina Bonnevier, Behind Straight Curtains : Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture (Stockholm: Axl Books, 2007); Marianne Blidon, "Jalons pour une géographie des homosexualités," Espace géographique 37, no. 2 (2008); Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001."; Peter McNeil, "Crafting Queer Spaces: Privacy and Posturing," in Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, ed. Alla Myzelev and John Potvin (Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010); John Potvin, "The Aesthetics of Community: Queer Interiors and the Desire for Intimacy," in Rethinking the Interior C. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts, ed. Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart (Farnham, Surrey & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010);

45

The first approach understands queer space as gay or lesbian territory demarcated from heteronormative territory, as the physical manifestation of a gay community. The earliest approach, -cited study of the Castro district in San Francisco.92 In architectural history, although it does also share some preoccupations of other understandings of -known Queer Space (1997) is fundamentally based in this understanding with its investigation of spaces used and designed by (mostly) gay men.93 Early descriptions of gay or lesbian bars by scholars such as Barbara Weightman or Maxine Wolfe offer a similar (and rare) entry into these hidden (and mostly forgotten) worlds,94 without however

-

ests

historical and contemporary designers and architects he believes to be gay. He defines this aesthetics camp, or an ironic, subversive point of view; drag, or dressing Rault, "Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects."; Jasmine Rault, Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In (Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011); Chapter 2 of Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, If Memory Serves: Gay Men, Aids, and the Promise of the Queer Past (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012); Matt Cook, Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in TwentiethCentury London, Genders and Sexualities in History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); John Potvin, Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain, Studies in Design (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). Recent challenges to earlier queer space research are summarized in Kath Browne, "Challenging Queer Geographies," Antipode 38, no. 5 (2006); Kath Browne, Jason Lim, and Gavin Brown, Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007); Natalie Oswin, "Critical Geographies and the Uses of Sexuality: Deconstructing Queer Space," Progress in Human Geography 32, no. 1 (2008). 92

Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots : A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 93

Betsky, Queer Space.

94

Barbara A. Weightman, "Gay Bars as Private Places," Landscape 24, no. 1 (1980); Maxine Wolfe, "Invisible Women in Invisible Places: Lesbians, Lesbian Bars, and the Social Production of People/Environment Relationships," Architecture & comportement / Architecture & Behaviour 8, no. 2 (1992).

46

things up to get a theatrical effect or desired result; and bricolage, or the assemblage and appropriation of elements--real or referential--to build queer identity for one's self or to identify one 95

thus assigning essential characters to a diverse landscape of buildings and urban tion. This approach is also used to describe

and analyse LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders)96

It has, however,

been rightly criticized for not considering that queer space existed before gay or lesbian neighbourhoods appeared, as described for example by historians George Chauncey and Matt Houlbrook in their investigations of early twentieth-

on.97 It

also does not challenge the assumptions that most other places are fully straight and that queer space can only exist within gay enclaves. This approach is sometimes broadened by considering queer space ay space and straight space,98 using queer as a broader vision of non-heteronormative identities. This extended understanding focuses on the boundary, the

95

Jonathan Boorstein, "Queer Space," in Building Bridges: Diversity Connections: American Institute of Architects National Diversity Conference Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects, 1995). referenced in Anthony, Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession: 73. 96

Alan Collins, "Sexual Dissidence, Enterprise and Assimilation: Bedfellows in Urban Regeneration," Urban Studies 41, no. 9 (2004); Brad Ruting, "Economic Transformations of Gay Urban Spaces: Revisiting Collins' Evolutionary Gay District Model," Australian Geographer 39(2008): 264. 97

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994). and Matt Houlbrook, Queer London : Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957, The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). An interesting study in New York and adds turn of the twentieth century Chicago (Kevin J. Mumford, "Interracial Intersections: Homosexuality and Black/White Relations," in Interzones : Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).). 98

See for examples chapters 6 to 9 of Stephen Whittle, ed. The Margins of the City: Gay Men's Urban Lives, Popular Cultural Studies (Aldershot: Arena, 1994). and Moira Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A. : The Intersection of Place and Politics, American Subjects (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

47

interface, and the adversarial ownership of place, in a vision tainted by Hegelian dialectics, without however questioning how these boundaries are themselves defined by an understanding of queer spaces as others defined by a normative majority. Another understanding positions queer space as overtly sexualized space. It focuses on sexual acts and tension, not sexual identity or ownership, where the sex act defines the construction and dissolution of queer space. Queer space is thus understood as inherently ephemeral. This approach is present rformativity theory, for example in the early writings of David Bell, Jon Binnie, and Gill Valentine who position the visibility of queer sex acts, both gay and lesbian, as creating queer space.99 It is a useful approach, but, by focusing only on the sexual aspects of sexual orientation, it underestimates the impact on the experience of space of social communities that have developed around a shared sexual orientation. As ographies of

100

It does, however, rightly note the importance of sexuality in most understandings of

sexuality. A third understanding of queer space builds on the previous ones, but enlarges them to define queer

and envisions queer space as continually in the process of being constructed in opposition to 99

See for example the foundational texts in David Bell et al., "All Hyped up and No Place to Go," Gender, place & culture: a journal of feminist geography 1, no. 1 (1994); Bell and Valentine, Mapping Desire. 100

Browne, "Challenging Queer Geographies," 891.

48

heteronormativity, but also to broader prescriptive norms. As such, queer space is sometimes

definition of queer.101 A group of geographers led by Doreen Massey has described queer space has characterized by a kind of social practice accepting the existence of categories, power and valuation, but also attempting to conceptualize them not in a fixed, but rather in a continually changing way. The point is not being different (stat 102

It is fluid and subversive, a place of freedom, and multiplicity. For them, queer space is

thus not only a category patchwork, but it also changes the depth of each category; in queer space, identity becomes the sum of numerous categories. Importantly, this understanding of queer space positions it as performative; it is built out through time, existing not only in the physical space, but in the intersubjectivity of the relations, through verbal, nonpolitics is about relations rather than identity. In queer space there are multiple identities that are 103

Christopher Re Queer space is imminent: queer space is space in the process of, literally, taking place, of claiming 104

past, linking it to the idea of camp

101

Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001," 82. in reference to Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography: 63. 102

"A Kind of Queer Geography/Räume Durchqueeren: The Doreen Massey Reading Weekends," Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 13, no. 2 (2006): 177. 103

Ibid., 178-79.

104

Reed, "Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment," 64.

49

(often through exaggeration and incongruity) the structure of assumptions undergirding normative ecent theorization of camp [that] supplants Susan Sontag's 1964 "Notes on Camp" with queerer formulations.105 This understanding of queer space also points out the importance of context in how people experience space. Context in performativity is not only understood as the physical context, but more importantly when and how space is encountered, through which earlier experiences, and by whom, taking into account issues of gender, race, class, sexuality. Walking by the closed door of a gay bar in the middle of the day is completely unlike entering it in the middle of the night or seeing it on television, even if these experiences take place in the same physical space, as is visiting an apartment knowing or not who lives in it. This importance of context echoes once a mean to hide and reveal. Urbach is particularly drawn to the ante-closet, the space before the closet, the space of -closet is an effect of reappropriations and resignifications without end. It resists the violence of fixed identities by allowing spaces to fold, unfold, and fold again. [...] Working with and against closet and room, the ante-closet dismantles their tired architecture to 106

Identity in relation to architecture thus cannot be

105

Ibid., 68. See Andrew Ross, "Uses of Camp," in No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1989), 135-70; and two anthologies: Moe Meyer, ed., The Politics and Poetics of Camp (New York: Routledge, 1994); and David Bergman, ed., Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), which reprints the extract from Newton's 1972 Mother Camp 106

Urbach, "Closets, Clothes, Disclosure," 72.

50

From an architectural point of view, this understanding of queer space in terms of performance and relation is challenging: what are the physical char conditions does queer space exist? Can any space become queer? Are spaces commonly associated with gay males, such as bars or cruising grounds, queer? Are the homes of gay male couples, lesbian couples, trans couples all equally queer spaces? How and why are domestic spaces inhabited by two men or two women automatically assumed to be gay or lesbian households? And why would those be queer spaces? Where do non-traditional households fit in these categories? Can a heterosexual

s search for a critically queer architecture. She attempts to find strategies for resistance to, and transgression of normative orders. It does not mean that queerness is an essentialist core of some buildings, and not others the queer perspective is, just like seemingly neutral observations, an interpretation but the cultural production that surrounds us is not as straight as heteronormativity makes it appear. Queer implies inter-changeability and excess; the possibility to move, make several interpretations, slide over, or reposition limits. To understand buildings as queer performative acts, and not static preconditions, opens architecture to interpretation and makes it less confined within normative constraints. It is a key both to accomplish a shift in how architecture can be understood or analysed and to [her] ambition to contribute to a transformation in future building; thereby presenting in a broader sense, enactments of architecture.107 Sara Ahmed further suggests through her idea of queer phenom attend to the background, it might do so by giving an account of the conditions of emergence for something, which would not necessarily be available in how that thing presents itself to , what we do with the table, or what the table allows us to do, is 107

Bonnevier, Behind Straight Curtains : Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture: 22.

51

108

This understanding allows Ahmed to posit that (queer) desires create spaces,

often temporary, that come and go with the coming and going of the bodies that inhabit them.109 Queer space theory thus extends far beyond gay- and lesbian-oriented architecture, but instead suggests that lessons learned from critically queer occupation of space by LGBT people could be of use to rethink how our environments are designed, used, and analysed. It is this idea that I wish to explore in the dissertation, although through a different angle from that taken by Bonnevier, who focuses on theatrical and performance tropes to support her critical rethinking of space. I instead investigate how these questions have been explored through interventions in space. Although based in similar theoretical bases than the last, broader, understanding of queer space presented here, art historian John Paul Ricco attempts to position himself outside of

the object of inquiry is purely a produc

110

Both

approaches may be understood as performative, but Ricco argues that queer space attempts to leave

its discursivity and configures itself as one materi Queer sex space theory is thus anticite

108

Ahmed, "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology," 549;51.

109

Ibid., 564.

110


52

and site.111

112

to suggest

that a discourse of queer sex space theory is not simply located in history, but has a particular role to play in the materialization of history.113 It is, in part, this knowledge of its own discursivity and role in his thus sees queer sex space theory as inscribed in debates over the place of sexuality within movement politics and theoretical production that surrounded the parallel emergence of neoconservative gay discourses and of queer studies and theory in the academy. Borrowing from Foucault, Ricco understands the housing of more radical queer theoretical practice within the academy as a means to contain and control. His que

-identity social-

sexual politics and to fabricating queer countercontainment.114 Ricco presents examples to illustrate his alternative theory; an important number of them are art installations, some taken from the exhibition disappeared he curated at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago (1996), but he also discusses built spaces such as gay sex clubs. The art installations and cruising spaces both force a physical implication from the visitor through a path of

111

Ibid., 149.

112

Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993), 13. cited in Ricco, The Logic of the Lure: 148. 113


114

Ibid., 142-45. but his current position as a university professor has meant that he is now more tied to the academic model he initially questioned.

53

section in chapter two on his disappeared exhibition). They are also linked by their inscription in public discussions and debates over gender and sexual differences, media representation, etc. Ricco approaches the erotic as a fundamental part of an understanding of queer space. In this sense, Queer Space (1997) as an attempt to totalize the field with a historicizing logic presenting a reformist history of architecture through an exploration of same-sex desire. Betsky frames his chapter on cruising grounds, bars and public gay-oriented spaces with discussions of two queer sex space theory essays by Ricco and Urbach who both reflect on the inventive sexual persistence of spaces and users.115 he constituent elements of a cruising network, and in turn, as communicative/signifying networks for the expression and coalescence of identity and community. For Ricco, Betsky appears to be suggesting that the queer erotic is in the past, that it is a ruin upon which queer communities and queer spaces are being built.116 understanding of the connection between acts, practices and identities through a turn towards erotic pr to get the materiality and physicality of sex as opposed to identities and communities [...] (although this is, of course, an artificial distinction as erotic connection may be seen as the foundation of sociality

even community

within some sexual dissident communities). [...] I must reiterate that I

115

Ricco, "Coming Together: Jack-Off Rooms as Minor Architecture."; Urbach, "Spatial Rubbing: The Zone."

116


54

the politics of erotics in knowledge creation

117

The idea of the political implications of sexuality and

explosion of private sexual fantasy into public view

118

Their

acknowledgement of the political potential of queer sex spaces is, I believe, useful for understanding how the deconstruction of assumed oppositions between private and public can change how we perceive both spaces and their users. Queering Architectural Discourse Building upon feminism and gay and lesbian studies, queer theory defies identity categorization. Without necessarily disposing of categories, it calls for an understanding and critique of their constructedness. More recently, it has also opened up to an intersectionality recognising the diverse elements that form identity, although many scholars working within a queer theory framework often do not satisfyingly account for race and class even if they are f

-

identification. Queer theory can thus help us move away from earlier understandings of queer space as strictly gay-oriented spaces towards a more inclusive approach that understands queer space as performative, as depending importantly on context and relationality in its challenge to both heteroand homonormativity. In this sense, space is queer not in itself, but in relation to something else, in relation to the changing people using or visiting a place; the queerness of space is a layer of spatial

117

Jon Binnie, "Sexuality, the Erotic and Geography: Epistemology, Methodology and Pedagogy," in Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics, ed. Kath Browne, Jason Lim, and Gavin Brown (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 32. 118

Michael Bronski, "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: Notes on the Materialization of Sexual Fantasy," in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice, ed. Mark Thompson (Boston: Alyson, 1991), 64. cited in Jon Binnie, "The Erotic Possibilities of the City," in Pleasure Zones: Bodies, Cities, Spaces, ed. David Bell, Jon Binnie, and Ruth Holliday, Space, Place, and Society (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 109.

55

experience amongst others. Queer theory thus reminds us of the importance of looking beyond the formal to understand space and architecture as one aspect among others in the construction of lessons to a study of space can furthermore underline the political

of sexual oppression requires room. [...] Many physical aspects of our communities reflect only 119

Architecture can be linked not only

to a physical representation of self-identifications, as in memorials, community centers, or bars, but also to the potential oppression of specific identity minorities through a repressive control of the spaces they visit, claim, and eventually transform through their presence.120 The most powerful potential of queer space theory is thus in its ability to help one understand the constraints and potentials created by spatial structures in relation to various elements of identities sexuality and gender, but importantly opening up to race, class, age, etc.

starting from

and not in attempts to

on of performativity can only exist in relation to contexts. Ricco extends this idea

a minor literature to suggest a minor architecture.121 Such a minor architecture understands queer

119

Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yoalanda Retter, "Strategies for (Re)Constructing Queer Communities," in Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, ed. Gordon Brent Ingram, AnneMarie Bouthillette, and Yoalanda Retter (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997). 120

While earlier studies often focused on police repression on bars, urban parks, spas or public toilets used by queer people to meet in relative anonymity, more recent discussions have shifted to how control and conflict over who can use a space also come from within community-owned spaces. See for example the documentary Wu Tsang, "Wildness," (USA2012). 121

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: pour une littérature mineure, Critique (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1975). Discussed in Ricco, The Logic of the Lure: 6.

56

space as an architecture which overcomes the binary reading of public and private by being situated within what he calls the majority, rather than outside of it. A minor architecture is neither the inside of architecture nor the outside of architecture, but architecture outside of architecture

the

architecture be thought, no longer as a whole, a complex unity, but as a set of and site for becomings 122

A minor architecture reinvents architectural tropes from the majority to contest its

relation with the majority within which it resides. Ricco uses as an example the gay sex club which creates a network of relations wi

Ricco acknowledges the earlier work of Jennifer "A Lay a Stone a Patch a Post a Pen the Ruddyrun: Minor Architectural Possibilities," in Strategies in Architectural Thinking, ed. Jeffrey Kipnis, John Whiteman, and Richard Burdett (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1992). a seedbed of subversion and transformation in her "Toward a Theory of Normative Architecture," in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), 123;52. She proposes a history of the evolution of American architecture after World War II as territorial, apolitical, and conservative of the status quo, or normative. She suggests that those who have long been excluded from the major territoty of architecture (women, African-Americans) might better use an incremental, subtle, and persistent minor architecture instead of relying on a nostalgic reterritorialization (associated with postmodernism) or the shock tactics of militant avant-garde. Robert Somol also uses the concept to discuss the practice of John Hejduk in "One or Several Masters?," in Hejduk's Chronotope, ed. K. Michael Hays and Centre Canadien d'Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press [for the] Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1996). , a resistive Jill Stoner, Toward a Minor Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). le, geographer Cindi Katz develops the notion of a minor theory as a way of reconfiguring the production of knowledge in geography, to change both theory and practice. She particularly sees its potential in joining the concerns of Marxism, feminism, antiracism, and queer theory. Cindi Katz, "Towards Minor Theory," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, no. 4 (1996). Also in geography, Oswin makes a similar argument in "Critical Geographies and the Uses of Sexuality: Deconstructing Queer Space.", from feminist, materialist, postcolonial and critical race theories. Without explicitly using the notion of a minor discourse or practice, Osw 122

Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies: 135. quoted in Ricco, The Logic of the Lure: 6.

57

display in major networks, such as newspapers and televisions.123 While Ricco, as is common in queer space discussions, links queer to specifically gay male (sexualized) spaces, his idea that queer space is a minor layer of meaning within a major network of buildings and city spaces can help us understand the plight of other marginalized groups. Ahmed, taking cues from Lauren Berlant and space of entrances, exits, unsystematized lines of acquaintance, projecting horizons, typifying examples, alternate routes, blockages, 124

underline the importance of not idealizing queer worlds or simply

locating them in an alt the majority. She suggests that, if the spaces we occupy are fleeting, this is as much a sign of how heterosexuality shapes the contours of inhabitable space as it is about the p because this world is already in place that queer moments, where things come out of line, are

125

calls for both a consideration of the physicality of space and for a rethinking of the role of theory through the queer voice. It does not only point out the normativity of discourses, but also underlines the relationality and subjectivity of academic discourses often perceived as either neutral or already

123

Ricco, "Coming Together: Jack-Off Rooms as Minor Architecture."

124

Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public," in Publics and Counterpublics, ed. Michael Warner (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 198. Quoted in Ahmed, "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology," 565. 125

Ahmed, "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology," 565.

58

into social, political and cultural context signals the importance of links between theory and politics. He further challenges architectural discourse by looking at spaces, such as sex clubs, public restrooms, and other gay cruising spaces (once again all urban gay male spaces), through art works.

queer space theory which is not yet well developed or static and homogeneous, and too much focussed on gay male sex spaces, it rightfully reminds us of the difficulties associated with the diverse

-

y

one possible lens in a discussion of queer space. Consequently, the political power of a queer architecture, seldom realized, comes from its relation to others, from its challenging reappropriations

And Everyone El The development of queer theory and the actions of queer activists have brought to light the idea of heteronormativity. It refers to the structuration of society along a male/female gender model through norms that enshrine heterosexuality as normal and position non-heterosexuals or non-genderconforming people as other. This concept is, however, increasingly criticized for its tendency to conflate all heterosexual identities in a single simplified category and to mask the differences among

heterosexual identities are uniformly normative and socially conservative, while non-heterosexuals or

59

sexual dissidents are constructed as radical, progres

126

Theorists from

mainstreaming of lesbian and gay politics associated with the more recent idea of homonormativity?127 How does the increasing visibility of affluent white gay men in mainstream public view contribute to a marginalisation of lesbian feminism and sexual radicalism and highlight exclusions within queer communities on the basis of race, class, gender, and disabilities? Queer theorists David L. Eng, Judith/Jack Halberstam and José Esteban Muñoz point out in their introduction to a 2005 special issue of Social Text the utility of queer as an engaged mode of critical enquiry that encompasses some of the most innovative and risky work on globalization, neoliberalism, cultural politics, subjectivity, identity, family, and kinship.128 Their claim that considerations of empire, race, migration, geography, subaltern communities, activism, and class are central to the continuing critique of queerness, sexuality, sexual subcultures, desire, and recognition is however challenged by Binnie who points out that all sixteen essays in the issue are by US-based scholars in the humanities, arguing that it contradicts the desire to bring a wide variety of critiques into the discussion.129

126

Binnie, "Sexuality, the Erotic and Geography: Epistemology, Methodology and Pedagogy," 33.

127

The concept of homonormativity has been used widely since Lisa Duggan elaborated it in her influential 2002 essay. Lisa Duggan, "The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism," in Materializing Democracy : Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D Nelson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). 128

David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz, "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?," Social Text 23, no. 3/4 (2005): 2. 129

Binnie, "Sexuality, the Erotic and Geography: Epistemology, Methodology and Pedagogy," 34.

60

importance of geography in the study of sexuality from his own UK-based point of view, his call for a more intersectional queer academic approach, taking into account the background of the researcher and of the object of study, is important. Other similar calls for intersectionality have emerged to challenge the silencing of other identifications and the retreat into single unifying identity categories instead of considering how gender and sexuality cannot be experienced and understood outside of class, race, ethnicity, age, etc.130 At its best, queer theory challenges both hetero- and homonormativity and reaches beyond gender and sexuality, but this is very difficult to achieve and is unfortunately rare.

queer

multidisciplinary and wide-ranging Queers in Space (1997) collection (which includes some discussions of architecture),131

Queer Space (1997) 130

Kimberlé Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color," Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1242. In a special issue of Signs Doyle and Amelia Jones grouped a series of essays that think about how gender in visual including race and ethnicity, nationality, sexual orien Jennifer Doyle and Amelia Jones, "Introduction: New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture," Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 607.) 131

See for example Oswin, "Critical Geographies and the Uses of Sexuality: Deconstructing Queer Space."; Natalie Oswin, "The Modern Model Family at Home in Singapore: A Queer Geography," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35, no. 2 (2010); Natalie Oswin, "Towards Radical Geographies of Complicit Queer Futures," ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 3, no. 2 (2005); Browne, "Challenging Queer Geographies."; Ingram, Bouthillette, and Retter, Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance.

61

complete title, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire of queerness. Similarly, his attempts to defend himself against accusations of exclusion underlines -sex love

queer space, because of the particular role we have assigned same-sex love within our society, offers a

that establishes such a free and radical space, no matter the sexual preferences of the persons making 132

-

characteristics he sees as essential to queer spaces; earlier in his book, however, he contradictorily states that such spaces should not be

-

of their designers or users.133 orientation and self-

ueer -identified homosexuals? Where does that leave people who do

(queer being used here in a very limited understanding) and furthermore, what do we do with historical spaces whose users we cannot clearly identify with our -consciously queer space was 134

132

Betsky, Queer Space: 26.

133

Ibid., 6.

134

Ibid., 26.

thus equating the emergence of queer space with the formation of

62

Ludwig II, Oscar Wilde, C.R. Ashbee, Louis Sullivan, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore, or Frank Israel, to finish

spaces or women designers such as Elsie de Wolfe and Julia Morgan.

art historian Jasmine Rault,135 discussants of domestic queer space have been more extensively interested in a variety of gay male spaces, among others Philip

Paul Ru

136

More theoretically-inclined works are somewhat more inclusive, as Michael Moon and Eve Kosofsky House Rules exhibition (1994, curated by Mark Robbins) attests. In this project, which like others in the same exhibition grouped theorists and architects to take on social issues in relation to domesticity, a

135

Bonnevier, Behind Straight Curtains : Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture; Bonnevier, "A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray's E.1027."; Rault, "Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects."; Rault, Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In. Bonnevier and Rault focusses on Gray as a queer figure to counter the heteronormatively inclined and much more widely read discussions by Beatriz Colomina and Sylvia Lavin that focus ray as a victim figure more than an empowered designer. (Beatriz Colomina, "Battle Lines: E.1027," in The Sex of Architecture, ed. Diana I. Agrest, Patricia Conway, and Leslie Kanes Weisman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996); Sylvia Lavin, "Colomina's Web: Reply to Beatriz Colomina," ibid.) Betsky also briefly discusses De Wolfe in chapter 3 of his Betsky, Queer Space. 136

Friedman, "Women and the Making of the Modern House."; Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001."; Betsky, Queer Space; Rohan, "Public and Private Spectacles / Paul Rudolph: Casa Rudolph, New York 1977-1997."; Alice T. Friedman, "Your Place or Mine? The Client's Contribution to Domestic Architecture," in Women's Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, ed. Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke (London & New York: Routledge, 2003); George Wagner, "The Lair of the Bachelor," in Architecture and Feminism, ed. Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze, and Carol Henderson, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); Urbach, "Peeking at Gay Interiors."

63

house is rethought to create a space for queer adolescents within nuclear families. However, the

project discussed by Henry Urbach, seems at first to be a non-gendered queer person, but upon closer reading reveals the use of only masculine pronouns.137

Logic of the Lure

(2002), while invested in presenting a queering of architectural and art theory, presents almost exclusively male subjects or male-oriented spaces.138 More recent work has, however, started to look

WomEnhouse website.139 Architectural discussions of non-domestic spaces are even fewer and focus almost exclusively on gay male spaces, for example, in John Paul Ricco, Henry Urbach, Jan 140

One must turn to

social historians or geographers to get a glimpse of queer uses of space by women or non-gay men.141

137

Moon et al., "Queers in (Single-Family) Space."; Henry Urbach, John Randolph, and Bruce Tomb, "In Medias Res," ibid. 138

Ricco, The Logic of the Lure.

139

Annmarie Adams, "The Power of Pink: Children's Bedrooms and Gender Identity," FKW // Zeitschrift für geschlechterforschung und visuelle kultur, no. 50 (2010); Lucas Cassidy Crawford, "Breaking Ground on a Theory of Transgender Architecture," Seattle Journal for Social Justice 8, no. 2 (2010); Lucas Cassidy Crawford, "Archive, Transgender, Architecture: Woolf, Beckett, Diller Scofidio + Renfro" (PhD Dissertation, University of Alberta, 2012); "Womenhouse," UCR/California Museum of Photography, accessed January 23, 2014, http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/education/programs/digitalstudio/studio_projects/webworks/womenhouse/default2.html; Pat Morton, "A Visit to Womenhouse," in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997). 140

Ricco, "Coming Together: Jack-Off Rooms as Minor Architecture."; Ricco, The Logic of the Lure; Urbach, "Spatial Rubbing: The Zone."; Jan Kapsenberg, "Erotic Manoeuvres: Transforming Zumthor's Thermal Baths in Vals," Daidalos, no. 69/70 (1998); Ira Tattelman, "The Meaning at the Wall: Tracing the Gay Bathhouse," in Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, ed. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yoalanda Retter (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997). 141

For example in Wolfe, "Invisible Women in Invisible Places: Lesbians, Lesbian Bars, and the Social Production of People/Environment Relationships."; Elizabeth Lapovsky Kenne, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (1993); Line Chamberland, "Remembering Lesbian Bars: Montreal, 1955-1975," in Gay Studies

64

The past decades have seen sociallyEuro-American white male-dominated culture. However, the slow pace at which the discipline is evolving

in part because of the important financial means and time length necessary to build most

projects means that most of these critiques have yet to impact in significant ways both the state of the profession and the ways buildings are designed and built. Given the longer time they have been part of the discussion, feminist critiques have been implemented by practices such as Matrix or muf, but queer critiques have been mostly presented as exhibitions, installations and speculative projects, as discussed in the following chapters.142

from the French Cultures: Voices from France, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and the Netherlands, ed. Rommer Mendès-Leite and Pierre-Olivier de Busscher, Research on Homosexuality (New York, London, & Norwood (Australia): The Haworth Press, 1993); Sally Munt, "The Lesbian Flâneur," in Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, ed. David Bell and Gill Valentine (London & New York: Routledge, 1995); Tamar Rothenberg, "'And She Told Two Friends': Lesbians Creating Urban Social Space," ibid.; Tim Davis, "The Diversity of Queer Politics and the Redefinition of Sexual Identity and Community in Urban Spaces," ibid.; Julie A. Podmore, "Lesbians in the Crowd: Gender, Sexuality and Visibility Along Montreal's Boul. St-Laurent," Gender, Place and Culture - A Journal of Feminist Geography 8(2001); Julie A. Social & Cultural Geography 7, no. 4 (2006). 142

See note 8.

65

Chapter 2. Bodily Exhibitions: Making Queer Space Theory Visible Queer space theory emerged in architecture in the early 1990s and became visible through a series of texts and exhibitions in the mid-1990s that underlined its potential for both architectural design and architectural history and theory. This chapter analyses how three of these exhibitions used gallery settings to present projects building on queer space theory: the Queer Space exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (1994), disappeared at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago (1996), and the House Rules exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts (1994). The chapter also discusses the Un-Private House exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (1999) as a counter-example conceptually organized around ideas similar to the ones brought forward by queer space theory, but channelling them in a formalist discourse that erases the social and political aspects of most projects. To understand how these projects challenge assumptions around the traditional separation between art and architecture, the chapter begins with a discussion of the existing knowledge about the intersection of art and architecture.

Bridging the Fields: Working at the Intersection of Art and Architecture Art and architecture are today seen as two independent fields, with distinct institutions, schooling, professional status, public recognition, and cultural status.143 However, as Jennifer Allen points out,

143

For histories of the architecture profession, see for example Spiro Kostof, The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); Dana Cuff, Architecture : The Story of Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). For histories of art and art history, see for example Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects, 2nd ed. (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Germain Bazin, Histoire de l'histoire de l'art: de Vasari à nos jours (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986); Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988); Vernon Hyde

66

Renaissance figures such as Brunelleschi, Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo can hardly be

to design buildings and machines, paint and/or sculpt. To explain what drove the two practices apart from the perspective of aesthetics, she argues that an epistemological shift in the eighteenth century differentiated the artist from the architect to make their work distinct, if not outright antagonistic, with respect to each other.144 varying place within the hierarchy of the arts, has been internalized to become the genetic makeup of the discipline, leaving architecture at times scrambling to get out from under or else dictating things from the top but, most important, endowing it with a unique proclivity to think of mediums in relational terms. (That such battles for cultural power continue unabated is immediately visible in the ironic fact that relational aesthetics is a term coined by the art world to describe art that behaves like architecture but somehow 145

Minor, Art History's History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994); Donald Preziosi, ed. The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 144

Jennifer Allen, "Portrait of the Artist as an Architect," in Parasite Paradise: A Manifesto for Temporary Architecture and Flexible Urbanism, ed. Liesbeth Melis and Foundation for Art and Public Space (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2003), 167-68. 145

Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture, Point Series (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), 52.

Th curator Nicolas Bourriaud who saw a shift in art works of the early 1990s towards an interest in creating open relations. See Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, Documents Sur L'art (Paris: Les presses du réel, 1998). Translated in English as Relational Aesthetics in 2002. ational practices and of the social and political aspects of the practices discussed. For example, curator and critic Helena Reckitt former era emulate forms of affective and immaterial work that have long been areas of female activity and feminist analysis. Bourriaud thus reiterates the classic capitalist exploitation of not only those who work directly for capitalism, by creating Relational Aesthetics presents the artist as a universal figure, unmarked by s Helena Reckitt, "Forgotten Relations: Feminist Artists and Relational Aesthetics," in Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions., ed. Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 138. Amelia Jones further notes that

67

Allen argues, however, that, starting with conceptual art and then developing fully in relational aesthetics, a (relative) fusion between art and architecture came back, mainly through installations coming from both artists and architects. Unlike Renaissance figures, however, Allen argues that contemporary artists working with temporary large-scale and multi-media interventions are not trying to be universal practitioners, but are instead presenting discrete concepts. Many discussions of the contemporary intersection of art and architecture build from Rosalind -

146

Krauss argues that the term

for the familiarity of sculpture, being careful to underline how it is not a universal category, but a historically bounded one, inseparable from the logic of the monument.147 This allows her to diagrammatically posit sculpture as the addition of the not-landscape and the not-architecture, underlining the fact that these two terms themselves express an opposition between the built and the not-built, the cultural and the natural. She thus sees conceptual art and minimalist art as trying to

social relations, reciprocity among maker, cknowledge the politics implied by the reciprocal and situational, and the historical development of these notions towards political ends. The potential of performance, when activated in particular ways and in particular spaces, to explode the frame of the process, to audience, and thus to reciprocal spatial relationships and this opening is explicitly political in that it foregrounds identification processes normally occluded or suppressed by the frames politically charged history of the relational (the reciprocal and situational), that Bourriaud's theory does not just sidestep performance and the rights movements that often motivated its articulations in the 1960s and 1970s; it explicitly rejects Amelia Jones, "Unpredictable Temporalities: The Body and Performance in (Art) History," in Performing Archives/Archives of Performance, ed. Gundhild Borggreen and Rune Gade, In between States (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press & University of Copenhagen, 2013), 62-64. See also Amelia Jones, "The Now and the Has Been: Paradoxes of Live Art in History " in Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History, ed. Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield (Bristol & Chicago: Intellect, 2012). 146

Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field."

147

Ibid., 34.

68

focus on and challenge the outer limits of those terms, creating a new term, site-construction, as opposed to sculpture, that becomes the addition of landscape and architecture, and two other terms, marked sites and axiomatic structures, that respectively link landscape and not-landscape, and architecture and not-architecture. Sculpture thus loses its privileged situation and an expanded, but finite, field of understanding is opened, both in terms of practice and medium.148 Krauss approaches the problem from a historical point of view, tracing the emergence and structure of that expanded field in what she sees as directly related to the rise of postmodernism. She does not, however, discuss the meaning of it or the reasons for its emergence. ating art from restrictive rituals, and importantly as

architecture that focus on the institutional critique embedded in these works. For example, Julie From Margin to Center (1999) presents how conceptual artists worked outside of conventional A Place Between (2006) focuses more specifically on how projects utional critiques.149 The social meanings of these works, however, are rarely discussed or valued. For example, Allen further argues, problematically, that contemporary works are very modest, opening up a situation within an existing space, rather than articulating a world view or instigating an aesthetic, socio-political programme

148

Ibid., 36-38;41-42.

149

Julie H. Reiss, From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1999); Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between (London: I.B.Tauris & Co, 2006). Histories focused on readings of installations as an art form specifically (as opposed to discussions of their relation to architectural practices) have more readily investigated how they situated themselves within social and cultural contexts. See for example Erika Suderburg, ed. Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

69

that could be applied to anywhere, anyone, and anything.150 In contrast, Sarah Bonnemaison, Ronit Eisenbach and Robert Gonzalez, in their introduction to a 2006 special issue of the Journal of Architectural Education dedicated to installations by architects, answer the question of what installations have to do with architecture and how they differ from prototype or mock-ups by what the architecture says. Installations are built as a mode of communication

issues embedded in the built environment that are often overlooked. Installations can engage in critical, often controversial, social, and political aspects of architecture

we might say, the implicit

tions are rhetorical objects 151

they convince

They push forward this argument in a book where

recent installations by architects are grouped under five themes (both technological and social), one of them being the body.152 Because of this rhetorical impulse, projects at the intersection of art and architecture are also open to explorations of modes of expression less frequently or explicitly used in architecture: political critique, humor and irony, etc.153 In addition to its smaller scale and shorter existence, architect Carole Lévesque argues that it is the intrusion of the architectural installation that does not fulfil a clear programmatic need in daily life that mostly sets it apart from other

150

Allen, "Portrait of the Artist as an Architect," 167-68.

151

Sarah Bonnemaison, Ronit Eisenbach, and Robert Gonzalez, "Introduction," Journal of Architectural Education 59, no. 4 (2006): 3-4. 152

Bonnemaison and Eisenbach, Installations by Architects : Experiments in Building and Design.

153

See for example political discussions of the work of John Hejduk (Somol, "One or Several Masters?."), or the work of muf (Shonfield et al., This Is What We Do : A Muf Manual.), Robert Venturi, or Rem Koolhaas (Emmanuel Petit, Irony, or, the Self-Critical Parody of Postmodern Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).).

70

architectures: b unexpected discoveries that forces the individual to stop, question, and reformulate his or her usual relation to architecture.154 The unexpectedness of such expressions in architecture breaks the invisibility and neutrality often associated with architectural backgrounds encountered in everyday life and opens up a space for critical discourses. The uselessness of these installations thus makes them ultimately useful. However, even though they can be quite powerful, these modes of expressions are still seldom used by architects and are more often present in artists working on space. Discussions of the intersection of art and architecture also refer to challenges to the public and private binaries discussed earlier. For example, Jane Rendell, in her analysis of architectural projects that borrow art practices to challenge institutions, of private and public are not neutral or descriptive lines, but contours that are culturally constructed,

between these two terms, mean different things to different people

protected isolation or 155

Unlike some feminist

historians discussed earlier, however, because of her focus on institu

Nevertheless, her insistence on the potential of installations to reveal meanings of architectural spaces that differ from the expected and stated design intentions is of crucial importance to the use of similar installations to underline critiques of domesticity.

154

Lévesque, À propos de l'inutile en architecture: 12.

155

Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between: 5-6.

71

Building Queer Space As the previous section suggests, most discussions of installations at the intersection of art and architecture have underlined the potential of these works to question and challenge art and architectural institutions. Very few, however, have chosen to investigate how this intersection of disciplines can also promote social critiques, such as the feminist discussions of public and private, especially when discussed from an architectural perspective. For example, the 1972 collaborative project Womanhouse led by instructors Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro with participants in the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute for the Arts, an influential exhibition presenting

challenges domestic norms on a spatial level, even if many of its participants explicitly target these norms.156 This section discusses how two queer-oriented exhibitions have attempted to reflect on the social norms shaping architectural space through their investigation of queer space(s): the John Paul Ricco-curated disappeared (1996), in which he developed some of his ideas on queer spaces understood as a minor architecture, and the collective experience of the Queer Space exhibition (1994) at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. disappeared and the Queer Potential of a Minor Architecture As discussed in chapter 1, Ricco envisions the potential of a minor architecture in creating queer understands them as sites where architecture is betrayed by forms of sociality, sexuality, and spatiality 156

See "Womanhouse," accessed January 23, 2014, http://womanhouse.refugia.net/. See also "Womenhouse"., which updates for a digital age through a website the Womanhouse critique to understand how race, class, gender, and sexuality most explicitly queer domestic space.

72

that betray architecture.157 If Ricco includes in his understanding of minor architecture spaces that correspond to a more traditional definition of architecture, albeit an architecture very rarely discussed by architectural historians (cruising grounds, sex clubs, eroticized domestic environments),158 light the characteristics of queer space. To do so, he builds from, among other works, disappeared, the 1996 exhibition he curated in Chicago.159 Ricco invited artists, but also planned the spatial layout of the exhibition to echo queer spaces and to support his theorization of a minor architecture. For example, access to the exhibition is made by walking behind or around a screen where Derek Blue (1993) is projected; Ricco points out that this creates paths similar to the spatial layout of many independent movie houses, gay bars, porn theaters, or sex clubs, but also that it places the visitors neither inside nor outside, but alongside the exhibition, a characteristic of minor spaces.160 He also discusses the anonymity and nonApproximation of a Chicago Style Blue Movie House (Bijou) (

157


158

For other discussions of such spaces, see for example Urbach, "Spatial Rubbing: The Zone."; Ricco, "Coming Together: Jack-Off Rooms as Minor Architecture."; George Chauncey, "'Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public': Gay Uses of the Streets," in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); Tattelman, "The Meaning at the Wall: Tracing the Gay Bathhouse."; Ira Tattelman, "Speaking to the Gay Bathhouse: Communicating in Sexually Charged Spaces," in Public Sex/Gay Space, ed. William Leap (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Ross Higgins, "Baths, Bushes, and Belonging: Public Sex and Gay Community in Pre-Stonewall Montreal," ibid.; Ira Tattelman, "Staging Sex and Masculinity at the Mineshaft " Men and Masculinities 7, no. 3 (2005). 159

With works by Tom Burr, Jürgen Mayer, Derek Jarman, Mark Robbins, Bill Jacobson, Oliver Herring, and Simon Logic of the Lure gay male sex spaces, none of the works exhibited were by women. 160

Ricco, The Logic of the Lure: 51-52.

73

Housewarming (1996) and Guest Book (1996) (fig. 2).161 architectural histories and anonymous buildings that will never be granted the status of architecture; Blue s words, to suggest socio-political relations (Blue, blue movie houses, blue movies, blue laws) without settling on one and without reproducing a specific minor architecture. It represents an abstraction of the anonymous sociality and sexuality it seeks to present.162 disappearing temperature-sensitive paint and data security patterns both hide and reveal, in a similar way to queer architecture, but also underlines the hidden signification behind the domestic.163

Figure 2. Jürgen Mayer. Housewarming: Guest Book, 1996. Credit: Jürgen Mayer H. 161

I use throughout the dissertation the names Jürgen Mayer, Jürgen Mayer H, or J Mayer H according to the name Mayer was using for its practice at the time of the projects discussed. When discussing him directly (in opposition to his practice), I use only Jürgen Mayer. Bibliographical references are made to the name used in the publication referenced. 162

Ricco, The Logic of the Lure: 52-53.

163

Ibid., 57.

74

Queer Space

installations than in actual buildings was shared by other theorists and curators, such as the team behind the Queer Space exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (June 18July 30, 1994, organized by Beatriz Colomina, Dennis Dollens, Cindi Patton, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Henry Urbach, and Mark Wigley to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots world

often discussed as the launching event for gay liberation in the Euro-American

which took place in Greenwich Village, close to the Storefront).164 Like Ricco does in

disappeared, spatial critiques in Queer Space are developed through installations with no or limited relation to traditional architecture projects, unlike a large number of architectural exhibitions that rely on models or drawings of built or speculative projects.165 This use of non-traditional forms of architectural discourse and practice is a rhetorical device that allows their unusual critiques to surprise an unprepared audience and to explain more clearly the ideas developed than if these ideas 164

With works by Jay Critchley, Michelle Fornabai, Rocco Giannetti, Benjamin Gianni, Blake Goble, Paul Halshofer, Gordon Brent Ingram, Martha Judge, Tom Kalin, Adam Kuby, Mao-Jung Lee, Paul Lewis, Jürgen Mayer, Brian McGrath, Mitchell Owen, Cindi Patton, Peter Pelsinski, Robert Ransick, Charles Renfro, REPOhistory, Mark Robbins, Maura Sheehan, Marc Tsurumaki, Greg Tuck, and Mark Watkins, and two panel discussions involving the organizing committee, artists and architects participating in the exhibition and selected writers (Colomina et al., Queer Space.).) While the organizing committee is equally divided between men and women, the ratio of male artists and architects (twenty) to female participants (four, not including members of the REPOhistory collective) is greatly unbalanced. Some of the non-selected proposals were by female architects or artists, but the submissions were there again overwhelmingly from men (Queer Space folder, Storefront for Art and Architecture Archive). These numbers are, unfortunately, not surprising considering the largely masculine state of the architectural world at the time, and still today (Anthony, Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession.). Of the participants, there are 15 architects or designers, 5 artists, 1 interior designer, 1 environmental planner and artist, 1 filmmaker, 1 social theorist, and 1 collective of artists and historians. 165

One of the most celebrated architectural practices to have resisted traditional building and focused on installations and conceptual exhibitions for a large part of their career is Diller + Scofidio (now Diller Scofidio + Renfro) who have themselves strong links to feminist and queer space discourses through their interest in cyborgs and the body and Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Georges Teyssot, Flesh: Architectural Probes (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994); Crawford, "Archive, Transgender, Architecture: Woolf, Beckett, Diller Scofidio + Renfro."

75

were already integrated into a finished project, and somehow diluted throughout the other elements shaping the design. Furthermore, as will be discussed later in the dissertation with the BOOM and Pumpwerk projects, architects face difficulties when trying to shape new forms of architecture that address queer critiques; the use of installation works might thus also be a way to first present clearly observations and challenges to the normativity of domestic spaces, as well as being a way to get round the hardships of getting an innovative project off the ground. These works are thus positioned outside of traditional schemes, but still within architectural discourse through their use of recognizable architectural tropes and their display

at least in parts

in often major exhibition

spaces, such as the Storefront for Art and Architecture.166 Queer space theorists are not the first to present architectural theories or critiques through exhibitions or installations.167 Where they differ is in their insistence on the relation between (architectural) space and self-identifications. They exhibit critical or projective works that cannot be understood without thinking about the ways we build our identifications in relation to others. For

166

It is also notable that many architectural theorists and practitioners involved in early queer space discourse Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley, Jürgen Mayer, Henry Urbach, Mark Robbins have since risen to prominent positions in the While Robbins is the only one who has kept an explicit focus on gender, sexuality and race in almost all of his subsequent works, the work on identity protection is still being developed and presented by him and has played an important role in the development of his increasingly celebrated and visible projects (his Metropol Parasol in Seville has also been the scene of many protests and important social meetings, see John Paul Ricco, "Parasol, Setas, Parasite, Peasant," forthcoming in a monograph on Jürgen Mayer H. (2014), https://www.academia.edu/4999063/Parasol_Setas_Parasite_Peasant.). Finally, for the educators, their understanding of the challenges linked to gender and sexuality has also meant that they have developed inclusive programs for their respective schools, as Robbins stressed to me in an interview (Mark Robbins, interview with author, Skype, May 14, 2012). 167

For more on architectural installations and social discourses, see Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between (London: I.B.Tauris & Co, 2006); Sarah Bonnemaison and Ronit Eisenbach, Installations by Architects : Experiments in Building and Design (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009).

76

example, the organizers of the exhibition Queer Space at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, propelled by the urgent necessity to rethink the politics of space,

sought to

bonds that unite them. The exhibition was centered around a set of crucial interrogatives that defined the spatial politics of the early '90s: How can minorities define their rights to occupy spaces within the city? How can such space be legitimized, given a history and a future? Is it even physical space that is in question, or is it the space of discursive practices, texts, codes of behavior and the regulatory norms that organize social life? The installations, interventions and proposals at Storefront and at other locations around the city were an attempt to generate new ways of thinking about the social politics of space in the city.168 The group of designers and theorists behind Queer Space envisioned the exhibition itself as a queer

gender and sexuality in shaping our environment.169 The project was initially intended to include, in osmosis with the gallery exhibition, a sym

-traditional venues like 3)

for the exhibition both underlines this approach, by presenting the queer shape of the exhibition space and its opening to the street,170 the diverse places of discussion involv

168

Storefront for Art and Architecture, "Past Exhibition: Queer Space," Storefront for Art and Architecture, accessed 2010-04-07, 2010, http://www.storefrontnews.org/archive_dete.php?objID=83. 169

Beatriz Colomina et al., Queer Space (New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994), Exhibition catalog, n.p.

170

designed façade panels physically literalizes the blurring of interior and exterior, domestic and public, closeted and out space xhibition. Jenna E. Miller, "[Gender]Queer Space" (Unpublished seminar paper, Columbia University, 2013), 7.

77

plan.171 In the catalogue, the works descriptions are complemented by essays and faxes written by the

Figure 3. Queer Space exhibition poster, 1994, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York. Image courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Although the organizing team was unable to fully complete these ideas, in part due to the unavailability of external funders (the project was rejected by every institution approached), a 171

The exhibition was designed by Operatives (Paul Lewis, Peter Pelsinski & Marc Tsurumaki), who later became, without Pelsinki, Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis. Their furniture for Queer Space was later published in their own pamphlet monograph. The furniture was designed to disrupt the installation, three stools, a bookshelf, and a table were desig The basement slips to the gallery as the gallery leaks to the basement, undermining the binary of the public, clean gallery and the private, dirty basement produced by the floor. By suspending the conventional gallery furniture between these See Slip Space in Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis, Situation Normal, Pamphlet Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), 58-63.

78

number of installations extend the show in the city or attempt to relate the exhibition experience to the outside.172

Queer Spaces Sign Project173 (fig. 4) used the opportunity

propose a reclaiming of public space through the revelation of a previously latent queer community. The project is a network of pink triangle signs scattered throughout the city to reveal little known queer political histories and reclaim public spaces; it showcases the politically queer use of space in both expected and unexpected places and underlines the temporality of queer space. Signs were

t gay rights demonstration, on the scene of the first ACT UP demonstration, and near the dwelling of Marsha P. Johnson, a transvestite whose drowning death may have been the result of homophobic violence.174

172

Beatriz Colomina, "Introduction," in Queer Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina, et al. (New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994). 173

REPOhistory Collective, Queer Spaces, 1994; Betti-Sue Hertz, Ed Eisenberg, and Lisa Maya Knauer, "Queer Spaces in New York City: Places of Struggle/Places of Strength," in Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, ed. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997); REPOhistory Collective, "Queer Spaces," REPOhistory Collective, accessed 2010-04-07, 2010, http://www.repohistory.org/queer_spaces/index.php3. 174

Colomina et al., Queer Space.

79

Figure 4. REPOhistor Credit: REPOhistory.

Queer Space exhibition, 1994, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York.

80

that try to bring queer lives to the public view, often informed by queer space theory. For example, a permanent memorial, the Homomonument in Amsterdam designed by Karin Daan, is described by Christopher Reed as a prominent example of queer space. Reed understands the impossibility of perceiving the space occupied by the monument as a whole

and therefore the monument itself

as

making it queer. Both invisible and overwhelming, for Reed the unrecognizability of the sculpture links it to other vernacular queer spaces that keep traces of queer use even when not actively used by acknowledge the gay uses of beaches (as cruising space), even when they are unoccupied. The presence is felt and 175

Similarly,

artists Elmgreen & Dragset acknowledge in their Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism (2008) the (continuing) use of Tiergarten, where the memorial sits, as gay cruising grounds.176 The project is an echo of their earlier Cruising Pavilion/Powerless Structures, Fig. 55

175

Reed, "Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment," 65-66.

176

The memorial is discussed in Sebastian Preuss, "A Monument," 032c, Winter 2008/2009; Shelley Hornstein, "Memorializing Site: On the Grounds of History," in Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place (Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011); Olivier Vallerand, "Un baiser en continu dans un parc: le mémorial aux homosexuels persécutés par les nazis, entre passé et présent," Inter, Art Actuel, no. 112 (2012). and extensively presented in the documentary Jannik Splidsboel, "How Are You," (Denmark: Radiator Film, 2011). Elmgreen & Dragset include in their memorial a video loop (initially showing a never-ending kiss between two men) designed to be changed every three years. This element underlines the importance of temporality in many queer memorial projects. Traditional memorials often present themselves as enshrining a definite vision of a past event through uous relation between the ephemeral and the permanent that might be linked to their queer inclination. If this ambiguity is designers relinquish attempts to fix a single understanding and acknowledge that queer histories are still being written, and therefore are still changing, by also often refraining from displaying figurative memorial content. Acceptance of gender and sexual minorities is still evolving, and very quickly in some cases, as are understandings of what makes a queer space or a queer history. This unstable relation to the past is also a legacy of the invisibility of queer presences until very ory exist, how can it be told and remembered? By placing such memorials between

81

(1998), in the Marselisborg Forest, in Århus, Denmark, where a pavilion presented a built trace in broad daylight of the cruising activities going on at night in the park, as will be discussed in more details in Chapter 5. While Elmgreen & Dragset focus on homosexual acts, they share with and other queer space works

a desire to make visible histories and

actions rendered invisible by the majority. also open the exhibition to the city by taking advantage of the configuration of the Storefront façade, large panels that can be flipped to open the space of the gallery to the street, to present on opposite sides divergent experiences by a man and a woman of (queer) urban open spaces (fig. 5

of posters of a naked lesbian couple overlapped with Toronto sites and photographs of the same posters destroyed by vandalism on a previous showing.177 Another work, PATH Architecture (Brian McGrath, Mark Watkins, Mao-

There is No Queer Space, Only Different Points of View,

is set up inside the Storefront and

the permanent and the temporal and between the past and the present, their designers also echo broader queer attempts to deconstruct categories. For some of the debates regarding tensions in representations of the past in public spaces, see Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoire," Representations, no. 26 (1989); Steven Knapp, "Collective Memory and the Actual Past," ibid.; Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Hornstein, Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place. See also the case of in Mary McLeod, "The Battle for the Monument: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial," in The Experimental Tradition: Essays on Competitions in Architecture, ed. Helen Lipstadt (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989); Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Berkeley, CA & London: University of California Press, 2009). 177

Queer Space folder, Storefront for Art and Architecture Archive.

82

n aims to invite others to occupy New York City from many 178

Similarly, in the manifesto written by geographer David Bell on behalf of

-

-

179

Figure 5.

178

Queer Space exhibition, 1994, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York. Credit: Gordon Brent Ingram.

Colomina et al., Queer Space: [n.p].

179

"Queer Space Manifestos." New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994. Cited in Miller, "[Gender]Queer Space," 4-5.

83

Other projects in the exhibition,

Colorado An Outing Space, Robert

The Walls Speak: Passage from Queer Places No Queer Space, Only Different Points of View

There is Finding

Queer Space or Reconstructing a Queer New York echo existing spaces they consider to be queer spaces, often spaces rendered queer by their occupation by queer people rather than by being designed to be exclusively used by them. The focus of many projects is on queer understood as gay/lesbian,180 open-ended project demonstrates that this is not always the case. Other projects like Ransick and The Walls Speak focus on gay and lesbian figures in history, but also announce that they are concerned with the other elements of identity that inform the queer experience: psychological place of queer experience, a place infused with parallel experiences: cultural, religious, 181

In addition to the exhibited projects, some of the non-selected The Arts Project at the St. Marks

180

Queer Space. For example, she notes the Still, the issues addressed in Queer Space do not focus extensively on the trouble associated with gender in the queer community. Even though the public bathroom the hotspot of debate surrounding spatialized transgender issues is mentioned throughout the Queer Space catalogue, it is not because of debate over the binary exclusion of transgender and genderqueer folk. Rather, it is because of the prominence that public restrooms play in gay male sex culture. The bathroom, which allows for a sense of privacy and intimacy, represents a space coded as queer within the heteronormative public sphere (particularly for those men who had not yet come out). It does not, however, represent a space of security and privacy for genderqueer people. For this population, the seemingly banal public restroom is one of and visibility surrounding questions of Queer Space were re-staged today, it would not just be the lags in technology that would show. The gaps in the discourse surrounding queerness with regard to gender are glaringly obvious today, but were not asynchronous with the being based off concepts of Otherness a notion that accepts the dichotomous presence of a dominant culture and its alternative to occupying the liminal Ibid., 12; 16-17. 181

Colomina et al., Queer Space: [n.p.].

84

Baths. Another proposal not se Day Parade, similarly sought queer opportunities, but focused on patterns of queer resistance within 182

Another group of projects, with some of them also part of the first group, attempt to capture queer space through their design, projecting new ways of offering opportunities for queer space to appear, a theme that will also appear in Benjamin Gianni & Scot

House Rules (see following

There is No Queer Space, Only Different Points of View provides recordings of public spaces in New York City to present queer minor routes through major public space

Housewarming

also presented in a revised form in

disappeared, see previous section and fig. 2 highlights potentials for occupation and contact in the domestic realm. A number of non-selected proposals also took this approach, including Dollennium 2000 and Ann Krsul a

Dyke Pleasure Palace, two of the rare projects looking more

specifically at lesbian-oriented spaces. Who we are and how we live, published in 1997 as

m Home) (fig. 6)

Households

182

ould have been based on his article "Mapping the St. Patrick's Day Parade," Thresholds, no. 6

(1993).

85

assumptions about spatial decisions from gay men and lesbian women.183 They present snapshots (composed of one interior view and one exterior view of dwellings) collected through ads published in gay papers in Columbus, Ohio and Ottawa, Ontario. Each pair of snapshots is accompanied by e, with roommates, with lover), and urban or suburban status.

Figure 6. Mark Robbins and Benjamin Gianni. Detail from Family Values (Honey, I'm Home), 1997.

Unlike other projects which attempt to identify queer space characteristics, Gianni and Robbins aim to demonstrate that such characteristics do not exist

or more precisely are impossible to generalize

by showing the diversity and variety of most domestic environments used by queer people (with a focus on gay and lesbian people), by making visible households usually hidden. They ask:

183

Colomina et al., Queer Space: n.p.

86

Columbus, Ohio has a population of 1.2 million If one out of ten people are gay, there are 120,000 homosexuals living in Columbus On a given night 5,000 are in bars, clubs or cruising areas Where are the other 115,000?184

and sexualized spaces, but it also attempts to show that most spaces used by queer people are hidden throughout ordinary landscapes, that they are a layer among normative symbols of domesticity associated with urban, suburban and non-urban environments.185 186

The project, however,

share with other projects in the exhibition, despite the different focus, what appears to be a flaw in

the critical message implied. Visitors alre project might understand the goals behind their project, but others might only see images that reiterate their own prejudices. In the November 1993 call for manifestos and proposals for Queer Space, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick asked:

184

Architecture, 1994), quoted in Miller, "[Gender]Queer Space," 6. Gianni and Robbins questions the assumption that all question, spaces mo again underlines the difficulties associated with definitions of identity and attemps to link spaces with sexual orientation. 185

for House Rules the built environment of the neighborhood must be invisibility. Castiglia and Reed, If Memory Serves: Gay Men, Aids, and the Promise of the Queer Past. 186

a bed in a darkened corner. Miller, "[Gender]Queer Space," 7.

87

What makes space queer? How to give queer space a history and a future, a intimacies, in bowling leagues, in health and illness, in solidarity, in urban pets, in nationalism and cosmopolitanism, in self-defence, in cyberspace, in jobs and no jobs, in film and video, in the Christian Right, in memory, in the hypothalamus, in the high schools, in dancing and walking, in civil society, and in interior decorating?187 As discussed, the exhibited projects tackled only a limited number of these issues. However, most

still present. None of the projects are interested in designing spaces that could be described as queer, but instead are attempts to either identify characteristics of queer spaces or to create opportunities for queerness to appear. Some of the only projects to present a complete design, such as Dollennium 2000, albeit based on purely speculative premises, were tellingly not selected for the exhibition. In one of the main essays for the exhibition, the team of curators further state that queerness is not simply a property of certain subjects or certain spaces or certain relationships between them. While all space may be queer, that queerness is not necessarily related to the way that it is occupied. Not even specifically queer space is

forms of identity have their queer sites and moments) involves transactions with both the queerness of space and its repression.188 This transi

seek to regulate queerness by defining it in a way that allows it to be either excluded from a space or

187

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Wanted: Queer Space Manifestos / Proposals," in Queer Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina, et al. (New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994). 188

Beatriz Colomina et al., "Something About Space Is Queer," ibid.

88

in spatial form requires a whole different understanding of space, one made possible by new alliances 189

between architec

It is the same point of view that leads

House Rules exhibition that opened a few months later, as will be discussed in the following section. Queer Space exhibition was important and innovative in its investigation of the links between (queer) sexuality and space; however, its longer term impact seems limited and mixed. Many of its protagonists continued their research in related topics in the following years, but few specifically kept working on queer spaces.190 The exhibition also got limited reviews, with most only presenting a broad overview of the themes.191 However, as part of a group of exhibitions and publications that came out in a short period of time, it brought attention to a set of theoretical questions that had almost never been discussed in architecture, if only for a short period of time. While no other project was directly designed in reaction to the Storefront show, it serves as an interesting point of departure for comparison due to its scope and the recognition some of its protagonists have had since.

189

Ibid.

190

For more on the career of some of the people involved in the exhibition, see notes 245 and 250.

191

While the Storefront for Art and Architecture does not keep a press folder for the exhibition, I uncovered four reviews in general and specialized publication. The longest, Herbert Mus New York Times, spends a few words enumerating some of the projects presented before discussing at large issues of norms and diversity in architecture. orming] the substance of this Herbert Muschamp, "Designing a Framework for Diversity," New York Times, June 19, 1994, H34. Another short and positive review in Architecture compares the exhibition with an international conference organized by the Organization of Lesbian and Gay Architects and Designers. Ann C. Sullivan, "Design Community Celebrates Gay Rights," Architecture, August 1994.

89

Investigating Domesticity at the Museum If Queer Space was the first major exhibition devoted to queer space discourse, and one of the only if not the only

organized by a specifically architectural institution, queer space discourses also

eer art exhibitions, such as the recent Domestic Queens at the FOFA Gallery of Concordia University in Montreal (March 2011, curated by Evergon).192 Two major architectural exhibitions particularly approached the topic of how changing social conditions impact domestic space, including the increasing visibility of queer domesticities: House Rules at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio (1994, curated by Mark Robbins, catalogue published as a special issue of Assemblage) and The Un-Private House at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1999, curated by Terence Riley, catalogue published by the Museum).193 Both exhibitions seek to portray how houses are or should be changing to react to new contemporary conditions and challenges, but they do in divergent ways. If House Rules teamed up theorists and practitioners to come up with purely speculative projects organized around various social issues, The Un-Private House more traditionally mostly presented completed houses, under review designs, or unbuilt projects designed for specific

192

With works by Jim Verburg, Jason Hendrickson, Zachari Logan, Ryan Conrad, Liam Michaud and REB (Richard E. Bump). 193

The August 1994 24th issue of Assemblage is edited as a catalogue for the exhibition and is devoted completely to the idea of analysing the architecture of the house from specific point of views. For articles more specifically focused on queer analysis, see "On the House," Assemblage, no. 24 (1994); Michael Moon et al., "Queers in (Single-Family) Space," ibid.; Jonathan Crary and Joel Sanders, "Sight Specific," ibid.; Henry Urbach, John Randolph, and Bruce Tomb, "In Medias Res," ibid. The MoMA show was published in Riley, The Un-Private House.

90

clients. Furthermore, the two exhibitions differed greatly in the importance they respectively gave to social and formal issues. House Rules: Reinventing Social Architecture In House Rules,194 Robbins called for ten teams of architects and theorists marginalized racial, ethnic, sexual or gendered identity195

many representing a

to work together to rethink the typical

North American suburban house from various points of view, with a focus on social issues (gender, race, sexuality, etc.).196 The resulting drawings and models for proposals to develop generic 80-by160-foot lots were supplemented by photographs, artworks, and historical material investigating the forces that shape the single-family house, including building codes, plans, materials, or marketing.197

194

House Rules was the first architectural exhibition initiated by the Wexner Center, after the appointment of Mark Robbins as its first curator of architecture in 1993. (Herbert Muschamp, "Ten Little Houses and How They Grew," New York Times, October 16, 1994; Darris Blackford, "Wexner Show Confronts Suburban Living," Architecture, October 1994, 28.) 195


196

While some reviews of the exhibition (Steven Litt, "Reimagining the Single-Family House," Progressive Architecture, November 1994; Kay Bea Jones, "House Rules: House Holds New Rules," Journal of Architectural Education 49, no. 1 New York Times, put aside completely discussions of the projects dealing with sexuality, as Mark Robbins mentioned to me (Mark Robbins, interview with author, Skype, May 14, 2012). Muschamp further questions the validity of the proposals by noting that, in opposition to earlier projects that seeked to define new middlethe projects at the Wexner are pitched against the mainstream. Their designers want to break the grip of homogenized norms and allow heterogeneity to flower (Muschamp, "Ten Little Houses and How They Grew," H40.) Similarly, in his review for the professional magazine Architecture the order to be as inclus providing the context for which the house is designed. (Blackford, "Wexner Show Confronts Suburban Living," 28-29.) 197

Robbins invited the following teams of architects and theorists: Joan Copjec / Michael Sorkin; Jonathan Crary / Joel Sanders; Margaret Crawford / ADOBE LA; bell hooks / Koning Eizenberg Architecture; Silvia Kolbowski / SmithMiller+Hawkinson Architects; Ellen Lupton / Jane Murphy; Heidi Nast / Mabel Wilson; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Michael Moon / Benjamin Gianni, Scott Weir; Allucquere Rosanne Stone / Susan Selçuk, Steven Fong Architecture; and Henry Urbach / The Interim Office of Architecture (chosen from nearly fifty responses to a two-tiered selection process) (Blackford, "Wexner Show Confronts Suburban Living," 28.). Not commissioned specifically for the House Rules exhibition, other artworks by Dan Graham, Keller Easterling, James Casebere, Alan Wexler, Camilo Jose Vergara, Kate

91

In an introductory essay for the Assemblage issue that serves as a catalogue for the exhibition, Robbins linked House Rules

houses, projects all engaged with the importance of dwelling for the healthy functioning of society, but also infused with a belief that better living could be attained through a rational and scientific investigation and rethinking of domesticity.198 Robbins does not explicitly discuss in his introduction feminist explorations of radical transformations of domestic spaces, including broader rethinking of the relation between community and domesticity. He thus ignores for example, as Haar and Reed note, the late nineteenth-century feminist housing projects documented by Dolores Hayden in The Grand Domestic Revolution (1981).199 They suggest that this silence by Robbins is also apparent in

200

dwelling to the aggregate, its proximity to other units, the gradations of public and private zones, and the type of community thus formed were also part of the investigation. The designers were encouraged to reevaluate the community planning strategies of the typical suburban development 201

While not all

on rethinking the relation between neighbouring suburban houses. Ericson, and Mel Zeigler were also exhibited. Project representations differed between the exhibition and their publication in Assemblage. (Jones, "House Rules: House Holds New Rules," 54.). 198

Mark Robbins, "Building Like America: Making Other Plans," Assemblage, no. 24 (1994): 9.

199

Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities.

200


201

Robbins, "Building Like America: Making Other Plans," 8-9.

92

Most projects in the exhibition use the rare opportunity of a collaboration between architects and theorists to suggest radical rethinking of the ways we experience life in society in relation to the domestic, be it through critiques of the legal constraints on housing lots (in bell hooks, Julie

on how queers explore and subvert the public in order to survive in the private (in Michael Moon, Eve

ungalow to follow processes of gender codification in the virtual community (in Allucquere Rosanne Stone, Steven Fong and Suzan 202

The tensions between the modes of thinking (practice and theory) are sometimes

themselves the collateral obj project, in relation to which a letter exchange between hooks and Eizenberg was reproduced in the catalogue and included in the project presentation (fig. 7).203

202

bell hooks, Julie Eizenberg, and Hank Koning, "House, 20 June 1994," ibid.; Heidi J. Nast and Mabel O. Wilson, "Lawful Transgressions: This Is the House That Jackie Built," ibid.; Michael Moon et al., "Queers in (Single-Family) Space," ibid.; Jonathan Crary and Joel Sanders, "Sight Specific," ibid.; Allucquere Rosanne Stone, Steven Fong, and Suzan Selçuk, "X + Y - Knots: Sideyardbungalow," ibid. 203

bell hooks, Julie Eizenberg, and Hank Koning, "House, 20 June 1994," ibid.

93

Figure 7.

House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Credit: Mark Robbins, bell hooks, Koning Eizenberg Architecture.

Though grounded in realistic land regulations, the projects themselves are innovative sometimes radical

and

departures from

project, or presented in an unconventional manner

interestingly, two of the most unusual

feminist and queer critiques. The exhibition presentation itself is, however, fairly traditional: the projects are displayed individually with models and drawings and with some art works and archive material spread out throughout the projects (fig. 8).

94

Figure 8. House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Credit: Mark Robbins.

Some of the projects suggest that new forms of domesticity, including queer ones, have to acknowledge that previous borders are no longer valid, that different groups do not exist within separate spheres, but share spaces that are now understood and used as a collective sphere where these groups and individuals, no matter their differences, interact in full relationality. As Moon and Sedgwick suggest in their essay published in Assemblage separate social or physical space from straight ones; instead, they are relational and conditional, moving across and transforming the conventional spaces that were designed to offer endless narcissistic self-

204

The

project developed by Gianni and Weir to dialogue with Moon and Sedgwick (fig. 9) aims to 204

Michael Moon et al., "Queers in (Single-Family) Space," ibid.: 30.

95

the leverage of access to the public sphere as a way to survive in the private sphere. They also attempt to

205

This can be interpreted, however, as being itself an

important character of queer space, as other theorists have identified. For example, in her analysis of E.1027 is a house filled with secrets, pockets in walls, is out in the open but still closeted. It tells the story of the visually exposed that remains overlooked 206

However, making safe spaces for everyone implies creating

enough flexibility to support any uses and the over-layering of private and public. Therefore, designing for queer users means first designing for any user in a way that also permits queer uses, eschewing the normative systems of familial organizations to permit subdivisions, zoning, separate circulations, and non-exposed spaces, as Gianni and Weir explore.

205

Ibid., 34.

206

Bonnevier, "A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray's E.1027," 162.

96

Figure 9.

House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. Credit: Benjamin Gianni and Scott Weir.

create spaces that encourage all self-identifications by, for example, designing parallel spaces for different expressions to coexist safely within one house. There again, they challenge normative

homes over and over develop new realities. In this sense, some architecture, such as E.1027, can be performative; it takes place within a given frame but manages simultaneously to stage something new. The inexact 207

Both clearly highlight the importance of

constantly rethinking the parameters of design to create domestic environments that both respond 207

Ibid., 167.

97

ow unexpected uses and careful control over the blurred threshold of privacy. The project developed by Gianni and Weir also shares preoccupations with the project presented by Gianni and Robbins in the Queer Space exhibition, conceived at approximately the same time. If different in their strategies

the Queer Space project is strictly

descriptive while the House Rules one is projective they both share a commitment to avoid prescribing characteristics that would define queer space. Unfortunately, none of the projects designed for House Rules were translated into realized projects, but a limited number served as draft for later built and unbuilt designs. For example, the ideas a Bachelor, as will be discussed in the following section.208 As for Robbins himself, his interest in the domestic will continue in later projects, including Households (2003-2006), discussed in chapter 3. The Un-Private House: Privacy and the Media

Architecture and Design Terence Riley organized an exhibition about the house at the turn of the twenty-first century, The Un-Private House (1999-2000). The show does not explicitly engage queer space theory, but Riley discusses gender and sexuality throughout his introductory essay for the

208

See also other projects by Sanders in Joel Sanders, Joel Sanders: Writings and Projects (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2004).. Links could also be made to some of the works of Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis, a firm co-founded by Marc Lewis, Tsurumaki, and Lewis, Situation Normal; Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis: Opportunistic Architecture, New Voices in Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008); Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis: Intensities (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013).

98

queer space exhibitions. 209 In comparison with the Wexner exhibition, which was for the Center a first in-house attempt at displaying architecture,210 of American architecture made the exhibition much more visible, even if, as one of the MoMA

this will be the first show [at the MoMA] devoted wholly to domestic architecture in more than 211

As architectural historian Sylvia Lavin not

considered itself to be the very home of good architectural design. It remains the institution of record for architecture, using its exhibits and collections to constitute itself as the standard bearer of value and importance, not only in the United States but for Europe as well. In other words, what happens at MoMA does not stay at MoMA but rather aspires to the status of disciplinarity as 212

nd its impact on

the house typology was thus an important step in bringing these topics to mainstream discussions.

and impact at odds with what Robbins curated at the Wexner, following his own background and

209

Riley is also part of the same East Coast scene in which discussions of feminist and queer theory in architectural theory emerged in the mid-1990s. In the five years between House Rules and The Un-Private House, Riley and Robbins also collaborated, along with Queer Space author Aaron Betsky, on the multi-venue exhibition Fabrications (1998) where twelve architects or teams elaborated fullThe Tectonic Garden (curated by Riley), focused on materiality, construction, and context, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Bodybuildings (curated by Betsky), on constructions that engage the body in four specific states, and the Wexner one, Full Scale (curated by Robbins), on responses to perceived needs. See Aaron Betsky et al., Fabrications: Bodybuildings, Full Scale, the Tectonic Garden (New York, San Francisco & Columbus, OH: The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, 1998). Exhibition catalogue. The Un-Private House toured after the initial run at the MoMA and was exhibited at the MAK-Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (February 2-April 24, 2000), at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (as part of The Home Show, June 4August 20, 2000), and at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (October 4, 2000-January 7, 2001). 210

Muschamp, "Ten Little Houses and How They Grew," H40.

211

Martin Filler, "Moma Comes Home," House Beautiful, July 1999, 40.

212

Lavin, Kissing Architecture: 15.

99

canon) 213

both in the sense of a private house and of privacy: Although it is precisely defined in the dictionary the term privacy is a thoroughly relative one. It has evolved over centuries and continues to do so. Nonetheless, the privacy in the private house, since its inception, has been predicated on a discernible separation of its inhabitants and activities from both the public realm and other houses. The private house has also been from its establishment a building type that enshrines family life to the exclusion of all other activities. Furthermore, as a space so dedicated, it has been for almost four hundred years largely responsible for the creation and development of those rituals and comforts that we now associate with the domestic.214 Riley points out that the private house, associated with a range of political, moral, social and economic issues, has been criticized for its association with the bourgeoisie and middle class. the private house in its most traditional form is rife with contradiction. The social conditions and structures that drove the development of the private house 215

For Riley, the transformation of the family and family life since

the Second World War has led to changes in the concept of privacy that have not necessarily been 213

Beatriz Colomina, "The Exhibitionist House," in At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture, ed. Russell Ferguson (Los Angeles & New York: The Museum of Contemporary Art & Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 158. quoted in Riley, The Un-Private House: 13. 214


215

Ibid., 10.

100

integrated in mainstream dwelling design, but that appear in the projects he selected for the exhibition. In similar ways to the theorists discussed earlier, when asked if what makes contemporary houses more interesting is an increased architectural quality or changing sociological issues, Riley answers that: It has to do with the shifting boundary between public and private. You used to have a fairly strong connection between the idea of individual liberties and privacy, meaning that you could not be observed in your home, that you had a kind of antiOrwellian perimeter around yourself. A hundred years ago people could relate to this "home sweet home" sense of seclusion. In the intervening century, people have relentlessly invited more of a public presence into their house.216 Riley thus starts from the same premise as Robbins domesticity

changing conditions for contemporary

but uses varying means that pushes the MoMA exhibition in a different direction.

Whereas in House Rules theorists and practitioners teamed up to think about specific social issues through essays and design-research projects, in The Un-Private House Riley selects twenty-six existing built houses or unbuilt designs that do not focus on particular issues, but instead represent his understanding of how future domestic spaces could be designed.217 While this selection is often more

216

Terence Riley interviewed in Ned Cramer, "Someone to Watch over Me," Architecture, June 1999, 44.

217

The exhibition is itself set up as a series of domestic spaces designed by David Schaefer / Furniture Co, with the projects printed on wallpaper. One of the major elements is an interactive rotating table (an updated lazy susan) designed by Schaefer with Riley and a MIT Media Lab team led by Neil Gerschenfeld. Fred Bernstein, "Rave," Blueprint, October 1999, 82; The Museum of Modern Art, "The Un-Private House: Credits," The Museum of Modern Art, accessed December 23, 2013, http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/un-privatehouse/credits.html. While almost all reviewers were impressed with the interactive table, not all of them appreciated the domestic décor: -domestlc rooms. At the entrance to the gallery is a vestibule where a vase of fresh flowers sits on a table (maybe they should have been plastic); a living room grouping is visible in the distance, There, sofas and a coffee table face: the flat-screen TV tuned eternally to the UN Studio: Van Berkel & Bos Möbius House. From the sofas, you can wander into the dining area or proceed over to architectural models set atop the Alexander Gorlin, "The Un-Private House: Moma's House Party," Oculus, September 1999, 11. -Private House" is unusual among recent architecture exhibitions at his institution. In addition to repeat appearances by such Riley favorites as Jacques Herzog

101

House Rules projects, because many houses are already lived and experienced by people, it is also less socially-focused and the critiques are harder to comprehend precisely.

218

become a permeable struc

Curating the exhibition in the first years of the mainstreaming of the internet,219 Riley notes an awakening to the duality of the real and the virtual in many projects, for example Diller +

220

He demonstrates how much concern is made about how media and

surveillance in a house constitute a presence antithetical to privacy. This extensive discussion of the intruding presence of media, however, sidesteps the argument made by many critics that, even

has been discussed earlier in the dissertation.

and Pierre de Meuron, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, and Bernard Tschumi (semifinalists and finalists in the almost allmale 1997 MoMA expansion competition), this show is noteworthy for its comparatively high representation of women architects. Among those included are Liz Diller, Winka Dubbledam, Merrill Elam, Danelle Guthrie, Victoria Meyers, and Kazuyo Sejima. Of particular interest to readers of House Beautiful will be sister-architects Gisue and Mojgan Hariri's Digital House, commissioned for the magazine's three-part "Houses for the Next Millennium" series and Filler, "Moma Comes Home," 40. 218


219

contemporary obsession with electronics may (I pray) prove ephemeral. Young architects seem wedded to the computer and may assume everyone else feels the same way. They do not and the more the line between real and virtual is blurred in the public realm, the more people are likely to retreat to a pixelMichael Webb, "The Un-Private House," LA Architect, November-December 2000, 32. 220


102

reading is also clearly visible in the lengthy last part of his essay where

scussed by Riley are thus

221

As a reviewer pointed out, this formal approach is reductive and hides duce the entire theoretical and practical realm of these

architectures to these two hypotheses is myopic. We can see in these houses formal, spatial, mathematical, structural, semiotic, cinematic, biological, anthropomorphic, naturalistic and 222

urbanistic th

To these themes could be added social and

identity preoccupations that are problematically discussed by Riley, as shown by some of the examples analysed in the next pages. Although his focus is formal, Riley still discusses how non-traditional households impact the

which has not completely disappeared

about unmarried adult men and women was the ambiguity of their social

status and by inference their sexuality. It is difficult to separate the legitimation of the house built for for social and sexual relationships and lifestyles that fall outside the traditional nuclearhouses built for single people

223

Riley presents some examples of

although at least one, the T-House by Simon Ungers with Thomas

221

Ibid., 28-29.

222

Andrew MacNair, "The Un-Private House," Archis, August 1999, 61.

223


103

Kinslow (Wilton, NY, 1992), originally designed for a single man, was now also occupied by the woman he had married in the meantime

-titled

House for a Bachelor (Minneapolis, unbuilt, 1998, fig. 10). The belief that marriage and parenthood are the most desirable state for an adult man or woman is still quite evident in society today. Yet the single person who builds a house for him- or herself is certainly becoming more common. Joel

traditional suburban home laid the foundations for the production of the nuclear family, this project, literally built upon the foundations of a pre-existing developer home, reconfigures the interior to sponsor new spatial and visual relationships 224 attuned to the domestic lifestyle of the contemporary bache

Figure 10. Joel Sanders, Architect. House for a Bachelor, unbuilt, 1998, Minneapolis. Credit: Joel Sanders, Architect.

Sanders, an important voice in the development of thinking about how architecture and design interact with sexuality and gender through his edited collection Stud: Architectures of Masculinity (1996), is the only architect represented in both House Rules and The Un-Private House. 225

224

Ibid.

225

Sanders, Stud: Architectures of Masculinity.

-

ished project description, 1998. Joel Sanders: Writings and Projects (2004). Households project (see chapter 3) is used as visual accompaniment to Sanders, Joel

Sanders: Writings and Projects.

104

projects for both exhibitions address the 1950s-60s suburban house typology. While the earlier project is entirely conceptual and is an attempt to subvert the type, the House for a Bachelor is an

single-family residence, adapting it to meet the requirements of a single professional man [and] addresses, in often witty and sometimes ironic ways, the many issues faced by men and women who choose to live alone or in relationships that are not defined by marriage and

226

The

11 most likely as a thin gay channel-

vely renovated

1950s home, selecting clothes off semitransparent mirrored panels and viewing a combination terrarium/window/television screen. It's both splendid and intensely narcissistic, slim, taut and image-

227

uperficial and formal presentation by the

MoMA exhibition of the issues at play in the design of domestic spaces, but also reinforces popular associations between homosexuality and an obsession with the body, even if neither Sanders nor Riley explicitly st

The Un-Private House

228

The representation of the project

226


227

Raymund Ryan, "Seeing through the Modern Home," Blueprint, September 1999, 81.

228

Joel Sanders quoted in Riley, The Un-Private House: 100.

105

(fig. 12) similarly highlights the play of layers and levels that surrounds the (male) bachelor, without however showing how these can be controlled by him.



culture, but also with a deconstruction of the ultimate symbol of privacy, the bathroom, by noting

Piscator Apartment [in Berlin, designed by Marcel Breuer, 1927], exercise equipment. However, in this instance, the health and hygiene

106

229

He links this idea to other domestic spaces

230

Yor

Riley then

notes that in many examples there is an opening up of private parts to public parts with, for example, an easy access to bedrooms and bathrooms. Apart from linking this characteristic to changes in the composition of households, especially the rising number of single people, Riley does not attempt to explain how this opening up translates into differing uses of the space nor how it can impact differently various people. He especially does not mention how the examples chosen are almost all designed for privileged people; what renders possible the experiments exhibited by Riley is the class status, often linked to race and gender, of the clients commissioning these projects. For

privacy that creates room for experimentation inside. While experiments with domestic privacy exist in less privileged homes, they are silenced by the M House Rules, conceptualized in dialogue with art historian

public/private, relationships already inscribed within the enclosing surfaces of the suburban 231

Considering the premise of the exhibition, the project is also designed with middle-class osing surfaces, arguing

that instead of reinforcing the demarcation between public and private, they are, in fact, unstable 229

Ibid., 21.

230

Ibid.

231

Crary and Sanders, "Sight Specific," 47.

107

visual boundaries. They shape this by getting rid of the backyard

or more appropriately making it a

and by putting back-to-back two houses with a shared inhabited and porous boundary (fig. 13). While this seems at first similar to the goals expressed in the House for a Bachelor, the text accompanying the project, which takes a prominent role in House Rules,

ts slipping and interrupted boundaries, is evidence not just of the deterioration of a private domestic sphere, but of how the rich adaptability

longer house primal scenes but a proliferation of scenic projections of effective identities, sexualities, 232

While this project is not for a single specific client, and thus the parameters

of his or her or their self-identifications are left open, Sanders and Crary are clearly calling for a new typology that links non-traditional households.

Figure 13.

232

House Rules exhibition, 1994, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. Credit: Joel Sanders and Jonathan Crary.

Ibid., 40.

108

As an example of a project questioning domesticity, Riley uses the Hergott Shepard Residence

two gay men who commissioned the house were intent that its design would reflect their own needs

233

For him, one of the main characteristics of this new order is the fact that the kitchen is

small for the size of the house, because neither of the owners cook on a regular basis, and adjacent to the garage which often becomes a set-up space for catering services. These services are used for, among other things, fund-raising events hosted for political causes and taking place in the central

ransformation

fact that the largest room, which also gets the best view, is the gymnasium, a characteristic similar to

234

It is,

however, an alternative supported by specific assumptions: in the absence of other examples of samesex couples in the exhibition, Riley approach to society defined by its wealthy New York heritage, exemplified by Philip Johnson, wealthy founder of its Department of Architecture and Design

seems to say that a queer

domesticity is one defined by wealth and race, by men who can afford to spend most of their free time entertaining or training, in line with end-of-the-twentieth-century common associations of gay 233

Riley, The Un-Private House: 26-27.

234

Ibid.

109

white men with money. This view obviously ignores the existence of a vast number of less privileged queer households who are also seeking

or not

235

In addition to the catalogue and a dedicated website, the exhibition was covered in many reviews.236 Interestingly, almost all reviewers were impressed by the interactive table designed in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, often noting how it is much more indicative of the possibilities of interactive media technologies than most of the devices integrated into the houses on display. However, similarly to my reading of the exhibition, many reviewers criticized the focus on specific aspects of the selected houses:

case about the rich territory of the house for theoretical and practical experiment and abo exhibition, without any precise explanation, only shows us the houses as showcases for individual experiments within the house, rarely examining the house in its context of city, suburb or country, never discussing its effect on the street nor its relationship to the still problematic car, and never helping us (both professionals 235

Mary Virginia Lee Badgett, Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001). 236

For some of the major reviews: Hubertus Adam, ""The Un-Private House" Im Moma," ARCH+, October 1999; Iain Borden, "No Place Like Home the Un-Private House at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 5 October," Architects Journal, August 26, 1999; Akiko Busch, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," Interiors, August 1999; Andrea Codrington, "Home Peep Show," Metropolitan Home, July-August 1999; Paula Deitz, "House Rules," Metropolis, October 1999; Jürgen Eicher, "Das Ende Der Privatheit: 'The Un-Private House' Im Mak in Wien," Deutsche Bauzeitung, April 2000; Filler, "Moma Comes Home."; Gorlin, "The Un-Private House: Moma's House Party."; MacNair, "The Un-Private House."; Herbert Muschamp, "Peeking inside Other People's Dream Houses," The New York Times, September 19, 1999; Ryan, "Seeing through the Modern Home."; Franz Schulze, "Redesigning the Domestic," Art in America, February 2000; Helen Searing, "The 'Un'-Private House," Architectural Review, September 1999; Webb, "The Un-Private House." The Un-Private House was covered in many more reviews than House Rules. Furthermore, whereas House Rules was presented in Assemblage, a journal with a readership concentrated in academic and theory audiences, with only a few reviews in other periodicals, The Un-Private House was extensively reviewed in general public and professional architecture and design magazines. On Assemblage and its place in architectural discourse, see Mitchell Schwarzer, "History and Theory in Architectural Periodicals: Assembling Oppositions," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58, no. 3 (1999).

110

and lay people) understand anything about how a small, intimate, private house can, or even could, affect all other architectures.237

however, and in any case screens, projections and the like are no more radical than television. More significant are those designs that play with the traditional 238

transparency and fluidity but also to argue that the houses reflect sociological shifts in our society. It is true that childless people, a growing segment of the population, may require fewer discrete spaces, that the computer ties our private spaces to the outside world, and that the hybrid home/office is proliferating. But the show's custom houses scarcely validate these generalized points, and vice versa.239 One reviewer also notes that, while Riley repeatedly states how families are changing, very few of the houses actually rethin form of the American family, but it's disappointing that an exhibition about contemporary domestic 240

There is thus a consensus

that the exhibition is missing an opportunity to understand more comprehensively how contemporary domestic design can address critiques of the oppositions of public and private and particularly of the impact of such transformations. However, as a reviewer notes, exhibiting such houses is already eye-opening and questioning some assumptions. It may not do so as strongly or clearly as the strictly speculative projects of House Rules

237

showing once again the rhetorical

MacNair, "The Un-Private House," 60-61.

238

Borden, "No Place Like Home the Un-Private House at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 5 October," 48. 239

Susan Doubilet, "A Preview of Moma's Splashy Summer Show, Which Examines Innovative Houses from around the World," Architectural Record, April 1999, 44. 240

Busch, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," 33.

111

possibilities of non-traditional architectural projects but it still does it importantly in the rather conservative and mainstream sanctum of modernity of the MoMA: While some of these floor plans seem far-fetched, it is exactly that quality of idiosyncrasy, mystery even, that recognizes the subtlety of the pull between intimacy and isolation. All of these houses may serve as strategies for modern ideas about privacy, but what they do more effectively is document how elusive privacy in fact is. When does solitude become alienation? When does a sense of openness become exhibitionism?241 In that sense, the exhibition serves a similar purpose as earlier queer space exhibitions assumptions about the privacy of domestic spaces

questioning

even if its focus on media dilutes its message.

Riley himself sees the un-private house as the next step in domesticity, even if it harks back to medieval big houses.242 Following other critiques, I believe that the private house, like all domestic -

open to the public gaze. Therefore, we do not need to

strive for a new type that makes this more explicit. What are needed instead are designs that let their users control more carefully how this publicness is enacted. I agree with Riley, however, when he

243

241

Ibid.

242


243

Ibid., 34-35.

112

BOOM: Actualising a Queer Architecture? After the initial burst in queer space discourse and exhibitions in the mid-1990s, interest in the topic quickly dropped.244 Later exhibitions on domesticity such as The Un-Private House expressed a focus more on formal and technological than social issues, echoing the emerging interest in the digital in architecture, but also marking a move away from a post-modern interest in diversity towards a renewed modernism stripped away from some of its social reform roots. Most architects involved in early queer space exhibitions have since moved on to other interests, often with very prominent

244

An extensive survey of the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals and closer investigation of some of the major architectural journals (Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Architecture, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Assemblage, as well as some more specialized journals such as Home Cultures and Interiors: Design | Architecture | Culture) has revealed that each published since 2000 less than one article with queer topics. Major journals fared particularly low in representing queer issues: for example, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians published no article on queer topics while the Journal of Architectural Education published only my 2013 article: Olivier Vallerand, "Home Is the Place We All Share: Building Queer Collective Utopias," Journal of Architectural Education 67, no. 1 (2013). In the same journal, an article on diversity in architecture such as Meltem Ö Gürel and Kathryn H. Anthony, "The Canon and the Void: Gender, Race, and the Architectural History Texts," ibid.59(2006). even ignores completely the topic of queer. Articles in other architectural journals include George Baker, "The Space of the Stain," Grey Room, no. 5 (2001); Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine Macy, "Queering the Grid: Transgression and Liminality in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade," Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 27, no. 1, 2 (2002); Potvin, "Vapour and Steam: The Victorian Turkish Bath, Homosocial Health, and Male Bodies on Display."; Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001."; Adams, "The Power of Pink: Children's Bedrooms and Gender Identity."; John Potvin, "Askesis as Aesthetic Home: Edward Perry Warren, Lewes House, and the Ideal of Greek Love," Home Cultures 8, no. 1 (2011); Preciado, "Architecture as a Practice of Biopolitical Disobedience."; Olivier Vallerand, "Living Pictures: Dragging the Home into the Gallery," Interiors: Design | Architecture | Culture 4, no. 2 (2013). Other papers have also been published in edited collections: Bonnevier, "A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray's E.1027."; Katarina Bonnevier, "Out of the Salon: With Natalie Barney Towards a Critically Queer Architecture," in Critical Architecture, ed. Jane Rendell, et al., Ahra Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); McNeil, "Crafting Queer Spaces: Privacy and Posturing."; Potvin, "The Aesthetics of Community: Queer Interiors and the Desire for Intimacy."; Rault, "Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects.". A few books have been published, but, apart from Castiglia and Reed, If Memory Serves: Gay Men, Aids, and the Promise of the Queer Past. (itself not solely about architecture), most take a historical point of view inst Bonnevier, Behind Straight Curtains : Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture; Rault, Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In; Cook, Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London; Potvin, Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. The most important legacy of the early burst of interests is, however, visible in the academic world where many of the people involved in the early exhibitions have developed successful careers (see note 245). Interest in the topic is also visible in conferences like Naomi Stead and Jason Prior, eds., Queer Space: Centres and Peripheries (Sydney: University of Technology Sydney, 2007).

113

careers as educators, curators or internationally recognized practitioners.245 Some of them have recently been involved in a shift from queer spatial experiments to actual inhabited spaces with the development of BOOM Community, a series of planned neighbourhoods for aging people aimed particularly at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.246 Not as clearly linked to queer theory as early queer space exhibitions and essays were, the projects seem instead to be part of a broader shift towards rights recognition issues (regarding same-sex marriage, military service, etc.) that has swept the North American LGBT communities in relation to rapid changes in visibility and acceptance of homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals in society. As the first generations of widely out people reach retirement age, the issue of how existing retirement homes or neighbourhoods can accommodate them without forcing them back into the closet is increasingly discussed.247 While an

245

For example, as will be discussed in next chapter, Mark Robbins has had a successful career as curator, National Endo Colomina has written books and articles on privacy and publicity in modern architecture and founded a Media and Architecture program at Princeton Univ School of Architecture and Planning; Henry Urbach owned an innovative architecture gallery, before becoming Curator lass House; John Paul Ricco taught at various universities and is now a professor at the University of Toronto since 2006 (in contemporary art, media theory, and criticism). For more on the career of Joel Sanders, Jürgen Mayer, and Charles Renfro, see note 250. 246

Design for the Palm Springs neighbourhood began in 2010. The project is currently on hold until the housing market recovers. (Matthew Hoffman, e-mail message to author, November 26, 2012.) 78, the use of the term queer space theory seeks to question relations between space and (communitarian) identity. While I have used other designers and advertisers or from journalists. 247

The issue is discussed in both mainstream and academic publications. For research on challenges associated with aging LGBT people, see Shari Brotman et al., "The Impact of Coming out on Health and Health Care Access: The Experiences of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Two-Spirit People. ," Journal of Health and Social Policy 15, no. 1 (2002); Sean Cahill and Ken South, "Policy Issues Affecting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People in Retirement," Generations 26, no. 2 (2002); Shari Brotman, Bill Ryan, and Robert Cormier, "The Health and Social Service Needs of Gay and Lesbian Elders and Their Families in Canada. ," The Gerontologist 43, no. 2 (2003); Line Chamberland and Johanne Paquin, "Vieillir en étant soi-même: le lesbiennes âgées," (Montréal: Alliance de recherche IREF/Relais-femmes/UQAM, 2004); Nancy A. Orel, "Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Elders: Expressed Needs and Concerns across Focus Groups," Journal of Gerontological Social Work 43, no. 2-3 (2004); Michael J. Johnson et al., "Gay and Lesbian Perceptions of Discrimination in Retirement Care Facilities,"

114

endeavour based on good intentions, because it focuses solely on age prejudices, the BOOM project is falling into similar traps as earlier queer work that did not account for the many ways in which class and race play into how gender and sexuality are experienced. Even if said to be designed to fight against prejudice, the projects seem to be geared primarily towards the needs of privileged white gay male couples or singles. The BOOM projects come out of broader research on aging and architecture by architect Matthias Hollwich248 and are planned and brand managed by his firm Hollwich Kushner Architects, whose

Journal of Homosexuality 49, no. 2 (2005); Shari Brotman et al., "Coming out to Care: Caregivers of Gay and Lesbian Seniors in Canada," The Gerontologist 47, no. 4 (2007); Nick C. Jackson, Michael J. Johnson, and Roe Roberts, "The Potential Impact of Discrimination Fears of Older Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender Individuals Living in Small- to Moderate-Sized Cities on Long-Term Health Care," Journal of Homosexuality 54, no. 3 (2008); David Haber, "Gay Aging," Gerontology & Geriatrics Education 30, no. 3 (2009); Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen and Anna Muraco, "Aging and Sexual Orientation: A 25-Year Review of the Literature," Research on Aging 32, no. 3 (2010); Stephen Accommodation Plans for Old Age," International Journal of Nursing Practice 16, no. 6 (2010); Gary L. Stein, Nancy L. Beckerman, and Patricia A. Sherman, "Lesbian and Gay Elders and Long-Term Care: Identifying the Unique Psychosocial Perspectives and Challenges," Journal of Gerontological Social Work 53, no. 5 (2010); Anne K. Hughes, Rena D. Harold, and Janet M. Boyer, "Awareness of Lgbt Aging Issues among Aging Services Network Providers," Journal of Gerontological Social Work 54, no. 7 (2011); National Research Council, "Later Adulthood," in The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding (Washington, DC: The pour une approche adaptée," Pluriâges 4, no. 1 (2013); William Billy Hébert, Line Chamberland, and Mickael Chacha Enriquez, "Accueillir les personnes âgées transsexuelles et transgenres dans le milieu de la santé et des services sociaux : données de recherche sur quelques barrières et stratégies," ibid.; MetLife Mature Market Institute, "Still out, Still Aging: The Metlife Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Baby Boomers," (New York: MetLife Mature Market Institute, 2013). 248

Penns homes that transforms the current situa -unit retirement facility for Catholic priests in the Ivory Coast. Among the points brought forward by Hollwich, the need for thinking about the extended family, global health, and shared common areas in addition to individual apartments are of particular significance to the themes developed by queer space theorists. HWKN, "New Aging," accessed January 16, 2014, http://hwkn.com/NEW-AGING; Stephen Johnston, "Interview: Matthias Hollwich Wants to Start a Revolution," Aging 2.0(2011), http://aging2.com/2011/10/10/hollwich/; Mimi Zeiger, "Assume They Want to Have Fun," Architect, January 2011;

115

partners previously worked with, among others, J Mayer H and Diller + Scofidio, two firms that have been involved with queer space and feminist theory.249 others, Joel Sanders, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, J Mayer H, and Nigel Coates, who have all engaged at various points in their career the intersection of gender, sexuality, and space.250 The move from conceptual projects in exhibitions to actual liveable spaces has not been straightforward: some of the more radical criticality of the earlier exhibition projects has disappeared, for, if the marketing images are any indication, the project is aimed at a rich and predominantly white clientele.251 Not unlike the largely male composition of the earlier exhibitions, the BOOM website also underlines how the architectural profession is predominantly male with only one woman, artist-architect Madeline Gins Senior Planet(2014), http://seniorplanet.org/meet-the-newold-age-matthias-hollwichs-contrary-vision/. 249

Matthias Hollwich is also partner, along with Mario Gonzalez of GHA Communities, in BOOM Communities, LLC, the real estate investment company developing the projects. 250

Joel Sanders, an adjunct professor at Yale School of Architecture, edited Stud: Architectures of Masculinity. and designed a series of houses playing with privacy, gender assumptions, and non-normative households. One of these The Un-Private House Queer Space exhibition with Operatives while working for Joel Sanders (between 1991-97). Charles Renfro (partner at the internationally recognized architectural practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro) had a piece in Queer Space exhibition. Before Renfro became a partner, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio were already working with gender and sexuality issues, for example in their His/Hers towels project. Jürgen Mayer (now head of the internationally recognized architectural practive J Mayer H) also had installations in the Queer Space disappeared, as well as a few installations exhibited at Henry simultaneously veil and reveal and to blur private and public also stems from his involvement in queer space discussions during his graduate studies at Princeton University. (Jürgen Mayer Hermann, "Data-Protection Pattern Family," Assemblage, no. 38 (1999); Jü Talk," in Dealing with fear: promise, practice, protocol - performing future presences (Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart2009).) Nigel Coates has been working since the early 1980s on the relation between the body and space, initially with NATO (Narrative Architecture Today), an architectural think tank he formed while teaching at the Architectural Association. His design work for nightclubs is also linked to his interest for gay clubbing lifestyles. (Nigel Coates, "New Clubs at Large," AA Files, no. 1 (1981); Nigel Coates, Guide to Ecstacity (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003); Chris Tucker, Michael Chapman, and Michael Ostwald, "Homosexuality and the Star Hotel: Exploring the Traces of Queer Space in Newcastle in the 1970s " (paper presented at the Queer Space: Centres and Peripheries, University of Technology Sydney, 2007), 3.) 251

BOOM, "Design: Architecture," accessed July 13, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/#5.

116

of Arakawa + Gins, presenting part of the project; this is also evident in the promotional material that depicts a large majority of male couples.252 community is poise consider friends family, an increased health consciousness, and willingness to fight for change within 253

echoes, however, more radical queer impulses for recognizing the need for relations

outside of traditional families, even if dressed in a more formal (neo-modern and digitally-informed) language than the earlier theoretical projects, a language close to much contemporary architectural production. Regarding this image-heavy approach, it is also telling that Hollwich and Kushner were founding partners of Architizer, a digital platform for architects to present their works which has grown since 2009 into one of the largest resources for architecture online. They are thus well informed and engaged with the ways architectural projects are presented and sold in the early twentythe architects were that their structures had to epitomize high design in order to fight the stereotypical look of retirement communities, and that none of the firms could have ever done work 254

No BOOM projects have yet been completed and, if they get built after the housing market fully recovers, they might not be realized according to the current plans.255 The available drawings, however, give a rich opening onto the complex issues at play in such a project. The challenges faced 252

BOOM, "Design: Architecture / Arakawa + Gins," accessed November 20, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/arakawagins/#4. 253

BOOM, "It Is All About You!," accessed July 12, 2012, http://www.boomforlife.com/.

254

Anna Almendrala, "Boom! A Bold New Community in Palm Springs," The Huffington Post(2011), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/boom-retirement-community_n_823535.html. 255

See note 246.

117

by the team of architects and planners working on the neighbourhoods also mean that the projects have already changed since their initial conception. Originally, a smaller group of architects (comprised of Hollwich, Renfro, Sanders, and LOTas an integrated comprehensive plan plan

ed the project

with all involved architects working together on the whole

for a development more strongly enmeshed with neighbouring residents. As the project

evolved, however, Hollwich Kushner took over the planning and invited other firms to create independent projects within this larger plan, a move which showcased the branding potential of individual architects.256 The final envisioned plan for BOOM is to develop initially two (selfcontained) neighbourhoods with limited links to their environment before replicating the model elsewhere: a larger one in Palm Springs in the Southern California desert (300 residences totalling 750 bedrooms, 60 hotel suites, 6 assisted living suites, with each invited architectural firm responsible for a 100-acre plot, see fig. 14) and a smaller one in Malaga on the Costa del Sol in Southern Spain (for 115 homes each designed for a 10m x 10m plan). The projects were at first solely dedicated to LGBT of retirement age, but the marketing campaign later opened up to anyone over 40 years old.257

256

Joel Sanders, phone interview with author, February 26, 2014.

257

Almendrala, "Boom! A Bold New Community in Palm Springs".

118

Figure 14. BOOM Palm Springs, completion on hold. Credit: BOOM Communities.

formally, both LOT-EK and L2 Tsionov-Vitkon describe their designs as being inspired by desert landscapes to acknowledge the natural environment of Palm Springs.258 At a less formal level, many of the architects involved also emphasize their attempt to create innovative connections to neighbouring units that would maximize occasions for socialising:

258

LOT-EK, "Lot-Ek / Boom," accessed February 7, 2014, http://www.lot-ek.com/filter/residential/BOOM; Tsionov Vitkon Architects, "L2 Tsionov-Vitkon Architects / Palm Springs Lgbt Retirement Community," accessed February 7, 2014, http://www.tsionov-vitkon.com/index.php.

119

-EK)259

Costa Del Sol project)260 individuals and the homes they occupy will activate social interactions. An individual occupies a series of volumes and the micro level, the boundaries of any one individual unit is blurred to increase the (Sadar+Vuga)261 This emphasis on social relations is also often linked to the assumption that LGBT people are used to developing strong relations with others in the absence of traditional family relations, but also that this absence of children means that they will need more support and interaction with other BOOM residents. Once again, as in his projects for House Rules and The Un-Private House, to BOOM is one of the most concerned with the subtle transformations to notions of public and private in the domestic realm. As a return to the topic of gendered domesticities after a break following his STUD collection and ser

The

Commons at BOOM is also informed by his current research on landscape planning.262 In this work, Sanders thinks about the liminal space where indoors and outdoors meet, seeing this connection as essential to a more inclusive conceptualization of the world. Furthermore, he understands the usual 259

LOT-EK, "Lot-Ek / Boom".

260

Nigel Coates Studio, "Boom Costa Del Sol," accessed February 7, 2014, http://nigelcoates.com/project/boom_andalucia. 261

Sadar+Vuga, "Boom, a Bold New Community," accessed February 7, 2014, http://www.sadarvuga.com/newsarchive/985-boom-a-bold-new-community. 262

See Diana Balmori and Joel Sanders, Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (New York: Monacelli Press, 2011).

120

separation between architecture and landscape as being grounded in gender oppositions, in very similar ways to the opposition between domestic and public space. In the case of a retirement home,

intention for his project, and initially for BOOM as a whole, was to attempt to find out how queer sensibilities can change how we interact with our community and particularly how this division can be overcome.263 In The Commons, assisted living spaces are fully integrated with everyone else and even become a hub for the neighbourhood. Through landscape design of the communal spaces and shared pool, directly accessible from each residence, Sanders facilitates a sense of community (fig. 15 and 17). At the level of

16). In both cases, the apartments offer equally sized bedrooms with patio access and bathrooms, except for one bedroom without an en-suite bathroom in th housing in line with examples of queer people not afraid to reinvent household structures thus materialize mainly in a focus on creating community groups at various scales where domestic spaces such as living rooms, kitchens, outside spaces (patio, pool, etc.) are shared.

263

The Commons, comes from BOOM, "Design : Architecture / Joel Sanders Architect," accessed July 13, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/joelsandersarchitect/#3; Joel Sanders Architect, "Joel Sanders Architect / the Commons," accessed January 30, 2014, http://www.joelsandersarchitect.com. and Joel Sanders, phone interview with author, February 26, 2014.

121

Figure 15. Joel Sanders Architect. The Commons site plan (assisted living and common areas at the top), BOOM Community, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Joel Sanders Architect.

Figure 16. Joel Sanders Architect. The Commons Community, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Joel Sanders Architect.

122

Figure 17. Joel Sanders Architect. The Commons, exterior view of shared areas, BOOM Community, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Joel Sanders Architect.

The BOOM projectss are attempts to build places where traditional family definitions dissolve through varying degrees of publicness, although this is done in a closed environment problematically isolated and unconnected from its existing neighbours; this puts BOOM far from queer space theorists positing queer as a layer of relationality amongst other layers, bringing it closer to earlier understandings of queer space as gay- and lesbian-oriented spaces. The blurring of private and public roject (fig. 18 outdoor and indoor, between privacy and pu

264

His project, like his JOH3 residential

building in Berlin developed during the same years (winner of a 2008 competition, completed in

264

BOOM, "Design: Architecture / J Mayer H," accessed July 13, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/jmayerh/#5.

123

2012), uses extensions such as balconies, bay windows, roof canopies, and screens to blur the distinction between each apartment and between each function.

Figure 18. J Mayer H. Puzzle.Buzz, BOOM Community, interior view of residences, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: J Mayer H.

The Waves, the architects underline formally, with undulating ribbons, the separation between inside and outside. The spaces created underneath the peaks of these ribbons house the interior programmes, including glazed domestic spaces, while the troughs are occupied by private or communal gardens. Adjacent ribbons are offset to create private spaces for each dwelling, but can also be opened to the streets to blur the transition with public space (fig. 19).265

265

BOOM, "Design: Architecture / Diller Scofidio + Renfro," accessed July 13, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/dillerscofidiorenfro/#5.

124

Figure 19. Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Waves, BOOM Community, townhouses, completion on hold, Palm Springs. Credit: Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

If some of the language used to describe the design strategies appears superficial, for example

Un-Private House exhibition, then other

an opening to the collective ideal that sustains some queer critiques.266 As the first neighbourhood in Palm Springs will not to be completed for another few years, if the economy recovers, it is too early to tell if it will succeed in actualizing the theoretical critiques developed in the mid-1990s, but even as a proposal, some of the decisions are telling.

266

BOOM, "Design: Architecture / J Mayer H"; BOOM, BOOM, "Design: Architecture / Rudin Donner," accessed July 13, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/rudindonner/#3; "Design : Architecture / Joel Sanders Architect," accessed July 13, 2012, http://boompalmsprings.com/design/joelsandersarchitect/#3.

125

Although open to all and envisioned to support gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people, seen as marginalized people in retirement facilities, the BOOM projects, designed as isolated places, will probably attract large numbers of wealthy white gay men, and exclude at once other more

mindedness, but also comfortable material and financial means allowing them to move to these neighbourhoods; as such, it is thus reiterating class and race structures even if it is trying to work against other discriminations. Dwellings are designed to blur private and public, but simultaneously,

Pumpwerk, discussed in chapter 5, many of the BOOM dwellings are designed to give to the dweller control over how the relation between private and public is managed. This control is, however, made possible by the social status of the dwellers, a status that gives them the possibility to own a house in an isolated controlled environment. This context is obviously very far from the original critiques coming from queer space theorists who insisted that queer space emanated from relationships, but also that everyone should be able to exert this control over his or her domestic spaces, no matter what his or her social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or age is. Despite these misgivings regarding the accessibility of the project, BOOM demonstrates the involved

to all, at least by design. However, the type of dwellings designed for BOOM, envisioned as unique pieces of architecture not attached to traditional city layouts and regulations, cannot easily be integrated into an existing urban setting and would hardly s 126

financial means. The next step thus appears to be a need to bring these ideas to less isolated settings,

broader, more accessible context.

127

Chapter 3. Living Pictures: Mark Robbins Drags the Home into the Gallery In a 1992 article in Design Book Review at gay domesticity, design journals nonetheless do not reveal 267

In a similar way to what

private are unstable,

comes to peeking at 268

In the twenty years since then,

representation of domestic spaces owned by out gay males has increased, but this representation has often been limited to the houses and apartments of superstar designers.269 Same-sex couples that do not correspond to this wealthy successful mobile white gay male mold are still few.270 Advertisers and television shows have also increasingly showed same-sex couples, although there again in a very

267

Urbach, "Peeking at Gay Interiors," 38.

268

Ibid., 40.

269

popular home architecture and design magazine Dwell. Dan Rubinstein, "Top Grades," Dwell, March 2014. Interestingly, the feature does not show their bedroom, only a guest room. Urbach had already noted in 1992 this Urbach, "Peeking at Gay Interiors," 40. 270

This is obviously also the case for the representation of domestic spaces for heterosexual couples and bachelors in home or culture magazine, see for example Bill Osgerby, "The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon: Masculinity, Consumption and Interior Design in American Men's Magazines, 1930-65," Journal of Design History 18, no. 1 (2005). These magazines are shaped by consumer culture and devoted to offering images to aspire to and as such their choice of l means and class than on his or her sexual orientation. As Urbach discusses, the question of sexual orientation plays a role in the ways the spaces are depicted once they are chosen.

128

controlled way that often considers gay men and lesbians as consumers rather than as social subjects, using encoded images and messages to reach gay people without losing a mainstream audience.271 n 1956) proposed Households (2003-2006), an alternative look at domestic interiors that explicitly includes gay couples, building from his earlier projects such as the one he developed for Queer Space with Benjamin Gianni. In this photographic project, Robbins documents a number of living spaces housing a variety of people (of diverse age, sexual orientation, marital status, etc.) through a photographic exhibition and catalogue. zines described by Architectural Digest, House & Garden, and many more

is an enduring fascination with other people's lives and houses. But the pristine photographs

in these publications do not represent reality. In his 'Households' series, artist and architect Mark Robbins has invented the 'flip side' of interior design magazines: a compelling series of photographs 272

Households presents a

large number of people perceived as queer, without however presenting them as separated from the

house magazines Urbach was discussing, the project questions the relation between interiors and people, but does not necessarily address clearly the issues brought forward by Urbach. This chapter investigates closely the impacts of the transposition through photographic representations of 271

Sex Roles 46, no. 3/4 (2002): 65. See also Kristin Comeforo, "Mis(Sed) Representations: Lgbt Imagery in Mainstream Advertising," in Coming out of the Closet: Exploring Lgbt Issues in Strategic Communication with Theory and Research, ed. Natalie T.J. Tindall and Richard D. Waters (New York: Peter Lang, 2013). 272

Mark Robbins, Households (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006)., consulted on http://www.amazon.ca/Households-Mark-Robbins/dp/1580931642.

129

domestic spaces commonly understood as private in the public space of the gallery. In its concept and formal resolution (full-scale photographic reproductions montaged to remind viewers of panel paintings), the work raises questions on popular presumptions about the adequacy between dwelling and dweller and on the public meanings of these spaces. In parallel, it also addresses issues of interior decoration and furnishings to question popular assumptions about how they appear appropriate or apter will discuss how Robbins uses photographic representations to question these assumptions.

Mark Robbins and the Body in Architecture Robbins started developing his photo and installation works in the early 1980s while still in architecture school. After spending time at the Peter Eisenman-directed Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and working for architectural firms SOM, Polshek, and Emilio Ambasz, Robbins taught, wrote, and exhibited critical works, including Framing the American City at the Institute for Contemporary Art in New York and at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus. The latter exhibition led to his appointment as inaugural curator of architecture at the Wexner, where his first exhibition was House Rules, discussed in chapter 2. He later became Director of Design for the National Endowment for the Arts before becoming Dean of the School of Architecture at Syracuse University in 2004, while working on his Households project.273 Robbins has presented his work in a number of self-edited monographs. The earliest monograph, Angles of Incidence

es,

273

New York Times article highlighted his interest in queer space. (Mark Robbins, interview with author, Skype, May 14, 2012.)

130

inspired by the work of artist Joseph Cornell, towards larger-scale installations, from the beginning of his career to 1992.274 In his early works, Robbins investigates how form carries content, for example by using the symbol of the religious reliquary, but also uses sexual references and visual puns to catch the attention of the viewer.275 In the projects illustrated in Angles of Incidence and in the

structu programmatic preoccupations involve behaviors and perceptions that architecture frequently 276

conceals

Gianni discusses the importance for Robbins of the

intersection of sexuality and space, already present in his World Trade project from 1980,277 more than a decade before the much-cited Sexuality & Space collection (1992) edited by Beatriz Colomina and often seen as one of the pioneering works in discussing this intersection (an influence not

dimensions of the relation of bodies and space).278 Morton similarly notes how Robbins creates a relationship where the body is not just the creator of the city, but where the body and the city produce each other and are inextricably intertwined, linking his work to Eli -

274

Mark Robbins, Angles of Incidence (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992).

275

Mark Robbins, interview with author, Skype, May 14, 2012.

276

Robbins, Angles of Incidence: 8.

277

Ibid., 13-15;21.

278

Colomina, Sexuality & Space.

131

insists on the importance i 279

This interest in the intersection of the body and (representations) of architecture or the city comes

Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, or in some of the exhibitions organized by Robbins while he was Curator of Architecture at the Wexner, such as House Rules (1994) and Fabrications: Bodybuildings, Full Scale, the Tectonic Garden (1998) (see note 209).280

Households: Undermining Interiors Representations Households project. Conceived from 2002 as an exhibition (presented at the Agassiz Gallery of the Radcliffe Institute (2003) and at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2003-2004)), it was later developed and published as a monograph with essays by Robbins himself, Julie Lasky and Bill Horrigan.281 Households is thus essentially a photographic project, unlike other projects by Robbins developed as elaborate installations. It moves his analysis from the city to the house and documents the living spaces of people of diverse ages, sexual orientations, and household arrangements. In development over many years, the project was

279

P.A. Morton, "The Building That Looks Back," in Angles of Incidence, ed. Mark Robbins (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), 18. Discussing Grosz, "Bodies-Cities." 280

Mark Robbins and Bill Horrigan, "Fashion Plate," in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); Betsky et al., "Fabrications: Bodybuildings, Full Scale, the Tectonic Garden." For Assemblage ("On the House.") and the reviews in architectural magazines (Judith Davidsen, ""House Rules" Show at the Wexner Challenges the Comeback of 1950s Family Values [Exhibition Review]," Architectural Record, September 1994; Jones, "House Rules: House Holds New Rules."; Blackford, "Wexner Show Confronts Suburban Living."; Litt, "Reimagining the Single-Family House.") and newspapers (Muschamp, "Ten Little Houses and How They Grew." and its reply by Benjamin Gianni in Benjamin Gianni, "Queering (Single Family) Space," Sites 26(1995).). 281

Robbins, Households. Households was also reviewed and discussed in architectural magazines (Leon van Schaik, "Home Body," Architectural Design 77, no. 5 (2007).)

132

preceded by Who We Are and How We Live exhibition, and

Queer Space (1997, fig. 6), published in Architecture of the

Everyday, both projects co-authored by Robbins and Gianni which similarly question assumptions about the correlation between domestic spaces and self-identifications.282 Unlike Households, however, the earlier projects focus on the architecture of the spaces and mostly ignore the specificities of their inhabitants. They are also concerned only with domestic spaces occupied by selfidentified homosexual men and women, whereas Households questions more generally selfidentifications, making sexual orientation only one of the variables taken into account in understanding domesticity. Similarly, in other projects such as Import/Export (2000-2001) and Of Mies and Men (1997), Robbins questions issues of gender, race and class in architectural representations. In those projects, he does so, however, through the lens of the potential homoeroticism of space.283 The Households exhibitions and the book share photographic series that juxtapose living spaces and their inhabitants, posing full-length for the camera, formally organized to recall panel paintings and presented close to full-scale in the exhibition (fig. 20). These panels are accompanied by the names of the sitters, the place, and the year in which the photo was taken. In the book, some of the sitters and their living spaces are further presented at the end of the book in a dry and descriptive manner.

282

Colomina et al., Queer Space; Robbins and Gianni, "Family Values (Honey, I'm Home)."

283

Mark Robbins, "Import/Export," Architectural Design, March 2002; Mark Robbins, "Of Mies and Men," Architectural Design, March 2002; Mark Robbins, "Life in Quotes," Architectural Design, March 2002.

133

Figure 20. Mark Robbins.

The project is shot in three series, presented separately in the gallery shows, but mixed together in the book: a first one, from 2002, presents couples and individuals, mainly gay men, in their homes in cities in the North and Southeast of the United States; a second, from 2003, focuses on vacation or transitory homes, presenting the landscape as being as important as the interior in suggesting the 21); the third, completed in 2004, covers modernist houses in the Netherlands and presents a broader group of subjects, including a larger proportion of heterosexual families.284 Many of the sitters, especially in the first two series, are friends or parents of Robbins, who themselves selected the objects and interiors depicted in their panels.285 The interiors depicted, and their occupants, thus vary greatly, from spartan student rooms to luxurious finely designed spaces. The first series focuses only on interiors while the second and third add exterior shots depicting the landscape or the typically modern Dutch houses. Every panel is composed in a similar fashion, with vertically cropped photos of the sitters, often partially or fully undressed, framing views of the 284

Mark Robbins, "Model Homes," in Households, ed. Mark Robbins (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006), 10-11.

285

Bill Horrigan, "Villas and Cottages," ibid., 19.

134

interior or of the courtyard. The compositions are often almost symmetric, giving a formal quality of unity that suggests that people, furnishings and architecture are part of a whole, have to be taken together to understand both the space and its inhabitant. For Robbins, body types and décor have a similar role in telling histories; his interest lies in highlighting the similarities and divergences between them and in building on the humor present in both body types and furnishings. 286 The nakedness of the sitters, in most cases males, objectifies the sitters and makes them integral part of

work: by making male bodies the object of the gaze, Robbins reacts to how, in architectural representations, the male body signifies sexuality differently than the female body and subverts the 287

figures present in canonical representations of modern houses where women are used as décor or depicted in highly gendered roles (fig. 22). Gill Matthewson underlines how, for example, celebrated architectural pho -war projects and to sell a modern domesticity to a public not necessarily [as] decorative

288

286

Mark Robbins,

interview with author, Skype, May 14, 2012.) 287

Morton, "The Building That Looks Back," 18.

288

-war pre-feminist contexts, the prints with women models still circulate and are published in numerous books and articles on the Case Study House Program, for Gill Matthewson, "Breaking Clichés: The Human

135

photographs, such as the famous Case Study House #22 photograph in fig. 22 festyle through architecture is, however, constructed by the positioning of human figures by Shulman in typical gendered roles, as Rosa notes.289 ed own, live in, or have designed the domestic spaces represented. The way Robbins presents his subjects as part of these spaces and as

approach, but simultaneously subverted by the unusual representation of male figures. Scale figures, where men would traditionally be represented, were instead understood as separated from the architectural spaces represented.290 Robbins also significantly uses sexualized male bodies in reaction 291

and once again challenges the

differing treatment of men and women in architectural photography.292

Accessory in the Work of Julius Shulman," Hunch: the Berlage Institute Report, no. 3 (2001): 79-81;90; Joseph Rosa, A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman (New York: Rizzoli, 1994). 289

Rosa, A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman: 54.

290

See for example Alex T. Anderson, "On the Human Figure in Architectural Representation," Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 4 (2002). 291


292

On gendered representation of human figures in architectural photography, see for example Geoffrey Simmins, "Gendered Space and Social Conformity in Selected Modern Architectural Photographs," Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 33, no. 2 (2008). on representations of Canadian modernist architecture or Colomina, "The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism," 102-7;23. works.

136

Figure 21. Mark Robbins. Summer Places & Households, 2003-4, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Credit: Mark Robbins.

137

Figure 22. Selection of photographs by Julius Shulman (clockwise, from top left: Stahl Residence, Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, CA, May 9, 1960, architect: Pierre Koenig (officially titled Case Study House No. 22 (Los Angeles, Calif.): iconic girls; Bailey House, Case Study House #21, Los Angeles, CA, 1958, architect: Pierre Koenig; Spencer Residence, Santa Monica, 1950, architect: Richard Spencer; Alexander Twin Palms House #2, 1957, Palm Springs, architect: William Krisel). Credit: Julius Shulman Resources, The Getty Research Institute.

138

Households echoes challenges to the alleged privacy of domesticity that had already been highlighted earlier by

Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (1963)

(fig. 23),

(1967), Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968), or

Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1971), often depict scenes which, taking place in the assumed privacy a domestic environment, and even more specifically the bathroom or the bedroom, are made public in exhibitions. In many instances, the couples depicted are same-sex couples, making the scene even more transgressive for a 1960s audience.293

Figure 23. David Hockney. Domestic Scene, Los Angeles (1963). 293

received, see Simon Ofield, "Cruising the

Archive," Journal of Visual Culture 4, no. 3 (2005). ted in his work, arguing e, unseen part of Kenneth E. Silver, "Master Bedrooms, Master Narratives: Home, Homosexuality and Post-War Art," in Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Christopher Reed (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 217-20. Cécile Whiting, "The Erotics of the Built Environment," in Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2006).

139

Claes Oldenburg also questions implications of private and public with his Bedroom Ensemble (1963) (fig. 24), the largest and most complex in a series of works on The Home, in which a bedroom set is

making the domestic into a showroom and the office into a hidden, mysterious space. The project is also developed as a threehat is usually not visible.

Figure 24. Claes Oldenburg. Bedroom Ensemble, 1963. Credit: Claes Oldenburg / National Gallery of Canada.

140

sexuality issues, as well as themselves producing discourse around these issues.294 Hockney depicts both mixed and same-sex couples on an equal foot. Furthermore, as historians have pointed out, Hockney is among the first artists to explicitly depict same-sex desire.295 loaded with a latent simmering sexuality expressed through everyday objects:

here where I am in America at this time, toward substitutes, for example, clothing rather than the 296

While Bedroom Ensemble does not imbue sexualized meaning to normally asexualized objects as Oldenburg usually does in his works, the references are more explicitly sexualized in the bedroom

highway motel in Malibu as a teenager),297 (fictionally) either by a guest or by the occupant of the room. The room can be read in different a bachelor pad, as a 294

Bedroom Ensemble in Claes Oldenburg: Skulpturer och teckningar, 1963-1966, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, reprinted in "Reviews and Writings," in Claes Oldenburg, ed. Nadja Rottner, October Files (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2012). d consumer culture/taste in A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender, and Consumer Culture, Cambridge Studies in American Visual Culture (Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 78-79. 295

Vincent Huguet, "Les hommes nus dans l'art sont-ils tous gay-érotiques?," Beaux-Arts Magazine, Septembre 2013, 73.

296

Claes Oldenburg and Emmett Williams, eds., Store Days: Documents from the Store, 1961, and Ray Gun Theatre, 1962 (New York: Something Else Press, 1967), 62., cited in Michael Lüthy, "The Consumer Article in the Art World: On the Para-Economy of American Pop Art," in Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, ed. Max Hollein and Christoph Grunenberg (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 149. 297

Guggenheim Museum and National Gallery of Art, "Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology / Bedroom Ensemble," Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, accessed December 15, 2013, http://www.artnetweb.com/oldenburg/bedroom.html; Eloise Moorehead, "Claes Oldenburg, Bedroom Ensemble, 1963," accessed December 15, 2013, http://eloisemoorehead.com/post/182476026/claes-oldenburg-bedroomensemble-1963-wood.

141

included in the installation. Dan Grah

Alteration to a Suburban House (1978) (fig. 25), while less explicitly about gender and

sexuality, similarly underlines how assumed ideas of privacy are not as certain as they appear to be, questioning who is looking and who is being looked at in suburban areas. The work, presented as a model, proposes a house where the front façade is replaced by a glass wall with the inside divisions cut in half by a full-length mirror reflecting the pedestrians walking outside and the houses on the other side of the street.298 The public domain is reflected inside the house, it enters domestic private space, while simultaneously being offered to the gaze of

299

Paradoxically, the

mirror hides half of the house, offering to the view only some spaces, those traditionally seen as the public parts of a house. It reinforces the division of the house and negates the juxtaposition of public and private brought by the glass wall. Graham implies through his use of a typical suburban model, albeit subverted, that behind domestic uniformity, different lifestyles are hiding, an idea already hinted at in his Homes for America (1965), originally published as a photo and text article in Arts Magazine examining the variations in style and color of typical tract housing.300 While Robbins similarly complicates notions of public and private, by looking at interiors, he insists on their

298

Dan Graham, "Alteration of a Suburban House, 1978," in Dan Graham : Architecture, ed. Dan Graham (London: Camden Arts Centre & Architectural Association, 1997). 299

Beatriz Colomina, "Double Exposure: Alteration to a Suburban House (2001)," in Dan Graham, ed. Alex Kitnik, October Files (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2011). 300

Dan Graham, "Homes for America, Early 20th Century Possessable House to the Quasi-Discrete Cell of '66," Arts Magazine, December - January 1966-1967.

142

Figure 25. Dan Graham. Alteration to a Suburban House, 1978. Credit: Dan Graham.

not only appear in the image, they are responsible for the choices behind it. Robbins insists that his authorship is mostly in the panel compositions and that the interior themselves have been designed -identification. Households ongoing project to understand how ritual and décor, identity and the body are linked, shaped by his interest

and are aligned

in relation to each other and to the market

301

302

The series of

photographs raise questions about popular presumptions about the relation between dwelling and 301

Robbins, "Model Homes," 10.

302


143

dweller, most importantly underlining how domestic spaces acquire public meanings. Repeatedly described as private, safe havens, they are, however, constantly shared, willingly or not, with strangers coming into the household. Robbins appears to suggest through Households that, when understood as public spaces, domestic spaces have to be approached with a new set of questions. What does our environment say about who we are, whom we live with, how we live? How are constructed assumptions about how interior decoration and furnishings appear appropriate or not to space, the gallery, Robbins explicitly offers to the public gaze what is assumed by most people to be private. He does not, however, explicitly address assumptions about how dwelling and dweller relate. The project hints at these questions in its accompanying material (essays in the monograph, introductory notes to the exhibition), but the panels themselves are not specifically discussed in relation to these assumptions. Some viewers might analyse and critique what they see, especially if they have read the

those terms, but another group of viewers would probably stumble on the project without prior specific knowledge of the issues involved. The choice of exhibition spaces, university and contemporary art galleries, aims at a specific group of people that are probably more aware of the issues questioned by Robbins and that share knowledge and intellectual frameworks with him. These conditions, however, do not necessarily guarantee that people will put aside their preconceptions n of the book and its similarity with coffee table books suggest a broader audience that might not be as

144

familiar with those questions and that might instead focus more on the interiors themselves, trying to understand the stories of these people.303 Even if the viewers do not critically analyse what they see, by presenting with similar compositions a diversity of people, and therefore a diversity of interiors, Robbins neutralizes expected associations between identity, clothes and decoration, most importantly around how gender and sexuality play into décor choices. Whereas in 1992 Urbach

304

ten years later Robbins insists on the disclosing, underlining the similarities

between all households. An important number of the depicted households are formed by gay men, couples or roommates, but numerous other panels show lesbian women or heterosexual men and women to underline that this project is not (only) about sexual orientation, but about all elements -identification, and that sexual orientation cannot be directly related to environment design or clothes. The published version of Households presents photographs of 64 households (sometimes represented twice in both their permanent and summer homes; sometimes depicting more than one family or couple), 30 of them being complemented by written descriptions.305 Of the people represented in

303

Similar questions arose from the publication of the House Rules catalogue as an issue of Assemblage. As Kay Bea Jones notes, House Rules: House Holds New Rules," 54.) But this impulse to reach to the mainstream is undermined by the choice of an academic publication not easily available outside of specialized bookstores. Would the questions brought forward by Robbins and the teams he assembled be stronger and potentially of more impact if they had been published, for example, in a mainstream publication such as Architectural Digest? 304


305

Although Robbins does not give surnames to his sitters and limits the descriptive presentations, I could identify at least two persons associated with queer theory: Heather Love, a leading queer theorist, photographed in her student apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2002 (Robbins, Households: 60-61.) and Aaron Betsky, author of Queer Space

145

n and 88 are men; 103 are white and 11 are visibly not white. The photographs show 20 gay male couples, 1 household of two women,306 10 heterosexual couples, a household involving 3 gay males, and 6 families (including 5 babies and 3 older children). Interes

professionally accomplished, these couples reflect

almost

the desi

307

diversity in the income level of the households represented, from students and artists to a doctor and a museum director, with a large number of architects in between, but all share class and culture traits e the mainstream articles that Urbach describes, Robbins does not shy away from representing the bedrooms of gay men couples, with 9 out of the 20 gay couples shown with their beds; the only household comprised of two women is shown with an exterior landscape only. Robbins also states for many couples, both same-sex and heterosexual, the number of years they have been together. Beyond these statistics, a

and at the time director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and his partner, photographed in Rotterdam in 2004 (ibid., 120-21.). 306

Unlike what he does for other couples, Robbins does not state the number of years these two women have been living together, opening up the possibility that they are only sharing the space without being a couple. There are no descriptive notes for this panel that would allow for more precision on their status. This silence is somewhat troubling considering that it is the only representation of two women living together; as well as echoing the articles discussed by Urbach, it 307

Urbach, "Peeking at Gay Interiors," 38-39. The articles analysed by Urbach include the houses of architects Ron Bentley and Sal LaRosa, buttons shop owners Millicent Safro and Diana Epstein, architects Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti, tennis player Martina Navratilova, architects Bill Ryall and Ted Porter, and interior designers Jed Johnson and Alan Wanzenberg.

146

comparison between some of the households depicted by Robbins can shine further light on his methods and highlight some of the potential readings. One of the common households depicted is the gay men couple, often, but not always, wealthy. For

34)308 photos (Anthony / exterior / living room / mirror exterior / Pierantonio) on opposite pages. They juxtapose the bright and open country house occupied by an unbuttoned Anthony and a shirtless Pierantonio with the darker and more cluttered New York City house and the dressed up couple. In both images, the two men are photographed outside and appear relaxed, but controlled. Compared to other examples, the exterior occupies an important part of the composition, even if the interior shot is at the center of the composition. The descriptive text on page 141 similarly notes that the terrace of their New York brownstone looks like the country more than the city. The text also underlines their class status as it presents them as operating and art and architecture publishing house from the ground floor of their Chelsea brownstone and owning a contemporary art collection displayed in their country house, built in the late 1990s. Another gay men -75; no descriptive notes): is the object of a complex threerows composition against a white page : the first row presents two horizontal sky views; the second shows is composed of Ryan, with cowboy hat (outside main composition), a large interior loft view, Gary, shirtless with cowboy hat, a city view, Ryan, Gary, shirtless; the third row presents two horizontal city views of different lengths. The composition emphasizes the stereotypical cowboy hats 308

All page numbers for Households panels are from Robbins, Households..

147

associated to this culture. The maps on the wall and of the city views anchoring the composition suggest that the couple has links to architecture or city planning.

-47 with descriptive notes on p.142), part of the third series photographed in the Netherlands. The

door of the house / her mother / the living room with a dog / another point of view of outside door. The exterior shots show the modernist character of the house, while the interior has been transformed with eclectic furnishings. Everyone is fully dressed in relaxed clothing. Another group of compositions show single men, often lightly dressed or naked, who, considering the genesis of the project and some contextualizing clues that will be discussed later, are probably -81; no descriptive notes) show, against a white page, a three-panel symmetric composition composed of Tom in a short swimsuit with a dog (Tiger) in his arms / a pool / a mirror image of Tom and his dog. Photographed

body and on the

-129 with long descriptive

notes on p. 150) presents against a white page an inverted T-shaped composition with two central vertical photographs of Peter (naked on top, fully dressed in relaxed clothes on the bottom); the bottom image is flanked by two square mirror images of his 250 square feet studio living room, with murphy bed closed on the left and open on the right. Peter is presented naked, with one leg up, in a 148

pose less rigid than other sitters. The notes and the photos underline the stereotypical artist cramped apartment with traces of artistic production. Other compositions present groups of people who appear to be friends or roommates. For example, 48-49; no descriptive notes) presents four young and middle-aged looking shirtless men in a linear composition : man / living room / man / exterior pool

names and has no descriptive notes. The viewer thus has to create for him or herself a story around the images, although a few visual hints and the context in which the photographs are presented helps, as discussed with earlier examples. For a start, it can easily be supposed that they are guests at a vacation house, but few other links can clearly be made between the men and the décor, since they are not regular occupants of the spaces. The combination, and its presence in the project, still suggests, however, that we might be able to create relations between the place chosen by these men for their vacation and themselves. Or is Robbins implying that the location is not important and that here we should just focus on their bodies? Thanksgiving: Dad, 82, Mom, 77, 52 years, Torrington, Connecticut, -139, with notes on p. 151). Against a white page, Robbins presents a three-panel composition with his father and mother in winter clothes in the snow on each side of a photo of their living room. The composition presents their weekend condo bought in the 1990s. Robbins notes in the descriptive text that some furnishings were created by them and that the choices reflect

149

sitters are being photographed with their respective living space. As they walk through the panels or sed on what they see and their own presuppositions. The people photographed often seem uncomfortable and vulnerable, as if they are not sure exactly how they will appear to the public eye, how their life story will become open to the imagination of the public. These stories can never, however, be fully guessed solely from

coincidence. While the staged photograph makes explicit this tension between privacy and publicity, Robbins implies in his accompanying essay that the same situation also happens in everyday living Households reflect the ways in which we 309

Robbins

with the images and descriptive texts presented without any discussion

somehow muffles the

critique implicit in Households: how are the images presented by Robbins unlike design magazines spreads? T choice of domestic spaces represented usually be found in magazines

naked, awkwardly posed, etc.

and the

not all highly designed spaces for wealthy people as would as does the limited discussion

of the photographs and the careful montages that he designed, but his decisions render the panels no more neutral than the carefully edited features in home and design magazines. However, if the photographs are not accompanied by a subjective description as in magazines, they are also not

309

Robbins, "Model Homes," 10.

150

accompanied by an implicit critique of the ways domestic spaces are assumed to be private, even if this critique is explicit in the accompanying essays in the monograph. e approach

Robbins supposedly leaving untouched the spaces photographed

thus can more easily

more humor-based approach or unexpected juxtapositions can have an eye opening effect on the viewers that will lead to a rethinking of an interview with me. Robbins claims that his project builds on a certain humor that he sees in body types and furnishings choices, but this is not necessarily obvious to an outsider looking at Households.310 didactic in its approach and not explicit enough in its critique, it does not offer a clear entry point itique. He is not the only artist to present works without explicitly stating his critique, obviously, but in his case, in part because of his background as a curator, public advocate and educator, the intention of his critique is clear, but does not come through in the photographic project alone. Robbins himself acknowledges this and claims that his works are often overdetermined because he wants to get his ideas across. 311 While this leaves open potential critical readings of the work, it can also paradoxically frame the project as a simple photographic survey of domestic interiors.

310


311

Ibid.

151

Households questions how domestic interiors relate to self-identifications and reveal to her elements of identity. These issues were already part of some early queer space discourse, in continuity with initial understandings of queer space as space specifically used by gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans people. However, unlike these early projects/discussions, which often concentrated on shared spaces in which few objects/design decisions could be associated to a specific person and his or her self-

hints at notions of taste and critiques of consumer culture

ideas that were already present in his

project with Gianni for the Queer Space exhibition.312 These openings also highlight how sexuality and gender are themselves associated closely to class and age, but also to race. As Urbach already noted in 1992, the presence of gay (mostly male) couples in mainstream design magazines is intrinsically linked

invokes these assumptions by showing a diversity of households which do not necessarily correspond to stereotypes and associations between taste, wealth, and sexual orientation, the vast number of

312

-identifications, see for example Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction : critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979); part II of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981); chapters 3 and 5 of Clare Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home (Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1995); Stephen Harold Riggins, "Fieldwork in the Living Room: An Autoethnographic Essay," in The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-Semiotics of Objects, ed. Stephen Harold Riggins (Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994). These questions will be discussed in more details in chapter 5 in relation to the work of Elmgreen & Dragset.

152

decors that correspond to these associations professions and academic careers

without being questioned or discussed can create further

problematic connections. Households, in its photographic part, documents domestic spaces in a mostly descriptive way without including explicit comments or diverging from the original spaces. Robbins questions some of the assumptions popularly made about domesticity in the essay included in the monograph, but this text is outside the main work, supports rather than participates in the representation of the spaces. The images are a critique of traditional home representations in design magazines, but simultaneously use the same broad language; it is a project by an architect to be seen by architects or people knowledgeable of architectural and design conventions. The following chapters will discuss how artists have approached real or invented domestic spaces and integrated fictitious scenes to overlay new meanings to the original architecture and highlight their queer-informed critiques.

153

Chapter 4. A Queer Modern Home: Dorit Margreiter and the Toxic Titties (Re)construct the Family in Motion In the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski, a pornographer resides in the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, 10104 Angelo View Drive in Los Angeles, a house designed by architect John Lautner. Like many other Lautner-designed houses, the house has appeared prominently in many movies, often serving as dens for evil characters. In 2004, artists Dorit Margreiter and Toxic Titties made their own attempt to transform how the house is represented in film: their project is a filmic documentation of both the house and a performance within it, presented on some occasions in its complete form as a spatial installation in art galleries and on other occasions as a more traditional short film. Unlike Households project which explores various domestic settings to deconstruct general assumptions in the encounter with domestic spaces, Margreiter and the Toxic Titties focus on a single house and attempt to uncover its various meanings, both obvious and latent ones. The work was initiated in 2004 as a joint effort between Vienna-based Margreiter (born 1967) and the Los Angeles-based queer feminist artists-activists collective the Toxic Titties (founded by Heather Cassils, Clover Leary and Julia Steinmetz during their art studies at the California Institute of the Arts, active 2000-2010). Margreiter invited the collective to stage a performance in the famous modernist house that would then be filmed, edited, and projected in galleries. The work follows recent scholarly discussions of the normative aspects of homes, and in this case more specifically modernist houses, challenging the assumptions linked to the modern home seen as a space of experimentation towards 154

313

In a sense, this artistic project is thus much closer to typical

architectural history projects in its investigation of a specific exemplary case. However, if, like ty in a formal art context, Margreiter and the Toxic Titties focus on an overtly queer subversion of domestic space, in contrast

already constructed as a subversion of the original space. The chapter discusses how the double removal of the house from its original context underlines the

space potential. However to edit and complete the video, the collaboration took a negative turn and both sides ended up editing their own cuts of the video and exhibiting and publishing the projects under different titles (10104 Angelo View Drive for Margreiter; At Home with the Toxic Titties and Domestic Bliss at 10104 Angelo View Drive for the Toxic Titties).314 In addition to a discussion of the history of the house in the context of modernist experimentation towards better living, I also analyse the queer intentions of

documentation (video, installation, photos, and essays) produced by the two sides of the collaborative project. I also question the existing discussions of the work that have often ignored the

313

See for example Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities; Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America; Adams, "The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia."; Sanders, Stud: Architectures of Masculinity; Ockman, "Toward a Theory of Normative Architecture." 314

Toxic Titties, "Toxic Titties: Mission," accessed February 2, 2011, http://www.toxictitties.com/mission.html; Dorit Margreiter, 10104 Angelo View Drive (Vienna: MUMOK, 2004).

155

f the house presents a challenge not only to normative domesticity, but also to normative representations of domestic architecture. Finally, I reflect on the choice of a Lautner house by the artists, in reaction to my own initial contact with Margreiter an to realize: why did they choose to approach domesticity through a house already so marked with visible and conflicting meanings?

10104 Angelo View Drive: a performance / a video / an installation 10104 Angelo View Drive image (fig. 26): We see a view as if from the cockpit of a landing airplane while before us, some distance away, is the hazy silhouette of a large city. At first the film image has a static effect and, although we appear to be gliding high over the buildings, we are not moving. Right through the panorama runs a vertical tear that slowly widens, out of sync with the edge of the image, behind it the film remains visible. From the vertical line comes a somewhat sharper and somewhat clearer image within the image, which finally takes up the entire screen.315 Michalka continues with a description of the film structure that notes the use of static views interspersed with one camera pan spread throughout the film to performance. His essay, the opening one for the 10104 Angelo View Drive catalogue published for

and artists involved of the work.

315

Matthias Michalka, "10104 Angelo View Drive," in 10104 Angelo View Drive, ed. Dorit Margreiter (Vienna: MUMOK, 2004), 84.

156

Figure 26. Dorit Margreiter & The Toxic Titties. 10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004, film still. Credit: Dorit Margreiter / the TOXIC TITTIES (Heather Cassils, Clover Leary, Julia Steinmetz).

For 10104 Angelo View Drive, Margreiter invited the Toxic Titties to develop a filmed performance316 that would add new layers of meaning to the already charged readings of the SheatsGoldstein Residence. Since the early 1990s, Margreiter has worked in photography, video, film and installations and taught video art in Vienna, building a body of work critiquing the social

316

The performance was developed specifically for the film. It was performed without an audience on location, with a conscious intention that people watching the filmed work would be the only audience for the performance. Heather Cassils and Clover Leary, interview with author, Skype, April 25, 2012.

157

construction of the modern built environment and architectural spaces.317 She regularly explores issues of gender, popular and high culture, and the representational politics of art and architecture in a modernist aesthetics. Most of her works also play with the codes of documentary film. 10104 is her first work in film, completed the same year as

,

another film investigating the relation between Liverpool and the origins of cinema. Earlier works such as Short Hills (1999) or Case Study #22 (2001) had already questioned the representations of the domestic and of the aesthetics of everyday life in both video and photo format. In Short Hills, Margreiter documents her Chinese-American aunt and c soaps and links them with their domestic space through videos displayed over a model of the suburban developments where they live.318 In Case Study #22, Margreiter revisits the celebrated Shulman photograph of the Case Study #22 House (see fig. 22 authentic conversation of the two women makes the aesthetic of the everyday visible as a permanent (self-

319

Works like The She Zone (with Anette Baldauf, 2004),

documenting a women-only shopping space, or Poverty Housing, America, Georgia (with Rebecca Baron, 2008), on the re-enactment and display of poverty in North American theme park replicating an existing South African slum, underline how societies display social inequalities and marginalities (gender separation, poverty) through the creation of separated architectural spaces. Finally, projects like the photo series Original Condition (2006-2009), which displays real estate advertisements for

317

See for example Barbara Clausen, "Dorit Margreiter," Artforum, September 2008, 446.

318

See Dorit Margreiter, Eva Maria Stadler, and Yvonne Volkart, Dorit Margreiter: Short Hills [Grazer Kunstverein, 19. Nov. 1999 - 20. Jan. 2000] (Frankfurt am Main; Graz: Revolver; Grazer Kunstverein, 2002). 319

Sabeth Buchmann, "Eyes on the World," in 10104 Angelo View Drive, ed. Dorit Margreiter (Vienna: MUMOK, 2004), 98.

158

family homes designed by renowned male architects in Los Angeles,320 continue 10104 Angelo View Drive

edia codes and networks. Unlike

other film and video work by Margreiter, 10104 has no display of the words and typography attached to architecture (see for example zentrum (2004-ongoing)) nor verbal narration and relies only on the editing of images of the house and scenes from the Toxic Titties performance.321 In comparison, the Toxic Titties have been less engaged with architecture specifically and more with normativity associated with gender, sexuality, and class. They had already, however, done some performances specifically targeted at spatial normativity, such as the IKEA Project (2001), when

familiar notions of gender, sexuality, and class within pop culture, fem

322

to bring queer perversions into cultural ideals.323 Building on the practices of 1970s feminism, especially those centered on performance and body art, the Toxic Titties are interested in the embodied experience of the house, in li environments that denaturalize familiar social models and animate questions of subjectivity and

ident of their projects were also engaged with the representations

324

While performance-based, many

and the politics of representation

of

320

André Rottmann, "The Artist as Topologist: Notes on the Work of Dorit Margreiter," in 'Dorit Margreiter. Description, ed. Lynne Cooke (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2011), 100-1; 07-8 321

Penelope Curtis, "Revival Hepworth, or Speaking for Sculpture," Sculpture Journal 17, no. 2 (2008): 131.

322

Julia Steinmetz, Heather Cassils, and Clover Leary, "Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 31, no. 3 (2006): 754. 323

Toxic Titties, "Toxic Titties: Mission".

324

Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, "Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft," 754.

159

these performances. The Toxic Titties also critique institutions in many of their projects, often

Going on in the Toxic Titties VIP Area? (2003) at the gala opening of REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, later reproduced in other cities, or in their IKEA Project, but at other times, such as in their infiltration of a Vanessa Beecroft performance at the Beverly Hills Gagosian Gallery (2002, addition to formalized institutions (art centers, multinational corporations), they also challenge social institutions, and especially the normativity that creeps through some feminist and gay and Toxic Union (CalArts gallery space, 2002), an

325

or their Camp TT (2001), an hybrid symposium-summer

camp organized to revitalize community interest in feminist and queer issues. One of the early attempts from the Toxic Titties to address issues of normative domesticity, and particularly normative repres 1994 advertising campaign targeting gay couples.326

IKEA Project reframes the script of

the advertisement that depicted a gay couple on an American network television for the first time. The Toxic Titties replace the white middle class gay couple, whom they see presented in a very hetero-normative context, with repeated scenes of four women, Toxic Titties members, enacting the

325

Toxic Titties, "Toxic Titties Take on Gay Marriage," accessed February 2, 2011, http://www.toxictitties.com/projects/toxicunion.html. 326

For a discussion of how the IKEA campaign fits within representations of LGBT people in mainstream advertising, see Comeforo, "Mis(Sed) Representations: Lgbt Imagery in Mainstream Advertising," 94.

160

the original ad is followed by five increasingly exaggerated re-enactments. Through the use of wigs, old-fashioned clothes, food and over-the-top acting, as well as the representation of a family of four adult women, the Toxic Titties present repeated caricatures that critique idealized traditional constructions of domesticity and families, even when applied to same-sex couples as did IKEA (fig. 27). In addition to an explicit critique of marketing strategies, the collective underlines the invisibility that still marks non-traditional households and questions the alleged opportunities of being safely visible in public for queer people. The parodic representations of non-traditional families are an ironic take to draw attention to the numerous people ignored by mainstream representations, exemplified by the IKEA campaign, ignore even when they are attempting to expand their scope to appear inclusive.327 also in other works including their performance in the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, underlines their acerbic critique in a boldly expressive way. The exaggeration that permeates the project presents a non-realistic domesticity, or at least a domesticity diverging from mainstream representations of domestic environments, and even of non-traditional ones such as same-sex couples as the Toxic Titties imply by targeting the IKEA ad, that can only question its viewers. This positions the project Households which, as discussed in the previous chapter, is paradoxically didactical but not very clear in its results. The IKEA Project is obviously dissimilar to Households: it is fictionally constructed and makes no claim to any relation to existing spaces; it does not focus on depicting actual domestic spaces, but instead critiques

327

Interestingly, the Toxic Titties got a very positive reaction from IKEA and were allowed to do a follow-up performance in the IKEA Burbank store. They understood the reaction as being driven by an interest in showing for onal global positioning and marketing. Heather Cassils and Clover Leary, interview with author, Skype, April 25, 2012.

161

representations of domesticity; it was presented in film festivals and re-performed in an IKEA store instead of being presented in galleries and a book. Because of their shared critique of representations

-guessing of the stories behind the photographs, even if both depict non-traditional sexualities. The ironic take present in the IKEA Project is a hallmark of the Toxic 10104 Angelo View Drive.

Figure 27. The Toxic Titties. IKEA Project, 2001, video still. Credit: the TOXIC TITTIES (Heather Cassils, Clover Leary, Julia Steinmetz).

162

theorists, as is often the case with artists working in video. 10104 is, however, a collaboration where the contribution of each one is clearly demarcated. Their approaches do not combine in the work, but are instead juxtaposed and superimposed, creating two layers of meaning that themselves add to

history to frame their intervention: Margreiter revisits filmic codes to document its architecture, while the Toxic Titties problematize the iconography of the period in which the house was built by using b-

-mod 328

The Toxic Titties

staged a performance depicting five scenes with the help of eight other performers:329 in the kitchen, mifears); in the living room, a television-watching couple interrupted by a couple in drag having sex; in -dressed swimmer; in another room, a group of villains/army generals plotting the next world war and world domination with paramilitary training taking place around the pool (to problematize feminist and military aesthetics); and a glamourous house party at dusk in the living room.330 From the performances and footage filmed around the house, Margreiter edited a 6 minutes 56 seconds 16mm film that mixes static views of the house (fig. 28

29).

328

Toxic Titties, "Domestic Bliss at 10104 Angelo View Drive," accessed February 2, 2011, http://www.toxictitties.com/projects/invasion.html. 329

In addition to Heather Cassils, Clover Leary and Julia Steinmetz, the following performers were involved: Vanessa Craig, Cathy Davies, Matt Dunnerstick, Rebecca Elswitt, Sara Jordeno, Michael Mandiberg, Emily Roysdon, Michelle Sinigayan. Margreiter, 10104 Angelo View Drive: 130. 330

The Toxic Titties performed with a limited number of people on set, but the performances were designed in Heather Cassils and Clover Leary, interview with author, Skype, April 25, 2012.

163


164


glimpses staged by her through the representation of the house.331 Unsatisfied with their presence in the final edit, the Toxic Titties edited an alternative 6 minutes 19 seconds cut (from digital transfers and small digital images) with more emphasis on the performances, keeping almost 3 minutes of footage from the performances with much shorter static sequences cut and interspersed throughout.332

331

Canadian Centre for Architecture and SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montréal, QC, January 16, 2014) 332

A film festival described the Toxi Outfest, "Shorts: Ends of Gays," Outfest, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, accessed January 22, 2014, http://www.outfest.org/tixSYS/2006/filmguide/eventnote.php?EventNumber=4894.

165

Toxic Titties kept the ambient sounds and dialogues, albeit in a subdued manner that do not propel the viewer to focus on what is being said. In both cases, the edits organize the static views and

image of the city through the opening window and finishing with views of the pool at night. When

onto a free-floating screen in one half of a gallery. In the other half, a spotlight illuminates a television sitting on a plywood reproduction of a Lautner-designed concrete table with integrated movable television shown in the film. A list of the participants involved in the realization of the work plays on the television. In some exhibitions, a screen separates the two halves of the space (fig. 30).

Figure 30. Dorit Margreiter & The Toxic Titties. 10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004, views of the installation in two configurations. Credit: Dorit Margreiter / the TOXIC TITTIES (Heather Cassils, Clover Leary, Julia Steinmetz). The Toxic Titties also stated in an interview with me that they felt the 10104 Angelo View Drive catalogue appropriated that there can be a genuine connection between a modernist architecture, fascist esoterics, erotic male fantasies, aseptic sex, and twisted psychos is also suggested in the scenes acted out by the "Toxic Titties." One could recognize in their imitation of the 1970s science fiction ultra-feminist scenarios of a male-productive-organ liberated propagation a certain precondition of a post-patriarchal world order of women. The fact that the dildos that turn up in the group sex scene not only have homosexual connotations but as such caricature the phallocentric order which, according to poststructuralist psychoanalysis, is not only the basis of the reigning sexual morality but also of the entire Christian-humanist Western Buchmann, "Eyes on the World," 104-05. Matthias Michalka, "10104 Angelo View Drive," ibid., 87.

166

10104 was exhibited across Europe (Vienna, Brno, an underground passage in Cologne, Leipzig, Madrid) and North America (Montreal, Los Angeles) in its installation version, but it also screened in film festivals (for example, both versions of the film have been screened at two different festivals in Vienna interestingly, the Margreiter version at a queer festival and the Toxic Titties one at a

The SheatsMargreiter and the Toxic Titties use as primary material a 1960s house in Beverly Hills, known as the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, chosen by Margreiter. The choice is both pragmatic easy to rent for films and events

the house is

and symbolic. The house was built in 1963 following plans by

architect John Lautner for Dr. Paul Henry and Helen Taylor Sheats, parents of a family of five children (fig. 31).333 The Sheats and Lautner had already worked together on the celebrated 1948 apartment building in Westwood.334 Lautner describes the 1963 project: This residence has bedrooms for the children at one end of the plan and a master suite at a lower level at the other end. This with free living-dining-kitchen space between allowed for mutual privacy in living. The determining idea for this concept was building into the rocky mountain-side site for real California living. To do this we created a concrete open-ended cave off the slope (no walls as such). A cantilever concrete terrace of a swimming pool formed a free space below for master bedroom suite with windows into the side of the pool and openable glass walls to the city view. The kitchen and dining include slide open skylights for sun and air inside and out. 335

333

Richard J. Williams notes the importance of Helen Taylor Sheats, an artist who, according to her website, worked as a collaborator on , on the Sheats House and on two other unbuilt projects for the family. Richard J. Williams, "Pornomodernism," in Sex and Buildings: Modern Architecture and the Sexual Revolution (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 119. quoting "Helen Taylor Sheats: Biography," accessed October 17, 2010, http://www.helenart.com/bio.php 334

Thomas S. Hines, "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner," in Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, ed. Thomas S. Hines (New York: Rizzoli, 2010), 624. 335

"John Lautner: Goldstein Residence," GA Houses 2008, 80.

167

The Sheats moved out after a few years and, after being owned for brief periods by two other households, current owner James Goldstein bought the house in 1972. 336 According to Goldstein, e house

until roughly 1979 when I brought him over

337

Working with Lautner, and

n Nicholson, Goldstein engaged into an extensive overhaul and remodelling of the property. The transformations, still ongoing, aimed

technological lim transformations were done without any major organizational changes; such changes would only come in the 2000s after Goldstein bought the neighbouring house, also designed by Lautner, to create a new entertainment wing for the house. The first transformations included finely finished and detailed frameless glass, new baths, concrete cabinets, a new main bedroom designed as one continuous space, and a swimming pool renovation that moved the water level up to the edge of the terrace, a precursor to the contemporary infinity pool. According to Lautner, the transformations 338

336

plaster, formica were employed to fill in the gaps. Goldstein found wall-to-wall green shag carpet throughout the house, the poured-concrete structures, including the triangle-patterned living roomceiling, was painted in black, white and green, ould see the treats!, no. 2 (2011).) 337

James Goldstein quoted in ibid.

338

"John Lautner: Goldstein Residence," 80; Adam Baer, "If You Were Cool, Rich, or Bad Enough to Live Here, You'd Be Home: Film Culture's Obsession with the Architecture of John Lautner," Virginia Quarterly Review 89, no. 1 (2013): 112.

168

Figure 31. John Lautner. Sheats-Goldstein Residence, 1963/1979-current, Los Angeles, CA. From left: lower level plan; main entry level plan; section. Credit: John Lautner Foundation.

The Sheats-

following pages, but also because of the story of its occupants. The house was originally designed for a large family, but it is its transformation into a bachelor pad for an eccentric millionaire that has made it famous in the public consciousness almost as much as its presence in films (encouraged by gerness to rent the space whenever he is not home

which is often considering he

travels over 300 days of the year to catch as many fashion shows and basketball games as he can). Few people know exactly how Goldstein made his fortune

most think it is through real estate

ventures in Los Angeles to which could be

169

339

Like Lautner, Goldstein grew up in the Midwest and discovered a passion for architecture, and more specifically for Frank Lloyd Wright, at an early age.340 After moving to Los Angeles, Goldstein found the Sheats R

esidence for sale

-conformist, just like me. I

had spent two years looking in Los Angeles for an unusual house with a view, and when I saw this one, I knew instantly that this was it!"341 Goldstein thus chose the house because it was out of the ordinary. Although he transformed it in the following years, he initially saw it as being already far from the typical modernist house. -Goldstein Residence is a structural and technological tour de

Margreiter and the Toxic Titties play. Discussions and exhibitions of Margreiter and the Toxic

(2010, curated by Lesley Johnstone),

342

However, their

339

James Goldstein, "James Goldstein," accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.jamesfgoldstein.com/; Donnelly, "Goldsteinland". 340

-designed Johnson Wax plant. In

moved out here and started traveling to Europe and being exposed to more and more varieties of architecture, I developed an appreciation for old designs that I never had as a boy, but at the same time I wanted to have something Donnelly, "Goldsteinland". 341

Goldstein quoted in Susan Doubilet, "Living in Modern Monuments," Town and Country, October 2001.

342

http://www.macm.org/en/expositions/yesterday%E2%80%99s-tomorrows/; Lesley Johnstone, Les Lendemains D'hier / Yesterday's Tomorrows (Montréal: Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2010).

170

goals at the core of the work. Although clearly modernist and sharing some ideals with other midtwentieth-century high and vernacular houses, particularly in their open plans and relation to the exterior, his projects also carry qualities inherited from Frank Lloyd Wright, but developed by Lautner in an extreme way that make him an outsider to the canon of modern houses. Lautner was notoriously ignored by most of the modernist intelligentsia, especially after his Googie phase. 343 As

as House and Garden and Playboy, professional architecture periodicals practically ignored Lautner's work during his design prime in the 1960s and '70s. And when critics and theorists did discuss Lautner's buildings, they often characterized them as the worst form of kitsch

guilty pleasures

344

atypical not only in their design, but also in their reception and position within the modernist canon. They are not, through their use in numerous movies, as will be discussed later. While their unique qualities have made his projects powerful stage sets for Hollywood movies, and therefore an easy target for Margreiter and the Toxic Titties, they also distinguish them from the typical modernist domestic

343

oped

Angeles. The name Googie was applied to an architectural style by Douglas Haskell, editor of House and Home magazine, in an ironic article written in 1952 (Douglas Haskell, "Googie Architecture," House and Home, February 1952.). Lautner to the margins of the modern movement. Lautner reacted by staying away from most publicity for the rest of his career. See Hines, "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner," 619-21; Alan Hess, Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004). Lautner was not the only modernist architect to be ignored by his peers during his career. Other examples include Eero Saarinen or Paul Rudolph in the later parts of their careers. For a discussion of changing critical and professional reception of their work, see for example Alice T. Friedman, American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010), 10-12; 144-47. 344

Jon Yoder, "A View to Kill For," Modern Painters, July-August 2008, 61.

171

environments whose normative aesthetic is described by many commentators as being critiqued by s and interpretations of Margreiter and the Toxic

his move from Taliesin West to Los Angeles in 1938, Lautner was initially still much attached to 345

lans, overlapping low roofs, merged indoors and outdoors.346 For example, in the Schaffer Residence (1949), which recently featured in the movie A Single Man (directed by Tom Ford, 2009, fig. 32 spaces where light filters through redwood fencing, dematerializing the boundaries.347 As Thomas

room acts as fulcrum between obliquely angled wings for living and dining, on the one hand, and for 348

Similar spatial compositions opening up spaces appear

345

Hines, "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner," 613-14.

346

Ibid., 624-25.

347

Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, John Lautner (Köln: Taschen, 1999), 26-39; 46-51. Discussed in Hines, "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner," 625. 348

Hines, "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner," 625.

172

Figure 32. Film stills from A Single Man, directed by Tom Ford, 2009.

isual and physical connection between interior and exterior, a characteristic of Californian architecture that Lautner develops to its extreme in projects like the Sheats-Goldstein Residence. For example, one of e Foster Carling House (1947), features a lily pool that penetrates the living room, sliced into inside/outside sections by a movable wall of glass. In the 173

he pool, a feat made possible by California's moderate climate. Instead of walls, he designed an invisible curtain of forced air from floor to ceiling along the room's edge. The air curtain was, however, later replaced with windows and, after Goldstein acquired the house, with unframed glass trying to replicate the effect of the air curtain. The pool is also visible from the bedroom: one side has windows looking into the pool, while the remaining sides present all-glass walls that slide back at one cantilevered corner to create an open deck.349 While early houses did not feature as many technological innovations, this interest took an ever-

importantly to emphasize exterior views. For example, Hines notes that, in the 1947 Foster Carling House, in a technologically dazzling but functionally questionable feature, an extruded bay and built-in sofa of the Carling living room pivots and swings open to an out-ofdoors deck above the pool. Was the large, fabric-covered sofa truly practical as patio furniture when wheeled into the sun and wind of its outside setting? Why would a client possibly want such an awkward and expensive contraption? Its rationale 350 would seem t This interest in the technological reaches its apex in mid-career projects around the time the Sheats-

Reiner-Burchill House, also known as Silvertop (1956), John Reese discusses the innovative double ceilings with acoustical tiles that can easily be removed to get at electrical circuits, air ducts and communication systems. However, as Hines notes, Reese ponders with mixed emotions that with 349

Doubilet, "Living in Modern Monuments."

350


174

you touch the right button, and the bottom board of the cypress siding silently folds, exposing a lighted well with all of the electrical outlets you need." Reese also notes that a tunnel harbored an

h of another button, "part of the glass dining room wall will glide open, and the table will roll silently onto the terrace. Kitchen range and refrigerator will be ambulatory too for alfresco cooking, but someone with crude animal muscle must still carry out the chairs." Ultimately those gadgets were never realized.351 Margreiter and the Toxic Titties focus on similar design elements that characterize the Sheats-Goldstein Residence. Hines es, the architect's designs for built-in and freestanding furniture achieve a monumental elegance but pose problems in their 352

But if these complex technological gadgets, for which Lautner

has been as much admired as criticized, give a futurist atmosphere to his houses, other low-tech details are also a major part of many of his designs. For example, in the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, hts created by setting into the triangular coffers of the concrete upturned drinking glasses that let in streams of 353

351

John Reese, "Dream House or Nightmare?," Saturday Evening Post, August 20, 1960. Discussed in Hines, "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner," 640. 352


353

Lautner quoted in Baer, "If You Were Cool, Rich, or Bad Enough to Live Here, You'd Be Home: Film Culture's Obsession with the Architecture of John Lautner," 112.

175

Richard J. Williams, in Sex and Buildings

-Goldstein House that best represents the transformation of Lautner from the 354

arc

by its existence since 1972 when Jim Goldstein bought

355

To illustrate his point, Williams

semi-public museum.356 One aspect of this consists of how the house is not only used by Goldstein, but is also rented for movies and parties357 or routinely opened to visitors. As Williams describes:

private, the opportunity, in other words, to see the private world of a public figure use is more or less completely open to view in an exhibitionistic scheme, in which Goldstein undoubtedly derives pleasure from his admirable openness. [Williams] wandered at will through the house for hours, jumped on the beds, inspected his wardrobe and his antique Rolls, admired the photographs of friends and lovers, and of the man himself nothing, it seemed, was off limits. What remained at the end was a strange emptiness, though, as if once everything had curiously, was the image that stayed with me afterwards - an image in which everything pointed towards sex, but remained at the level of fantasy.358 This last sentence underlines how, for Williams, the transformations brought by Goldstein have transformed the house to be about the body and sexuality:

354

Williams, "Pornomodernism," 118.

355

Ibid., 120.

356

Ibid., 121-27.

357

The parties hosted by Goldstein are some of the most legendary Hollywood parties, according to journalist Joe Donnelly. Donnelly, "Goldsteinland". 358


176

heterosexual male fantasy house from the plan up, full of spaces to watch women, a realization of many of the ideals of the P provides ample opportunity for the display of the body, and numerous spaces in which sex might occur, its jokes (of which there are many) depend on understanding that sexuality is normally kept hidden. So the most sexualized spaces of the house, in the master bedroom, all play with voyeurism and/or exhibitionism, a duality that depends for its effect on the assumption that seeing a naked body, or being seen naked, is of itself extraordinary and, by extension, arousing.359 But in arguing how the meanings of the original family house were transformed, Williams paradoxically describes only the additions and ignores any modifications done to the organisation of the original building: he writes about the current decoration by Goldstein and about the additions done outside of the house: a skylight bedroom designed by artist James Turrell in 2009, a main bedroom underneath the pool with one bed facing views of the city and another looking up the pool, an open-plan bathroom with an entirely mirrored space and an outdoor shower on a public terrace.360 This once again makes clear how the original house, though designed for a nuclear family, could easily be repurposed for a less traditional way of living, even if the space is now overwhelmingly marked as masculinist and heteronormative. Machine for Living, Machine for Looking Lautner is obviously not the only modernist architect using glass technology to reinvent the relation

359

Ibid., 124-25.

360

Ibid., 124.

177

Farnsworth House (1951) or Philip objectives were integral in many working class suburban developments.361 However, Lautner goes

have remarked, his domestic architecture is one that creates machines for looking. For example,

look out at a landscape, which is fundamentally different from what many architects do even to this 362

Whereas other architects start from the exterior and then organize views within an

overarching design, Lautner takes the opposite approach, as he explained: "It's thinking right from scratch and having a major idea, from inside. I've never designed a facade in my life."363 As Hines notes, in the Sheats-

Nearer the entrance, as it nestles into the hill, the central space is intentionally dark, but the house grows lighter as it approaches the edges. On both the upper level and in the bedroom suites below, obliquely angled glass walls open dramatically to the

364

Jon Yoder links this characteristic to

Of course, many architects of Lautner's generation employed similar "bubble" diagrams, but few ever managed this level of complexity. And most surrendered

361

See Nigel Whiteley, "Intensity of Scrutiny and a Good Eyeful: Architecture and Transparency," Journal of Architectural Education 56, no. 4 (2003); Sandy Isenstadt, "Four Views, Three of Them through Glass," in Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision, ed. Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). 362

Frank Escher quoted in Baer, "If You Were Cool, Rich, or Bad Enough to Live Here, You'd Be Home: Film Culture's Obsession with the Architecture of John Lautner," 123. 363

John Lautner quoted in Jon Yoder, "John Lautner: Diagramming Vision in Los Angeles," ArcCA: the journal of the American Institute of Architects, California Council. 5, no. 3 (2005): 28. 364


178

Lautner often began projects by taking a topographic map to the building site and

buildings as free of visible obstructions as possible, [to open] the viewing "apertures" of his wide angle spaces.365 For many historians, it is this investment by Lautner in the act of looking that has led to the overwhelming presence of his houses in Hollywood movies.366 The Sheats-Goldstein Residence itself has appeared in at least four major movies (

(2003), Bandits (2001), The

Big Lebowski (1998), Playing God (1997)) often to house evil or marginal characters

music

videos, photo shoots, and at least one pornographic movie.367 Other Lautner houses have been

families.368

Lautner's uncompromising resistance to the clean,

rectilinear lines of the normative post-war

365

Yoder, "John Lautner: Diagramming Vision in Los Angeles," 28.

366

See Joseph Rosa, "Tearing Down the House: Modern Homes in the Movies," in Architecture and Film, ed. Mark Lamster (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000); Yoder, "A View to Kill For." Both are reprinted in Benjamin Critton, ed. Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films, vol. 1 (New Haven, CT: Number One, 2010). publication brings together articles discussing the presence of modern houses in Hollywood movies, often depicted as dens for evil people, and photos from such movies. Of the eight movies depicted four star Lautner houses, one of them being the Sheats-Goldstein Residence. The four remaining are all by different architects. A (partial) list of Lautner houses (other than the Sheats-Goldstein) which have appeared in films: Elrod House (1968) in Diamonds Are Forever (1971); Garcia House (1958) in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989); Jacobsen House (1947) in Twilight, 1998; Schaffer House (1949) in Happy Endings (2005) and A Single Man (2009); Silvertop (1956) in Less Than Zero (1987); Chemosphere (1958) in Body Double (1984), (2000 ), a 1964 episode of The Outer Limits and a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. See Baer, "If You Were Cool, Rich, or Bad Enough to Live Here, You'd Be Home: Film Culture's Obsession with the Architecture of John Lautner," 107; The John Lautner Foundation, "Movies Featuring Lautner Buildings," The John Lautner Foundation, accessed November 27, 2013, http://www.johnlautner.org/wp/?p=32; Steve Parnell, "Space-Age Screen Idol Architecture," The Architect's Journal, March 19, 2009, 45-46. 367

Donnelly, "Goldsteinland".

The house has appeared in at least one adult movie, although Goldstein refuses to acknowledge the fact. Williams, "Pornomodernism," 125. 368

Alan Hess, The Architecture of John Lautner (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), 108.

179

cinematic ne'er-do-wells, helped by exuberant gimmicks such as pools that flow between inside and outside and whole walls with built-

369

Jon Yoder further argues that

work, including the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, is ocularcentric, that he designed machines for

for form. Extreme visual stimulation, of course, has typically been more acceptable in the 370

It

is this emphasis on the visual relation to the exterior, through enveloping views free from a Cartesian

movies. Yoder points out, however, that even in cinema visual pleasure is often construed as excess, hence the

voyeuristic.371 Williams understands this emphasis on the visual as part of another trend. He discusses structures: because the number of modern houses built was fairly limited, most people would be

369

Parnell, "Space-Age Screen Idol Architecture," 45-46.

370

Yoder, "A View to Kill For," 62. Yoder also points out tha to construct "widewideextra- wide aspect ratio of 2.35:1 instead of the standard US wide371

Ibid., 61.

r's houses as locations were shot in the Ibid., 60. onments,

-ocular bias progenito the seed of imilitary violence by Paul Virilio. Vision became the ideological villain. Ocularcentric projects like those of Lautner were subsequently cast as complicit with voyeuristic, pornographic, spectacular, racist, and panoptic modes of visual oppression. Ibid., 62.

180

more likely to encounter them through photographic reproductions rather than by visiting one and thus these houses needed to project a strong image to make their impact.372 was largely ignored in architectural publications, Williams argues that this was especially the case with him, as he was known mostly through publications and representations where his projects were sexualized: for example, as prototypes towards the ultimate bachelor pad in the pages of Playboy (see for example fig. 33);373 bikini-clad women; or even in their iconization by editor Benedikt Taschen, who became famous through its catalogue offering a mix Chemosphere (1960). As Williams point out, this is ironic considering that Lautner had conceived these houses for family life, in keeping with his own puritanical upbringing.374

Figure 33. Feature on John Lautner's Elrod House in Playboy November 1971 issue 372


373

Williams for example underlines how the Sheatstion in a Playboy piece, written just a year after its construction. It refers to a house with a special design of pool: 'the master bedroom literally faced on the pool - not looking down on it, looking into it - on the other side of the glass was water. You peered through the panes and saw the bodies of the swimmers from underneath.' It was an effect that the author 'was later to Bernard Wolfe, "Swimming in Red Ink," Playboy, July 1964, 100. Quoted in Williams, "Pornomodernism," 119. What Williams fails to note is that the article, a humor piece on expensive pools, never mentions the name of the house, only that Lautner designed it. 374


181

The case of Lautner is also ambiguous in relation to the wider post-war context. His focus on the view towards the exterior is often used to dismiss him from the modernist canon, even if it is in fact only an exaggerated version of the modernist attempt at framing private views of a landscape in each individual home. As Sandy Isenstadt argues, the beautiful landscape view was at the core of the postwar American suburban home, the leading resource for and symbol of domestic character.375 However, and Isenstadt is not the only one to argue this, most American homes were designed with great windows that looked out on nothing in particular, even if they derived from exemplary modernist houses where windows were there for good reason.376 Because the Toxic Titties and Margreiter uses a house surrounded with this charged context to create a performance and fauxdocumentary that comment on traditional households, Hollywood normativity, divergent

technological details, the resulting effect for anyone who ever had any contact with the house, even if only through its cinematic depiction, seems a

How Do You Read a Queer Feminist Take on a Mid-Century House?

is echoed in the treatment the work has received by reviewers, curators, and historians. Discussions works often analyse in details the feminist and

375

Isenstadt, "Four Views, Three of Them through Glass," 214.

376

Thomas Hine, "The Search for the Postwar House," in Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses, ed. Elizabeth A.T. Smith (Los Angeles & Cambridge, MA: Museum of Contemporary Art & MIT Press, 1989), 172.

182

queer aspects of their projects,377 but most discussions of 10104 Angelo View Drive focus on the formal aspects of the work. For example, Lesley Johnstone in her essay for the catalogue i 378

explicit, but she does not analyse how the artists unpack the power structures at play in the production and representation of architecture. Similarly, Matthias Michalka, in his essay for the 10104 Angelo View Drive catalogue, also partly reproduced in the

/

Tomorrows catalogue, focuses largely on describing the apparatus of the camera and the dynamics of the house, suggesting a disconnection between the cinematic medium and the mechanics of the house, projecting a fragmentary architecture. It is only through the presence of the Toxic Titties that

uncomfortably enmeshed with the social, the fictional with the documentary, the symbolic with the political dimensions.379 representations of architecture and domesticity, but he simultaneously notes that the queer takeover of the house by the Toxic Titties co

-documentary. For him,

377

Kaucyila Brooke and Dorit Margreiter, Gendered Geographies (Zurich, Switzerland: Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, 2002); Dorit Margreiter and Kaucyila Brooke, Two or Three Things You Know About Me (Vienna, Austria: Typodruck Sares, 2003); Sabine Schaschl-Cooper et al., Cooling Out : On the Paradox of Feminism (Zurich; New York, NY: JRP/Ringier; [Distributed in USA by] D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2008). The Toxic Titties have been less covered, but discussions of their work explicitely refers to their queer feminist discourse: Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, "Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft."; Kristen Raizada, "An Interview with the Guerrilla Girls, Dyke Action Machine (Dam!), and the Toxic Titties," NWSA Journal 19, no. 1 (2007). 378

Johnstone, Les Lendemains D'hier / Yesterday's Tomorrows: 37.

379

Michalka, "10104 Angelo View Drive," 86-88.

183

the association of clearly fictional performances and documentaryevels of 380

His understanding may be in part a reaction

ing of the installation similarly focuses on

381

However, she underlines how this use of the medium allows Margreiter to expose the false polarity of documentation and fiction, to contest classifications based on visuality to instead draw attention to social, economic, cultural, psychological, emotional, sexual, and other codes.382 The role of the Toxic Titties is thus underplayed in most discussions, relegated as background 383

This may be in part a consequence of the limited

success of Margreiter herself in maximising the also be a result of a misreading of the relation between both parts of the work. It also points to how -Goldstein presents a challenge not only to normative domesticity, but also to normative representations of domestic architecture and critiques

380

Ibid., 88.

381

Colomina, Privacy and Publicity : Modern Architecture as Mass Media.

382

Buchmann, "Eyes on the World," 97.

383

program and discussion, Canadian Centre for Architecture and SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montréal, QC, January 16, 2014)

184

formal way contradicts the corporeal approach of the Toxic Titties, almost negating their work, and brings the film and installation closer to formal readings of mid-century architecture. For example,

mance. She notes that the shrill, alien presentation in which the performers surface in 10104 Angelo View Drive does not in any way give rise to the impression that they belong in a conceptualist architectural documentation and all the less so with regard to what they do: deviant sex, infantile doctor games, and planning the next world war. Instead of the tension of the psycho genre, the scenes exude the somewhat trite camp glamour of the 1970s science-fiction horror trash, which they also refer to via their costumes.384 But this under representation of the Toxic Titties, combined with the pejorative wording used by

exhibited by Margreiter is not what was initially envisioned by the Toxic Titties. Moved to the side by the older feminist artist after the filming and unsatisfied with the limited appearance of their performance in the film, they edited their own version of the film, At Home with the Toxic Titties. The difference in titles clearly states the differences between both endeavours: while one offers the appearance of neutrality of a documentary, the other insists on the domesticity of the building, a home. The Hollywood-themed performance devised by the Toxic Titties is also for them an attempt to show how the house, built by Lautner with utopian ideals for domestic bliss, was then coopted, 385

384

Buchmann, "Eyes on the World," 104.

385

Heather Cassils and Clover Leary, interview with author, Skype, April 25, 2012.

185

For 10104 Angelo View Drive, the Toxic Titties had been invited by Margreiter; they realized they were not satisfied with the result only once Margreiter completed her cut of the film. A few years e Los Angeles VB46 performance by Vanessa Beecroft, an artist sometimes described as post-feminist.386 They were hired to work as naked models for the performance. While initial plans to act during the performance fell through, the collective reacted later by writing an essay published the Spring 2006 issue of Signs in which they proposed to hijack VB46 in order to suggest a set of readings inaccessible to the uninformed VB46, [they] expand the fram production, the subjectivity of her live models, the photographic and video contemporary art market.387 Through descriptions of the backstage conditions of production of her work, they underline how she places herself outside the work, unlike feminist performance artists who place themselves as subjects of the work (with agency) in an objectified position in order to assert their sexuality and question the power dynamics of viewing. They particularly critique how the process behind the work is not revealed in the performance or its photographic representations. They also highlight how the 386

Post-feminism is understood as a reaction, starting in the 1980s, to the perceived contradictions or absences of 1960s and 1970s second-feminism has itself been criticized for its role in undermining the major steps achieved by feminism in achieving greater equality for women and other groups by giving the impression that full equality is attained and that there are no struggles left. It also Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age (New York: Routledge, 1991); Amelia Jones, "Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art," in New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, ed. Joana Frueh, Cassandra L. Langer, and Arlene Raven (New York: HarperCollins, 1994); Amelia Jones, ""Postfeminism" a Remasculinization of Culture?," in Writings, Theory, and Criticism, ed. Susan Bee and Mira Schor (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2000); Angela McRobbie, "Post-Feminism and Popular Culture," Feminist Media Studies 4, no. 3 (2004). 387

Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, "Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft," 756.

186

heterosexually-directed rendering of the performance erases traces of the queer bodies of the Toxic Titties, for example in the defined muscles of Heather Cassils being smoothed out in Photoshop before being used for the official photographic representations of the performance. If 10104 Angelo View Drive offers more control to the Toxic Titties over their appearance, it nonetheless creates a similar situation in having Margreiter as an external presence controlling the presentation conditions of the performance.388 Margreiter interprets the house, and its experience, in a formalist way that

noted clash between the two. onographs mention how her work approaches both the Western nuclear family home and the conventions of cinematic representation particularly in relation to the depiction of the house as harbouring evil. While she notes how 389

the

of the building, and instead focuses on the technological apparatus of the house. Without the visible

in the visual construction of representations rather than in the social meanings of domestic spaces.

388

decision to invite the "Toxic Titties," a Californian lesbian/women's performance group to stage a documentation of their work within the documentation of the Sheats-Goldstein Residence does not simply represent a further form of cooperation, but rather, is also a gesture constituting a handing over of control; the expressive, amateurish performances of the "Toxic Titties" speak a co Buchmann, "Eyes on the World," 104. 389

Dorit Margreiter, "10104 Angelo View Drive," accessed December 3, 2013, http://www.doritmargreiter.net/projects/10104_txt.html.

187

The Toxic Titties attempt to queer

to misuse

a space designed for the domestic bliss of an ideal

family unit:390 by creating out-of-place scenes, they highlight the expected uses of a domestic space, even one as out of the ordinary as the Sheats-Goldstein Residence. Hollywood-style mad army

provocative character of their performance clashes with the restrained way Margreiter films the

out of the norm characters, spaces that welcome nondomestic activities. Margreiter and the Toxic Titties both largely ig objects. The house/space they engage with is solely the architectural structure and its built-in furniture; as discussed earlier, Goldstein has been involved greatly in the realization of the house and furniture, but to an unknowing eye, this is not explicitly apparent in the films presented by the artists. Margreiter and the Toxic Titties thus appear to work from an empty unoccupied shell, unlike Households project which explicitly dealt with the hous Their project thus appears to target a broad idea of modernist houses detached from the context of

do not use their source material for the same purposes. While Margreiter, in continuity with her other projects, is mostly interested in associations brought up by modernist domesticity

technology

the Toxic Titties instead take up the opportunity of working in a mid-century space to challenge references associated 390

Heather Cassils and Clover Leary, interview with author, Skype, April 25, 2012.

188

with upper- and middle-class domesticity. The final scene depicting a glamorous cocktail party for example explicitly echoes post-war expectations linked to the home seen as a representation space for business and social relations; in preparation for such events, a number of objects and décor elements rding and sometimes be chosen specifically to accelerate social ascension. Such a scene caricatured by the Toxic Titties thus underlines how domestic spaces are intrinsically linked to the representation of class. By depicting a women-only cocktail, the performance also critiques the gendered assumptions associated with the role of women in events like this

expected to prepare the

food and cocktail and support their husband by being nice with his guests. In their IKEA Project, the Toxic Titties targeted normative representations of sexual diversity through associations with material culture and tastes; in Domestic Bliss at 10104 Angelo View Drive, they once again subverts common domestic scenes to highlight how the home materializes the intersection of gender and sexuality with other aspects of self-identifications and more specifically class.

designed for a traditional family and only later became a bachelor pad through renovations that did not fundamentally alter the organization of the house, as was discussed earlier. How queer then that a family house can so easily be used as bachelor space and even more so come to represent in popular media the home of a pornographer. These reinterpretations suggest that domestic spaces are not as stable and definite as traditional representations infer. They are instead performative spaces that can be constantly reimagined. However, because 10104 Angelo View Drive builds on the current life of

189

houses gets somewhat lost: the Sheats-Goldstein is already constructed and understood in popular representations as being out of the norm and therefore its queer use by the Toxic Titties and its aestheticized representation by Margreiter only reinforce this. A tension also exists between the much louder political goals of the Toxic Titties and the often wordless narratives of Margreiter, from the silent tourists of Poverty Housing to the non-visible demolition of Wonderland, China framing her short film Broken Sequence (2013).391 Where the Toxic Titties state their point, often through exaggerated juxtapositions and caricatures that underline the normative aspects of a situation or a space, Margreiter engages an art historical approach where the reader must gain knowledge of the context of the object represented in her work before understanding more fully what the artist is questioning.392 work, the object of her films, like the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, must already be charged with

situations that allow for critiques of normativity that could be generalized. It is therefore not surprising that difficulties and tensions arose at different levels: between Margreiter and the Toxic Titties on the final edit of the film; between formal readings of the work and the critical questioning

391

Rottmann, "The Artist as Topologist: Notes on the Work of Dorit Margreiter," 103.

392

Replying to a question from me in a public discussion around her work, Margreiter stated that this insistence on not offering verbal cues to understanding the context of the work was a deliberate attempt to leave open to interpretation her work, but also the places she documents. This clearly contradicts her use of documentary codes: documentaries explain things, so why resist giving cues to the vie her work, particularly in projects like 10104 anadian Centre for Architecture and SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montréal, QC, January 16, 2014)

190

of normative domesticity and representations of such domesticity; and between the stated political and social aims of the work and the resulting reception by critics and visitors. project is built on their desire to give new meanings to an existing space, to highlight hidden meanings of the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, but also to suggest that initial perceptions and understandings of domestic spaces are often hiding queer uses. The next chapter investigates how Elmgreen & Dragset similarly attempt to overlay new meanings over existing spaces, but in their case by superimposing domestic settings over existing public institutions.

191

Chapter 5. Perfect Homes / Queer Homes: Elmgreen & Dragset Destruct(ure) the Domestic The case studies presented in the previous chapters

Households and 10104 Angelo View Drive

both work with representations of existing spaces, albeit with different media and focuses. The case studies in this chapter

large-scale installations by Berlin and London-based artists Michael

Elmgreen (Danish, born 1961) and Ingar Dragset (Norwegian, born 1969) expand the twodimensional focus of Robbins and Margreiter to propose three-dimensional experiences that transform existing spaces in imaginary domestic spaces exposed to the public view. Three related works are discussed, but the chapter focuses mainly on The Collectors transformation of the Danish and Nordic Pavilions for the 2009 Venice Biennale, where they imagined and designed two domestic spaces, a family space and a gay bachelor pad, and Tomorrow, their 2013 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London where they further develop the Venice ideas. Presented at the Art Biennale and in a decorative arts museum, but concerned with architecture and space, the installations question and critique assumptions about privacy and the public, domesticity and the institution, identity and built space, art and architecture. Part of the

and space that have sustained much of their earlier works, but also add a focus on domesticity, informed by broader social questions, that had not been as explicitly present before. The juxtaposition and blurring of the limits between private and public acts/spaces helps the artists question what is assumed as domestic spaces and confuse accepted symbols of domesticity by putting 192

them out of context. Like the Toxic Titties, Elmgreen & Dragset approach social questions with an The chapter ends with a discussion of how these projects represent a queer look at domesticity and an investigation of how the theoretical critiques developed by Elmgreen & Dragset have informed the transformation of their own house-studio.

From Powerless Structures to the Welfare State: Elmgreen & Dragset and the Political Working together since the mid-1990s and with major large-scale exhibitions in the last few years (including the much publicized transformation of two pavilions at the 2009 Venice Biennale), the work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset has been increasingly reviewed and discussed. Until recently, and in a similar way to Robbins and Margreiter, their work had not been written about much in a critical way beyond monographs or catalogues, but a series of major exhibitions developed since 2005 (The Welfare Show (2005-2006), The Collectors (2009), Celebrity The One & the Many (2010-2011)), retrospectives, and high-profile public art commissions and programs (Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, The Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square (2012-2013); A Space Called Public / Hoffentlich Öffentlich, curated art program, Munich (2013); etc.) is changing this.393 If their backgrounds and discussions of their work characterize them clearly as artists, they have, however,

393

See for example Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne, eds., Art of Welfare, Verksted (Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006); Michael Elmgreen et al., Elmgreen & Dragset: This Is the First Day of My Life (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008); Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin, eds., Trilogy (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011); Anita Iannacchione and Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, eds., Elmgreen & Dragset | Performances 1995-2011 (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011); Shannon Jackson, "Welfare Melancholia: The Public Works of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset," in Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (New York & London: Routledge, 2011); Splidsboel, "How Are You.".

193

from the beginning been critical of spatial structures and have therefore developed a body of work that transforms space on an architectural scale. Their work has consequently been reviewed and discussed in architecture or design publications, such as Abitare, Domus, Canadian Architect, or the Architecture Now! book series.394 Elmgreen and Dragset started their career with little formal art education. Dragset did some acting and mime training (in the Lecoq tradition) in theater school and also worked as theater instructor for children, while Elmgreen had some art training, wrote poetry and had odd jobs as an interior decorator. A year after starting a romantic relation in the mid-1990s,395 they decided that they could combine their experiences while Michael was preparing a show in Stockholm. The work exhibited

then everybody thought it was a performance 396

394

Some of the publications in architectural magazines and books: Cecilia Alemani, "The Elmgreen & Dragset Show," Domus, November 2009; Helena Grdadolnik, "Welfare State: Berlin-Based Scandinavian Artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset Challenge the Conventional Perception of Space... [Exhibition Review]," Canadian Architect, April 2006; Paola Nicolin, "Ricostruzioni Radicali = Radical Reconstructions," Abitare, June 2009; Paola Nicolin et al., "Monumento E Delitto? Pro E Contro La Costruzione Di Monumenti Nella Città Contemporanea = Monument and Crime? Pro and Con Building Monuments in Contemporary City," ibid., October 2007; Elena Sommariva, "The Collectors: Elmgreen & Dragset," Domus, July/August 2009; Ossian Ward, "Broken Homes [Exhibition Review]," World of interiors, November 2009; Philip Jodidio, Architecture Now! 5 (Köln & London: Taschen, 2007). 395

The duo tells that they met in a bar and discovered they lived in the same apartment building when they decided to go back to one of their apartments for the rest of the night. Interview with Elmgreen & Dragset in Michael Elmgreen et al., Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main] (Frankfurt Am Main: Portikus, 2003), Exhibition catalogue. 396

Interview with Ingar Dragset in Hans-Ulrich Obrist, "Performative Constructions: Interview by Hans-Ulrich Obrist," in Powerless Structures: Works by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, ed. Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset (Reykjavik: Kjarvalsstadir / Reykjavik Art Museum / Wide Screen, 1998), 27. cited and discussed in Shannon Jackson, "Elmgreen &

194

& Dragset develop a practice oscillating between those two poles, often performing themselves or hiring actors to interact with physical elements developed by them, but also asking the audience to perform within transformed spaces. From 1997, a series of solo exhibitions allowed them to develop increasingly complex pieces of fictional twisted architecture, of which the projects studied in this dissertation are the direct legacy. From the beginning of their career, Elmgreen & Dragset directly engaged issues of gender, sexuality, and class. Their initial use of performance, still present today but supplemented by transformations of built spaces, sculptures, videos, photos, etc., developed in reaction themselves within the Scandinavian art world

and as a way to frame

to the perceived reception of their work and of their

queer self-identifications. Their non-expensive performances, and self-identifications as gay performers, meant that they could easily sneak in group shows early on; their work later caught the attention of critics at the time that curator Nicolas Bourriaud was publishing the French version of his Relational Aesthetics

397

As their

work moved to larger pieces engaging with space, they applied the same critiques to architecture and spatial structures, understood as a major instrument of societal control (in reference to Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre).398 Much discussion of their work has thus focused on their attempt to

Dragset's Theatrical Turn," in Elmgreen & Dragset | Performances 1995-2011, ed. Anita Iannacchione and Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011), 14. 397

Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle., as Shannon Jackson notes in Jackson, "Elmgreen & Dragset's Theatrical Turn," 14-17. 398

Foucault a French philosopher, historian of ideas and social theorist, 1926-1984 took particular interest in the mechanics of power and the ways order is maintained; this was thoroughly developed through spatial examples: prisons, reformatories, hospitals, etc. Unlike other historians and philosophers developing understandings of space as a conceptual device, Foucault was interested in how the physicality of spaces impact social relations, for example in how asylums, hospitals and prisons distance and cited examples is the discussion in Discipline and Punish [Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison, Bibliothèque Des

195

shape into built form their understanding of Foucault. Dragset summarizes this understanding by

misleading since no structure can impose authority in itself. It is only the acceptance of the structure that creates the notion of power. This means that any structure can be altered, interchanged,

works under the Powerless Structures umbrella, being inspired to develop a working method where 399

Art historian Dorothea Von Hantelmann connects this idea with

Histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).] of the Panopticon, with its spatial organization allowing a constant threat of inspection and surveillance, but most of his other work is also informed by a sustained reading of how space and place operate within power structures. See also Michel Foucault, "Des espaces autres (conférence au cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967)," Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, octobre 1984; Michel Foucault and Jay Miskowiec, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986). The study of space is at the core of the critique developed by Lefebvre a French philosopher and sociologist, 19011991 throughout his career. The first phase of his thinking is organized around a critique of everyday life in which he nality of suburban life destroys the soul. The second, much cited, phase is his theory of the production of space in which he investigates how understandings and experiences of space are cultural and in evolution, along three axes: perceived space (le perçu) of everyday life, conceived space (le conçu) from cartographers, planners and speculators, and lived space (le vécu) of the imagination that balances the first two axes. See Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, 1; Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, 2. Fondements d'une sociologie de la quotidienneté; Henri Lefebvre, La production de l'espace, 2nd ed. (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1981 (1974)); Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne: pour une métaphilosophie du quotidien, 3. De la modernité au modernisme; Henri Lefebvre, "The Everyday and Everydayness," in Architecture of the Everyday, ed. Steven Harris and Deborah Berke, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997 (1972)); Mary McLeod, "Everyday and "Other" Spaces," in Architecture and Feminism, ed. Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze, and Carol Henderson, Yale Publications on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996); Lukasz Stanek, Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 399

Interview with Ingar Dragset in Elmgreen et al., Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main]: 34-35. The apparently random numerical indexing of the series also Musée (Pamela C. Scorzin, "Elmgreen & Dragset: The White Cube Recoded," Kuenstler: Kritisches lexikon der gegenwartskunst(2011).

196

relationship to each other

and that is where the politically interesting aspect of these works lie

a

relationship that can constantly be reconfigured without being entirely controllable. [...] Objectified in a mise en scène, they also embody a classical social, heterosexually standardized model of 400

In addition to being explicitly concerned with the relation of sexuality and space, it is

in this interest in the performativity of space that their work resembles, while problematizing them, discussions of queer space presented earlier. Many of the Powerless Structures works are white minimalist modernist pure forms that twist common objects or references into non-functional elements, for example the doors in fig. 34 or the white paint repeatedly washed off in fig. 35.401 The formal vocabulary used by Elmgreen & Dragset in their Powerless Structures works also echoes their interest in understanding and deconstructing the modernist white cube of the art gallery, most specifically in relation to artist and critic Brian 402

403

in a self-conscious attempt to demonstrate that is not a neutral space, but that it is

sexualized, gendered, classed, and raced. For example, as Von Hantelmann discusses, their Cruising Pavilion/Powerless Structures, Fig. 55 (1998), built in the Marselisborg Forest, in Århus, Denmark 400

Dorothea Von Hantelmann, "Production of Space Space of Production," in Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main], ed. Michael Elmgreen, et al. (Frankfurt Am Main: Portikus, 2003), 62-63. 401

Porte, 11 rue Larrey, Paris (1927), but I have not found any explicit refe ioNoi also showed in their 50th and 51st posts that the doors could be linked to (1986) or Monika Sosnow Doors (2003). See http://www.ionoi.it/index.php?start=1060, accessed March 16, 2014. 402

Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Santa Monica: Lapis Press, 1986).

403

Interview with Michael Elmgreen in Elmgreen et al., Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main]: 34.

197

(fig. 36),404 is a paradigmatic example of their attempt to present a complex interrelationship between space, time and action. The Pavilion, a white cube with a single open doorframe and glory holes in its interior walls, sits in a park setting used at night by homosexual men for cruising. An attempt to bring underground networks into public view, it deliberately creates a space to legally pursue cruising activities in a privatized space owned by the artists and their gallery, and thus protected from police harassment. Cruising Pavilion also gives Elmgreen & Dragset an opportunity to queer the use of Scandinavian functionalist design codes, associated with efficiency, simplicity and

gay sex venue, a space of non-functional pleasure.405 The clean lines associated with functionalist designs are present, but they are punctuated by circular holes dedicated to sexual pleasures.

The Pavilion thus loudly transforms a publicly coded site, a family park, into a performative space newly occupied time and again. Framed as art, Von Hantelmann argues that the activities taking

questions about how space is both produced and appropriated by physical actions and how political power relations materialize in the process.406

404

In the early 2010s, Elmgreen & Dragset proposed to reinstall the Cruising Pavilion at the Westerveld Rest Area along N34 in the Netherlands, in a similar context where cruising amongst men is present. The Scandinavian design references are also concordant with Dutch functionalism references. However, the proposal was never built. (Crusing Pavilion presentation book, Elmgreen & Dragset Studio unpublished materials) 405

Elmgreen interviewed in Elmgreen et al., 2003, p. 35

406

Von Hantelmann, "Production of Space

Space of Production," 62.

198

407

By doing so,

Elmg planning: daytime activities, such as family picnics, are reframed as subcultural activities in relation to the cruising pavilion, while sexual cruising activities, usually invisible during the day and discreet at night, are now officially sanctioned and made visible by a publicly-commissioned building.408 But, as Lars Bang Larsen argues, in the Pavilion, more conservative understandings of queer space are also being queered; the codes and routines that hold it together as a cultural displaced ambiences is to feel the pull of your identity, whether you are straight or loneliness of violently separated identities; on the other hand, the sense of a failure to condense things into a representational logic that can speak for the coherence and relevance of group identity. Space is collapsed via insertions that slice through the membranes of public, semi-public and mental spaces, destabilising their physical and ideological walls.409 While engaged with public space, this project thus nevertheless involves similar questions about the boundaries between public and private acts and spaces that Elmgreen & Dragset will later develop more specifically in projects dealing with domestic spaces.

407

Homomonument and ad hoc ardens as ephemeral and not immediately recognizable (Reed, "Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment," 65-66.). 408

Dragset interviewed in Elmgreen, Dragset, Volz, Hoffmann, & Hantelmann, 2003, p. 35

409

Lars Bang Larsen, "Questioning the Social: Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Art," in Momentum International Art Conference (Moss, Norway2000), 5.

199

Figure 34. Elmgreen & Dragset. Powerless Structures, Fig. 122 (Two Doors), 2000; Powerless Structures, Fig. 123 (One Door Two Handles), 2000; Powerless Structures, Fig. 129 (Corner Door), 2000; Powerless Structures, Fig. 133 (Triple Door), 2002. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / Galleri Nicolai Wallner.

Figure 35. Elmgreen & Dragset. Powerless Structures, Fig. 44, 1998. Credit: Pez Hejduk / Elmgreen & Dragset.

200

Figure 36. Elmgreen & Dragset. Cruising Pavilion/Powerless Structures, Fig. 55, 1998, Marselisborg Forest, Århus. Credit: Bent Ryberg / Planet Foto (exterior); Elmgreen & Dragset (interior).

201

As Elmgreen & Dragset moved towards larger and more complex works, they also moved away from the white-colored minimalism of their earlier projects towards an increasing messiness. This move paralleled a move away from a more or less direct critique of art institutions towards a broader questioning of how contemporary society deals with

or even just acknowledges these issues.

Whereas early works highlighted how th race, later works are sometimes set in artare part of a complex scenography that intersect imagined and real lives, art and institution, the political and the domestic, etc. For example, their large-scale exhibition The Welfare Show, presented in different iterations at the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway (2005), the BAWAG Foundation in Vienna (2005), the Serpentine Gallery in London (2006) and the Power Plant in Toronto (2006), is set in fictional institutional settings (administration offices, television talk show, hospital, museum, airport, etc.) where everyday situations are twisted and rendered inefficient and powerless. 410 The first in a series of large-scale exhibitions, it has driven many of the recent discussions of Elmgreen &

most explicitly political project, in terms of developing a critique of public policy, it has prompted

we definitively see ourselves as political human beings, and, in that respect, it has been important to

410

See Elmgreen & Dragset, "The Welfare Show," ed. Bergen Kuntshall & The Power Plant (Köln: Walther König, 2005); Grdadolnik, "Welfare State: Berlin-Based Scandinavian Artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset Challenge the Conventional Perception of Space... [Exhibition Review]."; Peter Osborne, "Elmgreen and Dragset's the Welfare Show: A Historical Perspective," in Art of Welfare, ed. Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne, Verksted (Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006); "Panel Discussion: Marta Kuzma / Peter Osborne / Claire Bishop / Thomas Hylland Eriksen / Victor D. Norman / Michael Elmgreen / Ingar Dragset," ibid.; Claire Bishop, "Live Installations and Constructed Situations: The Use of 'Real People' in Art," ibid.; Jackson, "Welfare Melancholia: The Public Works of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset."; part 3 of Weibel and Beitin, Trilogy, 297-369.

202

deal with some of the issues raised in The Welfare Show

411

If issues of class and economy take center

stage in this project, Elmgreen & Dragset also keep underlining how sexuality and gender are constructed by power and space, themes that figure prominently in their catalogue for the show, a binder alphabetically organized with files discussing topics such as adoption, the Canadian Pension Plan, death, gentrification, homosexual rights, justice, marriage, patriotism, public space, tourism, unemployment, or xenophobia.412 While initially conceived as an independent exhibition, The Welfare Show was retroactively thematically linked through a common catalogue with two other large-scale exhibitions, The Collectors (2009) at the Venice Biennale, and Celebrity

The One & the Many (2010-11) at the

ZKM in Karlsruhe, remodeled as The One & the Many (2011) at the Submarine Wharf in Rotterdam, known collectively as the Trilogy.413 These two exhibitions complement the institutional settings of the first project by investigating the domestic and the intimate and will be discussed in more details in the following section. Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin, respectively chairman and curator of ZKM where Celebrity

hree

exhibitions] represent an attempt to map out in a unique manner some of the key changes in Western culture over the initial ten years of the twentytriptych of thematic shows is not a sociological fact sheet of such tendencies, but an uncanny

411

"Panel Discussion: Marta Kuzma / Peter Osborne / Claire Bishop / Thomas Hylland Eriksen / Victor D. Norman / Michael Elmgreen / Ingar Dragset," 121. 412

Elmgreen & Dragset, "The Welfare Show."

413

Weibel and Beitin, Trilogy.

203

identity and, by extension, our behavioral patterns, have recently become far more complex and 414

All three exhibitions build on earlier Elmgreen & Dragset works as they dramatically

alter the spatial frame of the exhibition venue. But where earlier works often concentrated on rebuilding an art gallery space, the Trilogy projects broaden the scope of the reconstructions to reimagine everyday spaces, in a gallery context.415

process, both within their partnership and in collaborative works with other artists or non-artists. Their own backgrounds are often mythologized around the fact, discussed earlier, that Elmgreen and Dragset have a limited formal artistic training, often describing themselves as being outside of every discipline they touch, and that they originally became a romantic couple after meeting in a bar, unknowingly living in the same apartment building.416 While the artists themselves participate in building up the importance of their personal life in numerous interviews,417 it has also been specifically covered in a book on artistic partnerships by Mark Gisbourne and Ulf Meyer zu

414

Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin, "Introduction," in Trilogy, ed. Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011), 7. 415

Elmgreen & Dragset had already produced similar constructions earlier, but on a single room scale instead of the multi-room installations of the Trilogy. See for example Please, keep quiet! (2003) or Queer Bar/Powerless Structures, Fig. 21 (1998) and Queer Bar/Powerless Structures, Fig. 121 (2005). 416

Interview with Elmgreen & Dragset in Elmgreen et al., Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main]. and Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, interview with author, London, October 16, 2013. 417

For example in the recent documentary about their work by Splidsboel, "How Are You." or in interviews such as Kito Nedo, "We Never Wanted to Do a Normal Job: Elmgreen & Dragset," db artmag 2007.

204

Küingdorf.418 what they perceive as the limits of their original disciplines is related to the potentialities of the intersection of art and architecture identified in chapter 2. By twisting the disciplines they build from, by merging narrative performances, architecture, sculpture, and curating, by shaping space in an artistic context, by explicitly stating and insisting on the queer aspects of their work, they highlight the constructedness of limits between disciplines and medium, but also the political aspects of their interventions. The eagerness of Elmgreen & Dragset to expose their private lives also underlines the importance of identification and biographical elements in their work, as demonstrated by the title of some of their works or monographs, such as The Incidental Self (used for both a work composed of between 500 and 1000 snapshots of the artists or their friends (2006) and a special artist-curated supplement to ArtReview (2008) that includes some of these snapshots and other autobiographical texts) or This is the First Day of my Life (2007-2008, retrospective exhibition and publication).419 Both of these works The Collectors, The One & the Many and other later works, but they do so by using material from their own lives, whereas the following works will be constructed around invented characters. It is also interesting to note that the autobiographical works appeared as they were ending their personal relationship, which had until then explicitly shaped their career. When questioned about this, however, Elmgreen and Dragset insist that these works, despite being built around photographs and artefacts from their own lives, are 418

Mark Gisbourne and Ulf Meyer zu Küingdorf, Double Act : Two Artists, One Expression (Munich; New York: Prestel, 2007). 419

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, The Incidental Self, Artreview Artist Publications (London: ArtReview, 2008); Elmgreen et al., Elmgreen & Dragset: This Is the First Day of My Life.

205

no more autobiographical than the works built around imagined characters; the control exercised by the artists over the selection and presentation of the artefacts displayed make these projects as far 420

Households, where the construction of the photographs by Robbins and the selection of background

carefully how they wanted to be photographed, Elmgreen and Dragset clearly state and acknowledge that these art projects are constructions that comment on how one decides to present oneself.

Inventing a Private Life: Elmgreen & Dragset and the Domestic The trilogy of large-scale installations developed by Elmgreen & Dragset since 2005 (The Welfare Show, The Collectors, and Celebrity

The One & the Many) continues their interest in social issues,

developed initially in the Powerless Structures works. The Collectors and The One & the Many, in which the artists build temporary full-scale houses and apartment buildings, challenge common understandings of domesticity by transforming art spaces into fictitious domestic spaces, accessible by visitors through mediated experiences. Elmgreen & Dragset had already approached the domestic in works dealing with their personal life, as discussed in the previous section, but also in How Are You Today (2002), a project in which they cut out a hole in the ceiling of Galleria Massimo de Carlo in Milan to open the room to the apartment above. Visitors to the gallery could climb a ladder and watch the everyday occupations going on in the private apartment above through a transparent dome (fig. 37). The project is at once in continuity with earlier work transforming or building gallery spaces that moved away from understanding the gallery as a neutral container for art and in 420

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, interview with author, London, October 16, 2013.

206

rupture as it leaves aside the white cube of the gallery to invade a domestic space. Later installations will fully merge the public and the private, but here the two are only linked by a limited opening that apparently acts as a window, but also as a limit between them. However Households activities, the dweller is clearly aware that she is being watched. The unusual position of the viewing dome, in the middle of the kitc this project, Elmgreen & Dragset seems to insist less on the social structures that regulate and organize spaces, but the positioning of the dome in the kitchen also links the project to feminist discussions of domestic work in the separate spheres model. Overall, How Are You Today is one of the earliest attempts from Elmgreen & Dragset to question relations between private and public in a domestic setting.

Figure 37. Elmgreen & Dragset. How Are You Today, 2002, Galleria Massimo de Carlo. Credit: Thor Brødreskift.

207

The One & the Many If How Are You Today was still attached to a real-life setting, although limited by the awareness of -scale works add narratives about fictitious characters to their investigation of domesticity that underline the artificiality and constructedness of the works, but also put more emphasis on the issues raised through the use of humor. In The One & the Many, Elmgreen & Dragset insert a nine by twelve meters replica of a four-story (nearly eleven meters) Plattenbau apartment building

an industrially prefabricated Cold War socialist

into an exhibition space.421 As in How Are You Today, in this project there is a

limit between domestic spaces and the gallery space as visitors can only get a look through the windows from the outside (fig. 38) to witness empty apartment interiors. These apartments are almost all empty, with only one occupied by a visible human figure, a mannequin of a gay teenager (a reinstallation of a work from 2007, Virtual Romeo (fig. 39)). Other spaces seem to have been vacated only moments ago, with their occupants maybe in another neighbouring room: televisions are on, empty beer bottles and cigarettes packs are left on the tables, newspapers are open. The One & the Many was staged in two contrasting contexts that underlined different questions.422 At ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe (November 11, 2010-March 27, 2011), the work was exhibited in tandem with Celebrity, a large empty ballroom inhabited with golden

421

Andreas F. Beitin, "The Appearance of Demiurges," in Trilogy, ed. Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011), 55. 422

The artists also subtly reference the project in the issue of the magazine Wallpaper* they curated around the opening of the Tomorrow exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. In addition to including a model of the apartment block in the exhibition as an example of the work of the fictional architect inhabiting the space, they note in the biographical -awaited book, The Individual and the Collective Kieran Long, "Home Truths," Wallpaper*, October 2013, 234.

208

sculptures of maids, a performing security guard dressed in a b boy hiding in a fireplace (a younger version of a character present in The Collectors), and a video projection with sound depicting a reception behind translucent doors. The focus on the cult of celebrity in relation to the everyday life of working people in this initial installation disappeared in the subsequent incarnation of the The One & the Many at the Submarine Wharf in Rotterdam, presented by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (May 28-September 25, 2011). In this second iteration, Elmgreen & Dragset transformed the 5000 m2 cavernous industrial space of a former submarine factory into a rundown urban neighbourhood, as a commentary on the plans to use the Submarine Wharf as a gateway to the transformation of the old industrial harbour into a posh cultural district. The juxtaposition of the cultural intelligentsia and working class housing present in Karlsruhe is replaced by a reflection on the disappearance of public space in reaction to people being afraid of going out at night.423 In addition to the public housing building brought over from the ZKM version of the exhibition, the exhibition includes a parking lot with (live actor) mechanics

functioning Ferris wheel allowing views into the apartments, and actors (without scripts) playing a teenage single mum, two male hustlers, and a street musician.

423

Elmgreen & Dragset interviewed in Susanna Davies-Crook, "Elmgreen & Dragset: The One and the Many," Dazed Digital(2011), http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/10477/1/elmgreen-dragset-the-one-and-the-many.

209

Figure 38. Elmgreen & Dragset. Celebrity Leroi / www.vernissage.tv.

The One & the Many, 2010-2011, ZKM. Credit: Didier

Figure 39. Elmgreen & Dragset. Virtual Romeo. Photo from original installation in This is the First Day of my Life, 2007, Malmö Kunsthall. Credit: Galerie Perrotin

210

In both settings, The One & the Many represents an investigation of how identities are constructed in relation to social and physical contexts. If Elmgreen & Dragset use their usual trope of transforming the public gallery space into something else, here private domestic spaces, The One & the Many is not as explicitly a questioning of the relation between private and public as The Collectors is, as will be discussed in the following section. The boundary between the apartments and the visitor spaces created by the distance limits the mixing up of both environments, although the visitors are encouraged to question the control we have over our domestic environments through their peeking at the diverse environments, trying to guess the story of each dweller, as was the case in Households. The Collectors In the earlier The Collectors (June 7-November 22, 2009), Elmgreen & Dragset transform the Venice Biennale Danish and Nordic pavilions into houses, one for a traditional, albeit dysfunctional, family, the A. Family, and one for Mr. B., a bachelor.424 In the first house, only the father, an architect, and

accompanying texts in the catalogue or in the works exhibited; the rest of the family is not described. On the bachelor side, some of the artefacts exhibited, for example naked men lounging in the space 424

The project is a first experience of collaboration between the two national pavilions at the Biennale. The commission is the result of the Danish and Nordic agencies responsible for the pavilions being both interested at the same time in having Elmgreen & Dragset work on their exhibit. The choice of artists who were invited to collaborate on the project is shaped by the differing missions of the agencies, with the Danish team being more open to international artists (Anette Østerby, interview with author, Copenhagen, June 6, 2012.). The project also unusually positions Elmgreen & Dragset as combining the roles of artists, curators, interior designers, industrial designers, and directors, although they had already worked on projects where they invited other artists, often younger ones outside the institutionalized art world. The ambiguity of this position continues their career-long critical experimentations with disciplinary divisions, but is also inscribed in the new roles brought by the expanded scale of their recent projects. The character Mr. B. was later reused by Elmgreen & Dragset in High Expectations (part of Celebrity The One & the Many, 2010), where a mannequin of a young Mr. B sits in a fireplace, in The Afterlife of the Mysterious Mr. B. (2011) at Amigos

211

(fig. 40) and gay erotic drawings and pornographic videos, strongly suggest to visitors that the

written by artist Dominic Eichler following cues from Elmgreen vision of how his own house tells a story about his life.425 Both the family and the bachelor are imagined as collectors, of art but also of unique objects such as porcelains, insects, etc. In their choice of designing the two houses for collectors, Elmgreen & Dragset obviously respond to the

reduced to a financial issue instead of being a way of showing who people are, what their tastes are. They also highlight how collectors have kept and saved things written out of art history, for example art produced by minority groups.426 This is done partly by integrating in the two pavilions objects and artworks that would rarely be in art exhibitions, for example signs made by homeless people, but

Finland of which Mr. B. comments (in the Eichlerwonder if others like them will finally find homes in more serious museums, or if it is still left to 427

425

Dominic Eichler, "Another Death in Venice," in The Collectors: Calendar, ed. Elmgreen & Dragset ([København, Denmark]; [Oslo, Norway]: [The Danish Arts Council] ; [Office for Contemporary Art Norway], 2009). The letter, written by the artist Dominic Eichler and originally included alongside a description of the family house by Jacob Fabricius in the calendar available in the Bagalogue distributed to Biennale visitors (a catalogue formatted as a bag of limited edition small artworks from the invited artists), is republished in Dominic Eichler, "Another Death in Venice," in Elmgreen & Dragset Trilogy, ed. Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin (Köln: König/ZKM, 2011): 268-275. The text, although not written by Elmgreen & Dragset, was developed in collaboration with them and thus reflects some of the ideas the artists had in mind while staging the project. 426

Ingar Dragset, interview with author, Berlin, June 8, 2012.

427

Eichler, "Another Death in Venice," [14]. The text, although not written by Elmgreen & Dragset, was developed in collaboration with them and thus reflects some of the ideas the artists had in mind while staging the project.

212

Figure 40.

The Collectors, 2009, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions.

213

The artists decided to develop these domestic reconversions when they initially visited the two pavilions and experienced a feeling of walking through a residential posh neighbourhood.428 They worked from the existing spaces, using unique design characteristics to shape the two households life stories, transforming the empty rooms to reflect their own understanding of what is domestic.429 The two houses exhibit very different spatial organizations. The family house has more traditional room divisions (fig. 41), including a large dining room with a broken table (fig. 42; #21c on the plan), a kitchen with overflowing porcelain (#19), an abandoned living room with covered furniture and a video playing on the television (#20), a larger living room with a non-accessible mezzanine (#30c), and a room left burnt down by the teenage girl (#32). The bachelor inhabits one large open space (fig. 43) organized around a central glazed bathroom (#8 in fig. 44).

Figure 41. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009. Danish Pavilion plan, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / Danish Arts Council / Nordic Committee. 428

Anette Østerby, interview with author, Copenhagen, June 6, 2012. and Ingar Dragset, interview with author, Berlin, June 8, 2012. 429

For an overview of the transformation and design process, see Splidsboel, "How Are You."

214

Works exhibited: 19. Porcelain Collection, Courtesy of Massimo De Carlo; 20. Laura Horelli, Haukka-pala / A-Bit-To-Bite, 2009; 21. Elmgreen & Dragset a. Untitled, 2009, b. Rosa, 2006, c. Table for Bergman, 2009, d. Torso of a (Forever) Young Man, 2008; 22. Nina Saunders, Delicate Landscape, 2009; 23. Sturtevant, a. Stella Die Fahne hoch!, 1990, b. Stella Arbeit Macht Frei, 1989; 24. Jani Leinonen a. Anything Helps, 2005-2009, b. For Sale, 2009; 25. Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled, 2009; 26. Jonathan Monk, Thieves Remains, 2009; 27. Han & Him, Relatives, 2009 ; 28. Martin Jacobson a. Artist II, 2008, b. Untitled (Bridge of Sighs), 2008, c. Painter I & II, 2008, d. Urn I & II, 2008, e. Exhibition, 2008; 29. Fly Collection, Courtesy of Frederik Sjöberg; 30. Norways Says a. Uno, 2009, b. Duo, 2008 [with Hallgeir Homstvedt], c. & Same Same, both 2007; 31. Thora Dolven Balke, Safety Measures, 2009; 32. Klara Lidén, Teenage Room, 2009; 33. Massimo Bartolini, Black Floor, 2009.

Figure 42. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, Danish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists.

215

Figure 43. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists.

216

Figure 44. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009. Nordic Pavilion plan, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset / Danish Arts Council / Nordic Committee. Works exhibited: 1. Elmgreen & Dragset, Death of a Collector, 2009; 2. Polynesian Sculptures, Courtesy of Francesca von Habsburg; 3. Nina Saunders, Payload, 2009; 4. Norway Says a. Cyclos, 2006, b. Spline, 2006/2007; 5. Guillaume Bijl, Sorry, 1987; 6. Wolfgang Tillmans, FKK / naturists, 2008; 7. Henrik Olesen, Cubes (after Sol LeWitt), 1998 / 2008; 8. Elmgreen & Dragset, Marriage, 2004; 9. Han & Him, Butter ies, 2009; 10. Hernan Bas a. The act of pollination, 2009, b. Opening night of a Russian futurist play based on the life of Gauguin (or, Under the Tahitian Moon), 2009; 11. Jonathan Monk, Maquette for a Giant Spinning O, 2006; 12. Pepe Espaliú, Carrying VI, 1992; 13. Tom of Finland, Untitled, 1979, Tearoom Odyssey, c. 1968, Black Magic, 1984, No Swimming, from the AMG Series, 1965, The Loggers, from the AMG Series, 1974, David, a Beauty, 1989, , 1981; 14. Nico Muhly, Radio Music, 2009; 15. Terence Koh, David, , 2007; 16. William E. Jones, Compilation including 150 Films, All Male Mash Up and The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography, 2009; 17. Vibeke Slyngstad a. The Nordic Pavilion I, 2009, b.The Nordic Pavilion II, 2009; 18. Simon Fujiwara, Desk Job, 2009.

217

While the invented apartments in The One & the Many can only be seen from a distance, in The Collectors, visitors are guided through the family house by real estate agents, played by British performance artists Cocoloco (Helen Statman and Trevor Stuart), in charge of selling the house after the family has abruptly left (fig. 45).430 46). Combined with an

Fabricius states in his text for the Bagalogue

431

But no clear

explanation is given for this, only potential stories left to the visitor to make up from the signs left in the house. The fake realtors, working from a script written by Trevor Stuart with cues from the

-classical style at the rear, with some delightful late modern

teenager who lived here was a bit crazy as teenagers tend to be, so please disregard the rather Gothic 432

love of order which, according to them, comes from his profession as architect. However, these 430

Cocoloco, "Cocoloco Performance," accessed July 24, 2013, http://www.cocoloco.co.uk/; Rhea Dall, "'The Collectors', the Danish & Nordic Pavilions - La Biennale Di Venezia 2009. Final Evaluation Report for the Commissioners: The Danish Arts Council's Committe for International Visual Art & Office for Contemporary Art Norway," (unpublished: Danish Arts Council & Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2009), 2. The agents were only present for the first five days of the exhibition (Ingar Dragset, interview with author, Berlin, June 8, 2012.), but their scripts were partially reprinted in Iannacchione and Dragset, Elmgreen & Dragset | Performances 1995-2011. and excerpts from the tour were filmed for Splidsboel, "How Are You." and various art websites. 431

Jacob Fabricius, "Hidden Secrets in Brick Houses," in The Collectors: Calendar, ed. Elmgreen & Dragset ([København, Denmark]; [Oslo, Norway]: [The Danish Arts Council] ; [Office for Contemporary Art Norway], 2009), [11]. 432

Script excerpts by Trevor Stuart, as recorded in Jannik Splidsboel, "How Are You," (Denmark: Radiator Film, 2011).

218

collections, such as the porcelains (borrowed from gallerist Massimo De Carlo) are presented to the visitors mixed up and chaotic, echoing the descent into excess and dysfunctionality of the family.

Figure 45. Elmgreen & Dragset with script by Trevor Stuart. Real Estate Agents, 2009, Danish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Screenshots from How Are You, directed by Jannik Splidsboel, 2011.

219

Figure 46. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, Danish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists.

Visitors are then invited to enter the neighbouring bachelor pad which is occupied by partially undressed and naked young male actors (also working as security guards for the exhibition) playing 40). Like the work of arts collected by Mr. B., they are left over after his disappearance. Unlike the Nordic pavilion, where the actors / real estate agents are presented as outsiders discussing their own understandings of the house, in the Danish pavilion, the men become part of the décor, fused with the furniture collected (and abandoned) by the absent owner. The use of the naked reading men as one of the emblematic images distributed to the press to promote the

proposal. The tour ends at an outdoor pool where a mannequin, representing Mr. B., floats face 220

down, contributing another emblematic image for the project; like other examples in Elmgreen &

references cinematographic sources, this time the opening swimming pool scene of Hollywood classic film noir Sunset Boulevard (1950) (fig. 47).433 By offering visits of apparently lived-in spaces, in an international art fair context, the artists question common assumptions about private space, by confusing accepted symbols of domesticity, by recontextualizing viewers, and by blurring the usual limits and barriers between private and public acts and spaces.

Figure 47.

The Collectors, 2009, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Flickr user Halvor Bordin.

433

For other examples of references used by Elmgreen & Dragset in thinking about fictional domestic spaces, see Elmgreen & Dragset, "Halfway Houses," Wallpaper*, October 2013.

221

Households, the visitor is invited to discover decontextualized domestic spaces in the physical absence of their inhabitants, although here the spaces are three-dimensional and completely imagined. W privacy of the domestic is exposed into the public space of the gallery, here the public domain of art pavilions is transformed into spaces not usually available for visits, private spaces. The visitor is suddenly transported into a domestic space when walking through an exhibition space. In The One & the Many, visitors view the intimate environments of the dwellers from a distance, through the windows. In The Collectors, the relation between viewer and space is more ambiguous; participants are guided through the spaces as if they were prospective buyers, but the houses are not empty and clean staged spaces ready for visits, but messy, still occupied rooms where the presence of the owners is still visible. Participants also experience the two houses with all their senses: hearing the

installation thus transforms the visitors from observers to participants, suggests that they can do more than analyse the representation of space. They are not only looking at a domestic space, but walking through it, sensorially experiencing it. But these experiences are queered by the numerous other visitors visiting the space simultaneously: the normally lonely investigation of a house for sale is reframed as a collective discovery. The public gallery transformed into a private house is thus experienced also as a public exhibition. This is where the project gains its major strength: while probably all visitors know that these spaces are not usually domestic spaces, they nonetheless express domesticity and question our relation to both domestic and institutional spaces.

222

Unlike Robbins or Margreiter, Elmgreen & Dragset choose to represent space in three dimensions. Although the fictitious inhabitants are not present, the artists paradoxically insist on leaving traces of the absent users to help visitors understand the spaces. This is also acknowledged in the letter written noying, but there is so much of ourselves in objects - however you look at them.

434

anticipate - although people with means and of my age do tend to make houses impli Furnishings and room designs are described by the actor-agents as being selected, collected, as the name of the installation implies, by the art collectors who own and used to live in these spaces.

Carefully designed by Elmgreen & Dragset and collaborators, the objects fictitiously collected by the absent inhabitants are almost all slightly off, underlining the constructedness of space. Some of the objects replicate as miniature versions the overall form of the houses-pavilions, some cannot be used for what they appear to be designed for, and some are broken. For example, in the Danish Pavilion,

armchair [Delicate Landscape (2009)] seems to have melted or maybe swallowed up whoever was last 435

Urn I & II (2008) appear from afar as if regular vases, but Black Floor (2009) raises

the g

-three centimetres without having moved the garden furniture, rendering the Butterflies (2009) exhibit a

collection of swimwear behind a glass as if Mr. B. considered his former lovers as insects, Simon Desk Job (2009) replicates the design of the pavilion in miniature form as a desk (fig. 48), 434

Eichler, "Another Death in Venice," [13].

435

Jacob Fabricius, "Hidden Secrets in Brick Houses," ibid.

223

Elmgree

Marriage Payload

(2009) (fig. 48). Despite the strangeness of the spaces and objects within, the installations invite visitors to imagine how life in these dwellings could be and what values the inhabitants share. The artists underline the need to imagine a relation between dwellers and their environment, to assume Households. By doing so, Elmgren & Dragset also eanings, to an outsider has

imagine you strutting

436

436

Dominic Eichler, "Another Death in Venice," ibid., [13].

224

Figure 48. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, (with Simon Fujiwara. Desk Job, 2009 (left), and Nina Saunders. Payload, 2009 (right)), Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and the artists.

The installations and focus on collecting in the project title suggest that it is possible to understand ple can become themselves items in someone

network or value system. The disconnection between the realism of the visiting experience and the ironic construction of the spaces creates an opportunity to question what is being seen: the art biennale context, the absence of the fictitious inhabitants and the strangeness of the furniture and spatial organization create a shift towards a more analytical view of the project. Visitors are thus forced to reconcile contradictory understandings, to analyse their emotional responses to these spaces emerging from their sensorial memories and usual understandings of domestic spaces but disturbed 225

by unexpected objects and juxtapositions, and to challenge presuppositions about domestic space. In Households, visitors walk through full-scale images of domestic spaces. The photographic reproductions position them as observers, outside of the spaces, and force them to look at them from a distance, as images to be analysed and reflected upon. Unlike Households

decisions, as passed on through the re highlights the constructedness of domestic spaces, but simultaneously offers entry points for

Post-script: Tomorrow Following The Collectors, Elmgreen & Dragset were invited by the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London to stage a follow-up exhibition that would, like the Venice project, combine their works with curated pieces, this time artefacts from the V&A collection.437 Rejecting the initial offer from the V&A to use their contemporary galleries, considered too bland by Elmgreen & Dragset, they settled on the former textile galleries, abandoned for some years in preparation for long-delayed

437

Information on the exhibition background and planning comes from Louise Shannon, interview with author, Skype, July 23, 2013 and London, October 14, 2013. in museum collections to question curatorial practices and the different histories that are staged by museums and Mining the Museum as chanceprojects (1995-2008). Elmgreen & Dragset themselves had already staged installations or performances that attempted to understand anew museum and odern (with performance artist and actor Trevor Stuart, as in The Collectors) in 2004 discussing the industrial past of the former power station and particularly the human part of that history. The work was part of a series of displays titled Untitled: The Public World of the Private Space Elmgreen & Dragset | Performances 1995-2011, 106-07; "Untitled: Elmgreen and Dragset," Tate, accessed March 22, 2014, http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/untitled-elmgreen-and-dragset.

226

ren conceived as an extension of the Trilogy allowed ourselves to be less thematic. There are a lot of

438

Tomorrow (October 1,

2013-January 2, 2014) brings together themes from the previous exhibitions, but focuses solely on a domestic setting, as if to say that the home is the place where everything converges, where public and private personas are revealed. The exhibition also addresses how the domestic is enmeshed with obvious issues such as sexuality, class, age, but also with broader questions such as national identity, spectatorship and museum culture. Tomorrow transforms five exhibition rooms into the posh upper-class flat of Norman Swann, a sick, retired and broke architect, on the night before his former protégé, Daniel Wilder, takes ownership of the space. Unlike their previous works, the physical transformations undertaken by Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&A are fairly simple: apart from a new kitchen and two temporary walls added to a room (to create a corridor and two non-accessible rooms, a bathroom and a guest room), they left the spaces almost as they found them, including humidity stains on some walls. The rooms are located on the third floor of the museum, in a remote corner (fig. 49 signs are positioned outside and throughout the museum to announce the exhibition (fig. 50). After walking through a long grand tapestry gallery,439 visitors enter the Tomorrow apartment through a glass door opening in a hall where they can pick up a copy of a script, worked up with

438

Michael Elmgreen, interviewed in Martin Herbert, "Tomorrow Is Here," V&A Magazine, Autumn/Winter 2013, 55.

439

Ironically, in the gallery are hung the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries donated to the V&A in lieu of tax in 1957 by a broke aristocrat. Louise Shannon, interview with author, London, October 14, 2013; Will Jennings, "A Deftly-Curated "House": Tomorrow by Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&a Museum," One Stop Arts(2013), http://onestoparts.com/review-elmgreen-dragset-tomorrow-victoria-and-albert.

227

professional playwright Leo Butler,440 evening.441 Visitors are then invited by gallery assistants dressed as butlers and maids talk as if they were domestic workers

and trained to

to visit a combined living and dining room, walk through the

corridor, peek through the bathroom keyhole where the sound of a shower running can be heard,

renovated kitchen, before finally reaching the dark bedroom where a piano sits (fig. 51). Throughout, objects are displayed as if accumulated and collected by Norman during his life.

Figure 49. Floor map of Level 3, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Victoria & Albert Museum. The Tomorrow exhibition took place in galleries 95 to 99 (top right). The main entrance to the museum is at the bottom of the plan (where the main atrium is indicated by an opened rectangle), on Level 1. 440

Herbert, "Tomorrow Is Here," 49.

441

Elmgreen & Dragset, Tomorrow: Scenes from an Unrealised Film (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2013).

228

Figure 50. Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Olivier Vallerand / the artists and Victoria Miro, London.

Figure 51. Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, plan, 2013, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: the artists and Victoria Miro, London. The cloakroom, guest room, wet room and bathroom, although identified on the apartment plan displayed on the real estate sign outside the museum and reproduced here, cannot be accessed by visitors.

All rooms are furnished with a selection of artworks by Elmgreen & Dragset, most of them brought back from previous exhibitions, such as the broken table from The Collectors or the fireplace and boy portrait from Celebrity, objects found all over the world by the artists, and around a hundred

museum objects and some Elmgreen & Dragset works, everything else can be touched: visitors can 229

sit on the couches, play the piano or read the books and magazines left all over the apartment. Most visitors do, often sitting down to read the script or discuss with a friend the imagined life of Norman. For Elmgreen, Tomorrow can absolutely be viewed without reading the script. It just adds one element; if you want to make your own story from looking at the objects, you can. And if you sit on the couch and take a book from the bookshelf, another viewer can look at you and suddenly you're an actor. We've made the exhibition like a film set: we always envied film-makers such as Ingmar Bergman or Michael Haneke for their ability to describe something wider, like cultural tendencies, by showing one life, the failure in just one life. So what you can see are all the traces of a life that didn't filled up with dreams and desires. There are unpaid bills, old love letters, passports, travel tickets and other fabrications; there's a leak from the ceiling dripping down into a bucket. Lots of things - you can spend ten minutes in it, or three hours.442

more complicated meanings upon closer observation or when taking into consideration their -set suite is extremely evocative. The carefully considered placement of creature comforts holds a sense of the uncanny; a space in which to read a life lived almost to the end, through subtle clues of inhabitation. These intimate cues have been arranged with meticulous attention to detail, planting back-dated postcards, 443

archival copies of architecture periodicals and collected vulture perched on the bed (fig. 52)

The sculpture of a

golden, like the sculpture of a maid standing in the corridor

that was already present in The Collectors and Celebrity

and the broken table (fig. 53) are examples

of this, but other smaller details, such as a found cigar holder replicating a small boy sculpture in the

442

Michael Elmgreen, interviewed in Herbert, "Tomorrow Is Here," 49.

443

Shumi Bose, "Golden Boys," Blueprint, September/October 2013, 156.

230

Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 which stood on 54), also attract attention and link the domestic narrative to other networks of sociality. As one reviewer remarks:

period replicas and artefacts borrowed from the V&A. Motifs from the greatest hits almost blend in, but for their deliberate exaggerations, giving the visitor from a total suspension of disbelief. In effect, the fragments of Elmgreen who show up from time to time, but with different stories to tell.444 While these references are not legible to every visitor the model of the apartment building from The One & the Many is for example probably not recognized by most

the high visibility of

Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 in London suggests that many Londoners could link the smaller model to their recent experience of Trafalgar Square. Those familiar with Elmgreen & Dragset might also associate the table (fig. 53) with The Collectors the younger version of The Collectors

54) with Celebrity and The Afterlife of the Mysterious

Mr. B. (2011, Galerie Perrotin, Paris). In Tomorrow, the sculpture of the boy in the fireplace seems to be a portrait of Norman Swann445 once again the artists insist on the idea that changing combinations of objects and space create different stories and that, if these stories can be made explicit for example through a script, they can also be left to the imagination of the viewers as would be the case in a real apartment. As Louise Shannon, the V&A curator working on the exhibition with Elmgreen & Dragset, noted during the 444

Ibid., 156;59.

445

Martin Herbert notes in an article published in the V&A Magazine to coincide with the exhibition that Swann is a Proustian name, further confusing the references. Herbert, "Tomorrow Is Here," 49.

231

objects to weave spectacular narratives around things

446

As

Shannon remarks, unlike The Collectors where most objects displayed were artwork or high design furniture, here the objects are much more ordinary, but their combination and context give them meanings. The position of the transformed galleries itself, in a remote corner of the museum not usually used for special exhibitions, also support these unexpected relationships between mundane house objects, personal belongings and museum and art collections.

Figure 52. Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, (with Omnes une manet nox (The Same Night Awaits Us All), bed for Louis Vuitton, 2012), Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / the artists and Victoria Miro, London.

446

Louise Shannon quoted in William Lee Adams, "Monumental Cheek: Inside the World of Elmgreen and Dragset," Time, February 21, 2013.

232

Figure 53. Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, (with Table for Bergman, 2009), Victoria & Albert Museum.. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / the artists and Victoria Miro, London.

Figure 54. Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, (with model for Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, 2012 (left), and found objects with High Expectations, 2010 (right)), Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Anders Sune Berg / the artists and Victoria Miro, London.

233

Of the Trilogy projects, Tomorrow shares most with The Collectors. They are similar not only in many of the themes but also in some the aesthetics and organizational decisions. Like in Venice, economic preoccupations are prominent as visitors to the V&A are welcomed with a for sale sign (fig. 46), this time a gigantic advertisement for a new residential development (fig. 55) combined with a plan and images from the Swann apartment (fig. 50).447 Inside the museum, signs for the exhibition were similarly designed to look like those used by realtors (fig. 50). However, more importantly than in earlier exhibitions, Elmgreen & Dragset here play constantly with the tension between the domestic and the institution. They question the limits of what is appropriate behavior in a museum setting, but simultaneously they confront visitors with their preconceptions about what makes a domestic space.448 Elmgreen & Dragset chose the space because it corresponded with their sense of what is domestic; its larger than usual dimensions relate to what most people assume upper-class apartments to look like

and the dimensions are not too far from their own Pumpwerk studio (see next

section). The position of the space in the museum, in a corner removed from where major temporary exhibitions are usually located, also makes it more prone to be discovered by chance by visitors and more surprising for many of them. This preoccupation about what is appropriate to the 447

The ad included a telephone number connected to an answering machine. In the first two weeks of exhibition, the museum had already received numerous phone calls to request information about the development or to complain about the transformation of the museum. Louise Shannon, interview with author, London, October 14, 2013. 448

In parallel to the exhibition, Elmgreen & Dragset were guest editors for the popular design magazine Wallpaper*. They used the opportunity to further build the fictional character of Norman Swann with an biographical article abour -built projects have influenced British architecture, and visit his South Ke Long, "Home Truths," 234. They also present a selection of images of fictional homes (Elmgreen & Dragset, "Halfway Houses," ibid.), including style of the domestic setting can function as an indicator of social background, talk about a period of time, portray a certain taste, desire and perversion, but it can also create a psychological drama, even be used as a political statement. Or simply function as a relaxed Nick Compton, "Elmgreen & Dragset: Fictional Homes & Home Truths," ibid., 224.

234

domestic (even if only to be deconstructed and queered later) was already present in The Collectors, as exemplified by a discussion between the artists in the documentary How Are You 449

At the V&A, interestingly, Elmgreen &

Dragset do very little to physically transform the institutional gallery space into a domestic space, apart from building a kitchen, and yet one step in the exhibition space and most visitors are instantly

on it one reviewer was even outraged that the space did not look how he imagined a real British 450

and visitors discussed amongst themselves or with the gallery assistants 451

449

Splidsboel, "How Are You."

450

Kester Rattenbur, "Architect Manqué: Elmgreen & Dragset's Installation at the V&a, London," accessed October 14, 2013, http://www.uncubemagazine.com/blog/10921441. 451

I observed this on numerous occasions while visiting the exhibition on October 5, 6 and 14, 2013.

Elmgreen also commented on this: Elmgreen: One thing that is lovely is that people read our book. Old people, young people, they sit in the sofas and read the book. And a lot of people find references from their personal lives, maybe their uncle or someone they know. They really play the role of guests in the home. Some even play the piano or open a drawer and find some letters. And the museum guards have been wonderful. They play the role of butlers and maids. They welcome people to the home and Eve M. Kahn, "A Blueprint for Misery," The New York Times, October 24, 2013, D2.

235

Figure 55. Elmgreen & Dragset. Tomorrow, 2013, Victoria & Albert Museum. Credit: Anders Sune Berg/the artists and Victoria Miro, London.

The confusion is also apparent in one of the major challenges faced by the artists and the V&A curator working with them: they had to negotiate with the numerous V&A department curators the positioning and access of the objects included in the installation. For most curators, these objects are a was that all the objects at the V&A, they were never made for being in a museum. We are kind of 452

The found objects are all accessible, the Elmgreen

& Dragset works are reachable, but watched by gallery assistants, while the V&A collection artefacts

452

Elmgreen interviewed in ibid.

236

are positioned out of reach, but in a manner that looks believable. No typical museum inscription is included in the exhibition: explanatory information outside of the story is limited to an introductory panel is outside the entrance door and the exhibition credits are outside the exit. Elmgreen & Dragset do not hide their goal: creating an installation that is at first look as close as possible to a regular domestic setting. But the experience quickly gets more unsettling, confusing, as a reviewer writes:

reality and fiction. Approaching and interacting with the refined trappings of Mr rifling around the cupboards of a host in whose home you are an especially nosy guest. And yet s collection, and if 453

The placement of everything is thus of great importance to address questions about how spatial organizations trigger understandings of context and of expected reactions. Unlike The Collectors, The One & the Many or the gallery projects from the Powerless Structures series, there are properly speaking very few architectural transformations in Tomorrow and yet the shift from an institutional

Elmgreen & Dragset started their career before being aware of queer theory, to which they were introduced around 1997, when they installed Powerless Structures, Fig. 11 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. They do not consider themselves as having one specific 453

Bose, "Golden Boys," 156.

237

discourse, as being uniquely queer artists, but they embrace queer issues and their own queerness as integral to their approach, as opening original ideas towards other social issues.454 They are not interested in doing work that speak to only one community; they want to approach the political in broad, inclusive ways. However, even if projects like The Collectors tackle a large number of issues, they are often linked to queerness.455 But what makes these projects queer? And what does taking a queer approach bring to the project? Elmgreen & Dragset develop questions about the interaction of public and private inherited from queer space theorists in their interest in letting all types of selfidentifications be lived and represented, especially when they are outside the norm. These issues were already present in their autobiographical The Incidental Self and, although the fictional context makes them more light-hearted and humourous in The Collectors or The One & the Many, they are still very present in the depiction of non-traditional households.456 More particularly in Mr. house, in a similar way to other queer space projects, Elmgreen & Dragset also insist on the role of sexuality in shaping and understanding space and self-identifications. For example, in Dominic

the Nordic Pavilion (fig. 56

454

-


455

For example in Diedrich Diederichsen, "When Worlds Elide," Artforum, September 2009, 245; Torben Sangild, "Stærkt Dansk Bidrag Til International Kunstudstilling ", iBYEN.dk(2009), http://ibyen.dk/kunst/anmeldelser/ECE727063/staerkt-dansk-bidrag-til-international-kunstudstilling/; Eivind Røssaak, "Queer Space I Venezia," Kunstkritikk(2009), http://www.kunstkritikk.com/kritikk/queer-space-i-venezia/; Lynn Macritchie, "Melancholy Giardini: The National Pavilions," Art in America, September 2009. 456

same-sex marriage in Splidsboel, "How Are You.".

238

a

457

separation and isolation in The One & the Many, Elmgreen & Dragset (via Eichler) seem to assert their belief that queerness is not about identifying solely with a gay community, a working-class community or any other defined group, but about combining individual freedom and society, about creating a sense of belonging within various groups.458 Unfortunately, while interviews with Elmgreen & Dragset show that they are aware of the multiplicity of identities they are not discussing or presenting, their focus on gay male desires, because of its repetition in many of their works, has the perverse effect of silencing other self-identifications.

457

Eichler, "Another Death in Venice," [14].

458


239

Figure 56. Elmgreen & Dragset. The Collectors, 2009, (with Tom of Finland. Untitled, 1979; Tearoom Odyssey, c. 1968; Black Magic, 1984; No Swimming, from the AMG Series, 1965; The Loggers, from the AMG Series, 1974; David, a Beauty, 1989; , 1981), Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Art Biennale. Credit: photo by Anders Sune Berg / The Danish & Nordic Pavilions and Elmgreen & Dragset; works by Tom of Finland Foundation.

with the political and social contexts in which we live

and by extension align and express ourselves.

Clear social critiques are presented by the artists in relation to the built environment, for example in The Welfare Show where they materialize in spatial structures some of the contradictions and cul-de-

240

sacs of the traditional welfare state. Their works on domesticity, The Collectors, The One & the Many, and Tomorrow, focus particularly on issues of class and social status; like Robbins or the Toxic Titties, they highlight how we identify ourselves through our choice of homes and objects with a specific target on social status and class. In The One & the Many, the lower-class households of the socialist Plattenbau are signified by the objects visible from their windows in the absence of (almost all) inhabitants; in the initial presentation, they are contrasted with the posh setting of the Celebrity ballroom. In The Collectors, the art market

and its relation to upper-class signifiers

is brought to

t are often part of collections of decorative art. Tomorrow presents a more balanced setting with a mix of artworks and everyday objects; Elmgreen

way, as some of the objects and spaces are obviously non-functional, but in a way that tells something about Norman Swann, about his belonging to a perceived social class, about his views on political and social issues, for example his attachment to British imperialism and nationhood.459 If

459

Herbert, "Tomorrow Is Here," 51-52.

The film script developed by Elmgreen & Dragset to complement the exhibition also contributes to this and is tellingly organized in relation to the different rooms of the apartment. Discussions between the characters are often related to the spaces and objects surrounding them, for example: deous proof of your banality. Banality ingrained in your DNA, your ancestral heritage, if you will. NORMAN: Yes, and what an appalling monstrosity it is, too. DANIEL: If you bothe -

241

staging of domestic spaces renders them more explicit and calls to mind for example Pierre cation and class distinction.460 Reliance on notions of cultural

recognized aesthetic preferences, but also from the manipulation of everyday objects. According to

-standing dispositions [that lie] outside the scope of the education 461

Elmgreen & Dragset explicitly play with this in their projects and for example use in

Tomorrow the collections of objects from the Victoria & Albert Museum, guardian of British taste in decorative arts,462

-

belonging to a cultural class, and by extension a social and economic class. The artists develop these ideas in parallel to associations with gender and sexuality that, in the spirit of queer theory, exemplify how all of these elements perform together in reiterating on

-identifications. However, while

NORMAN: Design to read journals meant for designers?! D Tomorrow: Scenes from an Unrealised Film: 48. 460

Bourdieu, La distinction : critique sociale du jugement. -Styles).

Elmgreen & Dragset, e classe et styles de

Bourdieu a French sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher, 1930-2002 did not explicitly theorized space in the way other thinkers like Foucault and Lefebvre have done, but his work on the habitus, on the theory of practice, and on space, see Gary Bridge, "Pierre Bourdieu," in Key Thinkers on Space and Place, ed. Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine (London: SAGE, 2004). 461

Bourdieu, La Distinction : Critique Sociale Du Jugement: 84. Translation from Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 77. 462

On the changing roles of the Victoria & Albert Museum in the development of British taste and design, see Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications, 1999); Bruce Robertson, "The South Kensington Museum in Context: An Alternative History," Museum and Society 2, no. 1 (2004); Ruth Adams, "The New Girl in the Old Boy Network: Elizabeth Esteve-Coll at the Victoria & Albert Museum," in Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader, ed. Amy K. Levin (London & New York: Routledge, 2010), 28-29.

242

Elmgreen & Dragset explicitly invoke class in their work, they cannot situate themselves outside of class distinctions and their own Pumpwerk is designed and occupied in relation to their own taste and belonging to art world and queer networks, as will be discussed in the next section.

463

In The Collectors, Celebrity, and Tomorrow, Elmgreen & Dragset address domesticity by creating fictional realms for specific characters. Interestingly, these imagined places are preceded by the design for their own shared dwelling, the Pumpwerk Neukölln studio-house in Berlin, a former water pumping station converted in 2006-2008 by architects Nils Wenk and Jan Wiese.464 The project is -long interests, as so we were 465

looking for somewhere we could apply the Pumpwerk also suggests questions about domesticity

and especially queer domesticity

The

that will

reappear in the later projects. In their art, Elmgreen & Dragset do not explicitly suggest design cues for new construction

their projects present distorted, incomplete spaces that cannot be directly

463

Ingar Dragset interviewed in Cathrin Schaer, "On Location: Berlin, with Few Walls," The New York Times, October 15, 2009, D6. 464

Although they collaborated closely with Wenk & Wiese to make sure the Pumpwerk would reflect their desire to be in an innovative combination of working and domestic spaces that connected with some of the preoccupations and ideas developed in their art, Elmgreen and Dragset do not consider the Pumpwerk as one of their projects. Wenk was particularly aware of their desire to experiment with domesticity and, in addition to the attention devoted to the structural and technical challenges associated with the unusual building, he made specific plans to create a spatial arrangement that would disrupt traditional public/private oppositions and would also acknowledge Elmgreen and Nils Wenk, interview with author, Berlin, July 1, 2011 and Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, interview with author, London, October 16, 2013. 465

Dragset interviewed in Schaer, "On Location: Berlin, with Few Walls," D6.

243

translated into new buildings

but they nevertheless imply that current domestic designs could be

rethought and modified to acknowledge how people experience space; the Pumpwerk is an example of such changes. The Pumpwerk presents a rich and rare experiment in merging a critique into an actual design for a domestic space. It is, however, a critique allowed by the wealth of artists with an international high profile career: even if the Berlin location meant that this large space was not as expensive as it would have been elsewhere,466 its price plus the renovation costs

and dimensions

social and cultural status also allowed them a design freedom that is not possible for everyone. Despite these caveats, the analysis of the use and impact of the resulting project is very important to understand how the critiques discussed earlier could be implemented and what new constraints appeared.

their personal relationship ended. Their professional partnership had initially evolved from a romantic engagement, but, by 2005, Elmgreen and Dragset were no longer in a personal relationship, which made their move into a single building an even sharper critique of traditional domestic arrangements. The transformed building, a former industrial space on a residential street in the dense Neukölln borough, combines a large studio space, two loft spaces for the artists, and spaces shared between the artists, their guests and studio employees (kitchen, bathrooms, living room) (fig. 57). The move into a single building used by the artists, the studio employees, and outsiders presents a clear critique of domestic planning, setting aside both the traditional family model and the 466

Elmgreen & Dragset do not want to disclose the price they paid for the building, but in an interview with the New

typical twoalso notes that the renovations cost about the same as the purchase price. Ibid.

eporter

244

dichotomy of (private) living and (public) working spaces in the layering of its different functions (fig. 58). While the main working and gallery space is adjacent to the primary entry, a multi-purpose

putting the visitor in close proximity to the artists who may be performing intimate acts or working. The interlacement of studio and living spaces in section and plan creates a building that, although designed in a context contrasting with their installations, presents many similar traits.

245

246

Figure 57. Wenk und Wiese Architekten. Pumpwerk Neukölln, plans, 2007-2008, Berlin. Ground floor: gallery, workshop; second floor: Dragset loft; third floor: offices platform, kitchen/conference room; fourth floor: Elmgreen loft; attic: shared kitchen, guestroom, gallery/lounge. Credit: Nils Wenk.

247

Figure 58. Wenk und Wiese Architekten. Pumpwerk Neukölln, section, 2007-2008, Berlin. Credit: Nils Wenk.

Designed and discussed as a house, the Pumpwerk is paradoxically mostly a public space where studio employees spend more time than the artists themselves, and where clients are hosted for private shows in the attic, the furthest space from the entrance.467 located, at the physical heart of the Pumpwerk, around the main stairs, but they are also invisible to the visitor, completely sealed off from the studio spaces. Only the attic space, at once a private lounge and an exhibition space, explicitly combines the private and the public, creating a space 467

See for example Wenk und Wiese Architekten, "Pumpwerk Neukölln," Arch+, no. 201/202 (2011). Although both artists officially use the space as their part-time home, they have gradually used it more as a work place than a house after finding out in the first months that the loft spaces were too small, especially as they met new life partners. Furthermore, Elmgreen now spends most of his time in London where the duo is developing projects, but uses the Pumpwerk when he visits Berlin (Ingar Dragset, interview with author, Berlin, June 8, 2012. and Nils Wenk, interview with author, Berlin, July 1, 2011.).

248

sheltered from the exterior, but where outsiders are invited to participate in the performance of the work in the place where -houses,468 but they also display a new type of household arrangement where two gay male ex-lovers live within the same semi-domestic space. Interestingly, the attic lounge is also the space that most resembles the bachelor space in The Collectors with its open structure, cool Scandinavian furniture, and general ambiance of a performative display space (fig. 59). Unlike invisible from the outside; the occupants can thus control who can access the space, but once inside, those visiting can still read and interpret the space as they wish. The unusual spatial organization of the building positions queer lives, long forbidden to be seen, as worthy of being visible, but simultaneously allows its inhabitants to keep a strict control on who is permitted to access the spaces.

The combination of vast floor space and the small, quirky nooks means you can be very hidden here, 469

The building is in a residential

neighbourhood, but it is in the middle of a fenced garden, unlike other residential buildings that touch the sidewalk, keeping it sheltered from intrusive gazes. The domestic spaces themselves, while

468

in SoHo, New York. Jasper Sharp, "The House That Judd Built," Art Review 2004. A recent restoration of the space has highlighted the challenges associated with Greg Allen, "101 Spring Street by Donald Judd (and Aro Architects)," Architect 2013; Jonathan Griffin, "Escape from New York," Apollo, July-August 2013; Christine Mehring et al., "Minimal Impact," Artforum International, May 2013; Clifford A. Pearson, "Soho Time Capsule," Architectural Record, May 2013; Madeleine Schwartz, "The Art of Gentrification," Dissent 61, no. 1 (2014); Catherine Croft, "Conservative Measures," Architectural Review 2014. 469

Dragset interviewed in Schaer, "On Location: Berlin, with Few Walls," D6.

249

placed in relation with the spaces accessible by all visitors, face the garden, hidden from the street; one thus has to be invited to be able to penetrate the private lives of Elmgreen & Dragset.

Figure 59. Wenk und Wiese Architekten. Pumpwerk Neukölln, attic lounge, 2007-2008, Berlin. Credit: Udo Meinel.

The Incidental Self and This is the First Day of my Life, the

even if once inside visitors can imagine what they want about them. Elmgreen & Dragset have allowed (and themselves released) numerous publications of the studio-house, including a few of them where their works or themselves appear (fig. 60). Interestingly, the duo also shot most of their contribution to the limited edition artist-curated journal Gayhouse (2011) in the Pumpwerk. The 250

photographs have been staged by the artists to depict young male models, often naked, in intimate domestic scenes (fig. 61).470 The staging of these photographs in the Pumpwerk further confuses the The Incidental Self or This is the First Day of my Life.

Figure 60. Pumpwerk Neukölln interior with Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Berlin, 2011. Credit: Giorgio Possenti. Figure 61. Elmgreen & Dragset. Image from Gayhouse, 2011. Credit: Elmgreen & Dragset.

similar to and divergent from canonical examples of modern houses that have been discussed as challenging, or in certain cases 470

Elmgreen & Dragset, Gayhouse by Elmgreen & Dragset (Paris: Septembre éditions, 2011), Artist book. The only image not from the Pumpwerk was a photograph of a naked model in The Collectors (similar to Figure 40), which is appropriate considering how Gayhouse is a continuation of Gayhouse note in Gayhouse," accessed December 17, 2013, http://www.gayhouse-building.com/elmgreen-dragsets-gayhouse-3/?lang=en.

251

restating, normative views on gender and sexuality. Alice Friedman, for example, discusses the importance of assumptions about ge and Guest House (both 1949, with an interior remodelling of the Guest House in 1953). She argues id-

on gender shape the design as he attempted to stage a space.471 While the Pumpwerk is not a glass house, its blurring of public and private limits in its interior space brings it close to the experimentations of Johnson. The control over the space is also much more House, than to the single-space Farnsworth House. If Johnson singlehandedly designed the Glass House for his own use, Elmgreen & Dragset collaborated much more closely with their architect Nils Wenk to shape the transformation of the pumping station than Farnsworth did with Mies van der Rohe, who could thus much more impose his views and values over her. Annmarie Adams discusses in similar terms the contradictory aspe

while simultaneously presenting a very strong outside image.472 As in the Pumpwerk, traditional room divisions are subverted here. Three bedrooms of equal dimensions are positioned adjacent to terraces and a badminton court, only visible from the bedrooms. The court here plays a similar role 471

Alice T. Friedman, "People Who Live in Glass Houses: Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, and Philip Johnson," in Women and the Making of the Modern House : A Social and Architectural History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998). 472

Adams, "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001."

252

le through private spaces, but used extensively by other people than the primary dweller. Two other houses, both designed by their users, also exhibit a blurred and ambiguous relation -29) is often discussed by queer space theorists, not only because of the struggle between Gray and Le Corbusier to claim ownership over

shaped in the pockets between public spaces.473 Similarly, in his New York apartment (1977-97) designed and renovated constantly over the last twenty years of his life, architect Paul Rudolph, known for his brutalist modernism, designed a complex labyrinth of Plexiglas, steel and light that blends private and public spaces. Timothy Rogan argues that, through careful planning, Rudolph created a deeply eroticized architecture where, in apparent contrast to the exaggerated transparency, he could exert an intense control over his privacy, but also over the (male) object of his desire.474 In

insist on the need to make queer lives public. Unlike the other houses discussed, the Pumpwerk is also a chance to build upon critiques present in their work since the beginning of their career and to open up new fields of investigation that have since been explored in The Collectors, The One & the Many, Tomorrow, and other works.

473

Beatriz Colomina, "Battle Lines: E.1027, " in The Sex of Architecture, ed. Diana I. Agrest, Patricia Conway, and Leslie Kanes Weisman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996); Katarina Bonnevier, "A Queer An " in Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture, ed. Hilde Heynen and Gulsum Baydar (London & New York: Routledge, 2005); Rault, Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In. 474

Rohan, "Public and Private Spectacles / Paul Rudolph: Casa Rudolph, New York 1977-1997," 140.

253

The actual experience of living in the Pumpwerk has not functioned as well as expected, with the loft spaces being too small and the impact of working and living constantly in the same environment being too constraining, although temporary use of the living space has proved successful and the exhibition of private life to coworkers and guests has had some impact.475 Public and private are not neatly separated in the Pumpwerk; they coexist, they merge at some points kitchen, etc.

in the attic, in the

and at others they spill onto each other. As designed, public and private do not

disappear to be replaced by a third kind of space, but instead overlap to allow simultaneous uses and blurred readings. Because they are explicitly interrelated, private and public acts are at once more clearly identifiable and more confused; they can thus be more consciously controlled and used by the

environments are, however, located within a specific, privileged, context, very similar to the one they critique in The Collectors and Celebrity

The One & the Many. They are aware of this context and

understandings of domestic spaces, for example with the placement of golden sculptures of maids in the A. family house or with the opposition of a high society cocktail party and social housing in Celebrity. Their own status as celebrated white male artists, and the wealth that comes with it, allows them, however, to attempt in the Pumpwerk experiments that others could not. The Pumpwerk design thus suggests clues for transformations to other domestic spaces, but it is also a very specific example for a privileged duo of artists that cannot be easily reproduced elsewhere.

475

Ingar Dragset, interview with author, Berlin, June 8, 2012. and Nils Wenk, interview with author, Berlin, July 1, 2011.

254

Conclusion. A Queer Use for a Queer Place "There are no explanations - only indications." - Jacob Fabricius, 2009476

I came to this research project with a desire to understand how sexuality and gender play a role in the design and use of space, not as essentialising characteristics, as some scholars seemed to assert in

around us, including our built environment. To do so, I attempted a genealogy of queer space discourses and critiques which, as has been shown throughout the dissertation, vary greatly from limited analysis of spaces occupied by gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people to nuanced understandings of how a queer perspective allows renewed readings of space

in architecture, but

also in art projects. If numerous discussions focused on the queering of spaces such as bars and parks, often presenting queer acts and uses as a layer within a multitude of layers creating public spaces, a certain number of theorists, historians, and practitioners also approached domestic space with a queer lens, following the lead of feminists, both to discuss houses or apartments designed for or by noted gay and lesbian people or to present the challenges that normative domesticity brings to queer lives. While such discussions have been more sustained and continuous in the art world, they have slowed down in architecture after an initial burst in the mid-1990s. The recent development of a project like BOOM, however, shows that we are not yet at a point where a complete history of queer space theory or of the thinking about the interaction of gender, sexual orientation and architecture can be accurately and comprehensively sketched. Major shifts are still occurring as the attention 476

Fabricius, "Hidden Secrets in Brick Houses," [11].

255

turns to aging LGBT populations, but at the same time many of the critiques associated with queer theory, in particular the need to be more inclusive and representative of the broad diversity of people outside of the often white privileged and male subjects of sexuality studies, have rarely been successfully addressed by architectural theorists and even less so by practitioners, as BOOM shows in its focus on gay white men.

the rare cases where the idea is discussed, it often falls victim to a tendency to attempt identifying oriented towards LGBT users or designed by a non-heterosexual designer or architect; there are, however, more nuanced theorists, often from outside architecture, that have inspired my work. Building on the case studies, to me a queer space approach is a political stance on architecture, and particularly the domestic where our intimate experiences develop and which is often described as a safe space even if this safety can be compromised by a number of elements and is thus never fully present, and an opportunity to design in a more inclusive way, acknowledging the moving and changing selfidentifications of everyone, especially when linked to sexuality which is still assumed by many to be identifications are expressed through their living spaces; it includes sexual orientation, gender, and

an integral role into how spaces are experienced and lived. Because there are so few examples of such approach, I chose to focus on how critiques were presented, more often in art contexts where they

256

are much more visible, in an effort to bring them back, as well as other social critiques of space, to the forefront of architectural discussions. Architects like Jürgen Mayer have taken the ideas initially investigated in their more explicitly queer

most queer critiques by architectural theorists and practitioners have yet to effect traditional built projects. These critiques have thus mainly appeared in non-traditional proposals or in art representations and installations. Queer critiques appeared in architectural discourse in a series of exhibitions and essays in the mid-1990s that built on work developed by feminist theorists and practitioners since the 1970s and on the emerging queer theory. These projects presented, sometimes at the same time, both investigations of queer spaces from an architectural point of view and queer approaches to understanding architectural and urban spaces. One of these exhibitions, Queer Space (1994) at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, represented a very broad attempt to bring the idea of queer to the architectural discipline and as such included a varied selection of approaches and discourses. Other exhibitions like House Rules (1994) at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus used a queer approach as one of a set of social and theoretical approaches to an architectural question, in this case contemporary domesticity. In addition to attempting to identify and define what could constitute queer space, with the most interesting discourses showing how queer space is in fact not confined to specific spaces but instead a layering of meaning that can possibly appear in many places, an important common thread of these exhibitions was the contestation of traditional public/private oppositions and the realisation that for many people, including for example queer children and teenagers, the assumption that domestic spaces are private 257

spaces threatens their safety. After these initial exhibitions and texts, however, interest dwindled and later exhibitions on domesticity such as The Un-Private House expressed a focus more on formal and technological aspects than social, echoing the emerging interest in the digital in architecture, but also marking a move away from a post-modern interest in diversity towards a renewed modernism stripped away from some of its social reform roots. Mark Robbins is one of the rare architects who continued working with an explicit interest in queer issues throughout his career after the mid-1990s. After participating in the Queer Space exhibition and curating House Rules, among other projects, he developed in the early 2000s his photographic project Households (2003-2006). By presenting how domestic spaces always act as representations of -identification, Households underlines that, even if not explicitly part of a public domain, homes are still informed by pu of domestic spaces also calls to mind material culture studies and sociological investigation of studied subvert the usual discussions of home objects and décor by fictionalising the spaces represented or imagined. Dorit Margreiter and the Toxic Titties in their performance and film project 10104 Angelo View Drive (2004) similarly question assumptions about domestic spaces, but this time focus on a single modernist example, a house by Californian architect John Lautner. Bringing together, not completely seamlessly, contrasting feminist approaches, the project highlights how cinematic thus inevitably public

and

representations of domesticity are constructed, but also how a single house

can sustain completely different meanings. The conflicting positions presented in the divergent edits 258

of the film by Margreiter and by the Toxic Titties show how related critiques can take almost opposite approaches with varying readings. Furthermore, if the issues raised by Margreiter and by the Toxic Titties are relevant to all domestic spaces, their choice of presenting them through an assault on a very famous house, both in architectural circles and in Hollywood movies, already loaded with very strong and varied meanings make it harder to translate their critique to other more already strongly identified with a mainstream domestic ideal, can for example more easily be applied to

er critiques of how sexual orientation and gender categories are negotiated and reframed by capitalism and globalism. The more recent examples by Elmgreen & Dragset not only investigate representations of domestic space but build fictional domestic spaces on an architectural scale. Their projects on domesticity come as a continuation of their career-long interest in how spatial structures function in reiterating institutional structures. Unlike the previous cases studied which represent domestic spaces in the gallery, in The Collectors (2009), The One & the Many (2011) and Tomorrow (2013), Elmgreen & Dragset transform gallery spaces into temporary domestic spaces. Theses transformations support a rethinking and questioning by both the artists and the visitors of what constitutes the domestic and particularly of how one creates stories about a household through the belongings displayed and the design decisions shaping the space. In similar ways to Robbins and Margreiter and the Toxic Titties, while also including representations of heterosexual domesticity, Elmgreen & Dragset make explicit references to non-traditional sexuality, usually hidden from view. In continuity with their interest in 259

social and political issues, the duo bring into their investigation of domestic spaces topics that would usually be discussed as public issues, such as nationhood in Tomorrow or celebrity culture in Celebrity The One & the Many, highlighting how much the domestic is enmeshed with the public and, thus, political. The domestic installations also build directly from sociology of objects and homes, story, lifestyle, self-identifications and belonging to a social class. While theoretical investigations have played a role in architecture for a long time, for example in Le hese ideas into actual buildings or cities is the goal for most architects. As such, it is not surprising that many of the architects involved in the early queer space exhibitions later moved their critiques to the development of built projects. Similarly, although artists do not have the same urge to apply their insights to lived practical experiments, Elmgreen & Dragset, when it came time to build the Pumpwerk, their own live-work space, integrated many of the ideas they had played with in their work. The Pumpwerk and the BOOM projects show, however, that critiques easily presented through installations are hard to translate into actual architectural designs. Furthermore, in both subjects discussed and presented are mostly wealthy gay white male, mirroring the still largely privileged male artists creating the work and the predominantly male architectural profession designing spaces. This is also explicit in the focus in queer spa as queer, unfortunately silencing other forms of queerness. Queer ideals will only be achieved when discussions and even more so completed architectural projects

fully include and take into 260

account the different needs of women, non-white, poor and other marginalized people. Other

queer critiques were explicitly spelled out, domestic experimentations disrupted and subverted

w York apartment. However, all of these projects were designed for wealthy people or people with design resources easily available; the ways in which these issues the

domestic spaces. The projects studied also question the relationship between art and architecture, in particular nontraditional forms of architecture such as complex transformations of space underline the varying uses and possibilities of architecture and art. Notwithstanding the absence of technical training of Elmgreen & Dragset requiring the assistance of licensed architects in many of their larger projects, the major reorganisation of gallery spaces undertaken by the artists are architectural endeavours even if they do not consider themselves architects. Their mise en espace create complete spaces that could almost be really inhabited, but

social structures instead of the liveability of the spaces. Architectural installations similarly insist on the rhetorical potential of spatial manipulations and are therefore used prominently to present social critiques, such as the feminist and queer critiques discussed in this dissertation. The critiques, 261

however, often lost their coherence or disappear when architects start developing projects that must satisfy regulations, budgets, and other constraints, even if that often means that the projects do not

learn from manipulation of space by artists to develop new forms of architecture that better respond

ace. Households, 10104 Angelo View Drive and Elmgreen & of space in oppositional terms that are omnipresent in architectural discourse. These binary understandings do not reflect the fluid complexity of actual spaces and are often based in normative views on socia architecture mirrors the fluidity of private and public underlined by queer space theorists. In these projects, the creators bring the visitors face to face with their own assumptions and values, underlining how these are constructed and how they play a role in understanding how others live. Visitors are confronted with the ways in which they assume to know how people live and who they are by looking at their living space, making allegedly private space very public billboards. Because they exist as representations of spaces, both real and imagined, these installations are comprehended as discursive tools. Their position between disciplines further questions our relation to space, underlining how we often forget to question how spatial designs, by both architects and users, -identification. The projects studied ultimately share the implication that not only is the often reiterated distinction between public and private irrelevant when discussing domestic spaces, but that people consciously 262

set up their dwellings to perform their self-identifications. Their living environment is designed not only to sustain their daily life, but also to support or subvert their relation to social assumptions about identity. However, these enactments often appear in relation to existing spaces: a dweller transforms a space he or she moves into, personalizes a house designed by someone else, and adds meanings to the initial space. As the works by Margreiter and the Toxic Titties or Elmgreen & Dragset discussed here imply, these changes are developed in relation to shared social and cultural symbolism associated with spaces that are assumed to attach to particular identifications. By highlighting these critiques, the artists and architects studied move away from a simplistic understanding of queer space as strictly attached to sexual orientation and gender to present a broader, more all-encompassing approach that intersect various elements of identities and selfidentifications, pointing out specifically how class and race play a role in making more or less visible and safe sexual orientation, gender inequalities, etc. However, the difficulties that arise when those elements are integrated or taken into account in the development of built spaces point out the complexity of such interplay between different layers of identities and self-identifications. While these ideas are easily expressed through exaggerated discussions in a gallery space, the move

with their own house or the projected BOOM neighbourhoods show. Exhibitions present an opportunity to question social issues and make them explicit in a way that everyday spaces seldom can. Social critiques are often present in innovative designs, but the regular use of domestic spaces render them invisible for most users. When made too explicit, they risk becoming obnoxious, tiring for the occupants, unliveable, the public exhibition taking over the possibilities for self-performance. 263

The consciously public transformation of the dwelling exposes critiques in a similar way to exhibitions, but it can hardly be a universal design solution. These critiques must instead serve as a base point for rethinking how we design and experience domestic spaces in relation to the performativity of self-identifications. Early queer space theorists and practitioners in architecture have already played an important role in architectural education in academic institutions (for example Beatriz Colomina, John Paul Ricco or Mark Robbins) and museum and galleries (for example Henry Urbach or Mark Robbins), but the queer inclination of their work has not always been present. Their impact has been more in an opening towards diversity in architecture, as well as an increasing interest in the potential of social theory and critical installations in moving forward the discipline. Moving from critical installations to architectural education, the discipline is now ready, I believe, to clearly acknowledge how all identities are essential elements in the design and use of not only domestic environments, but also all architectural and urban spaces. Traditional divisions between private and public have forced a discussion of spaces as driven by different social contexts, but understanding domestic spaces as public displays of both collective and self-identifications highlight how architecture is always political. A firm knowledge of the social and political issues at play in architectural design must thus become part of the architectural curriculum as much as programmatic, technical, or formal aspects.

264

Bibliography Unpublished archival material 53rd International Art Exhibition press collection, Rassegna stampa, arti visive, 2009, Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee / Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia Nordic Pavilion press book, Raccolta documentaria, arti visive, 2009, Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee / Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia Elmgreen & Dragset Studio presentation books and press collection. Queer Space folder. Storefront for Art and Architecture Archive. The Toxic Titties video and photo documentation.

Interviews Heather Cassils and Clover Leary, for the Toxic Titties, interview by Skype, April 25, 2012 Ingar Dragset, interview at the Pumpwerk Neukölln, Berlin, June 8, 2012 Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, interview in London, October 16, 2013 ssion organized by SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, QC, January 16, 2014. Jürgen Mayer, interview in Berlin, June 27, 2011 Annette Østerby, interview at the Danish Agency for Culture, Copenhagen, June 6, 2012 Mark Robbins, interview by Skype, May 14, 2012 Joel Sanders, phone interview, February 26, 2014 Louise Shannon, interview by Skype, July 23, 2013, and interview at the Victoria & Albert Museum, October 14, 2013 Nils Wenk, interview in Berlin, July 1, 2011

265

Published material Adam, Hubertus. ""The Un-Private House" Im Moma." ARCH+, October 1999, 12-13. Adams, Annmarie. "The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia." In Gender, Class, and Shelter: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture V, edited by Elizabeth Collins Cromley and Carter L. Hudgins. 164-78. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. . "The Power of Pink: Children's Bedrooms and Gender Identity." FKW // Zeitschrift für geschlechterforschung und visuelle kultur, no. 50 (December 2010): 58-69. . "Rooms of Their Own: The Nurses' Residences at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital." Material History Review / Revue d'histoire de la culture matérielle 40 (Fall 1994): 29-41. . "Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001." Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 17, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 82-97. Adams, Annmarie, and Peta Tancred. Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Adams, Ruth. "The New Girl in the Old Boy Network: Elizabeth Esteve-Coll at the Victoria & Albert Museum." Chap. 3 In Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader, edited by Amy K. Levin. 28-42. London & New York: Routledge, 2010. Adams, William Lee. "Monumental Cheek: Inside the World of Elmgreen and Dragset." Time, February 21, 2013. Agrest, Diana I. "Architecture from Without: Body, Logic, and Sex." Chap. 9 In Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice. 173-95. Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1991. Ahmed, Sara. "Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 4 (2006): 543-74. . Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2006. Ahrentzen, Sherry. "The F Word in Architecture: Feminist Analyses in/of/for Architecture." Chap. 2 In Reconstructing Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices, edited by Thomas A. Dutton and Lian Hurst Mann. 71-118. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. . "The Space between the Studs: Feminism and Architecture." Signs 29, no. 1 (Automn 2003): 179-206.

266

Ahrentzen, Sherry, and Kathryn H. Anthony. "Sex, Stars, and Studios: A Look at Gendered Educational Practices in Architecture." Journal of Architectural Education 47, no. 1 (1993): 11-29. Alemani, Cecilia. "The Elmgreen & Dragset Show." Domus, November 2009, 101-05. Allen, Greg. "101 Spring Street by Donald Judd (and Aro Architects)." Architect, 2013, 56-59. Allen, Jennifer. "Portrait of the Artist as an Architect." In Parasite Paradise: A Manifesto for Temporary Architecture and Flexible Urbanism, edited by Liesbeth Melis and Foundation for Art and Public Space. 167-86. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2003. Almendrala, Anna. "Boom! A Bold New Community in Palm Springs." In The Huffington Post (2011). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/boom-retirementcommunity_n_823535.html. Altman, Irwin, and Abraham Wandersman. Neighborhood and Community Environments. Human Behavior and Environment. New York: Plenum Press, 1987. Anderson, Alex T. "On the Human Figure in Architectural Representation." Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 4 (May 2002): 238-46. Anthony, Kathryn H. Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Badgett, Mary Virginia Lee. Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. Baer, Adam. "If You Were Cool, Rich, or Bad Enough to Live Here, You'd Be Home: Film Culture's Obsession with the Architecture of John Lautner." Virginia Quarterly Review 89, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 104-33. Baker, George. "The Space of the Stain." Grey Room, no. 5 (2001): 5-37. Balmori, Diana, and Joel Sanders. Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture. New York: Monacelli Press, 2011. Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l'histoire de l'art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986. Beauchamp, Julie. "Réalités et besoins des aînés gais et lesbiennes : approche adaptée." Pluriâges 4, no. 1 (2013): 19-23.

267

Beecher, Catherine Esther, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science; Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes. New York & Boston: J.B. Ford And Company & H.A. Brown & Co., 1869. Beitin, Andreas F. "The Appearance of Demiurges." In Trilogy, edited by Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin. 52-67. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011. Bell, David, Jon Binnie, Julia Cream, and Gill Valentine. "All Hyped up and No Place to Go." Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 1, no. 1 (1994): 31-47. Bell, David, Jon Binnie, and Ruth Holliday. Pleasure Zones: Bodies, Cities, Spaces. Space, Place, and Society. 1st ed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001. Bell, David, and Gill Valentine, eds. Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. London: Routledge, 1995. Bergdoll, Barry, Peter Christensen, Ron Broadhurst, and Art Museum of Modern. Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008. Berkeley, Ellen Perry, and Matilda McQuaid. Architecture: A Place for Women. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. "Sex in Public." In Publics and Counterpublics, edited by Michael Warner. New York: Zone Books, 2005. Bernstein, Fred. "Rave." Blueprint, October 1999, 82. Betsky, Aaron. Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: William Morrow, 1995. ———. Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire. 1st ed. New York: William Morrow, 1997. Betsky, Aaron, Pat Morton, Terence Riley, and Mark Robbins. Fabrications: Bodybuildings, Full Scale, the Tectonic Garden. New York, San Francisco & Columbus, OH: The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, 1998. Exhibition catalogue. Bingaman, Amy, Lise Sanders, and Rebecca Zorach. Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis. London & New York: Routledge, 2002. Binnie, Jon. "The Erotic Possibilities of the City." Chap. 5 In Pleasure Zones: Bodies, Cities, Spaces, edited by David Bell, Jon Binnie and Ruth Holliday. Space, Place, and Society, 103-28. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001. 268

———. "Sexuality, the Erotic and Geography: Epistemology, Methodology and Pedagogy." Chap. 2 In Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics, edited by Kath Browne, Jason Lim and Gavin Brown. 29-38. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007. Bishop, Claire. "Live Installations and Constructed Situations: The Use of 'Real People' in Art." In Art of Welfare, edited by Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne. Verksted, 61-86. Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006. Blackford, Darris. "Wexner Show Confronts Suburban Living." Architecture, October 1994, 28-29. Blidon, Marianne. "Jalons pour une géographie des homosexualités." Espace géographique 37, no. 2 (2008): 175-89. Bloomer, Jennifer. "A Lay a Stone a Patch a Post a Pen the Ruddyrun: Minor Architectural Possibilities." In Strategies in Architectural Thinking, edited by Jeffrey Kipnis, John Whiteman and Richard Burdett. 48-66. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1992. Bondi, Liz. "Gender, Class, and Urban Space: Public and Private Space in Contemporary Urban Landscapes." Urban Geography. 19, no. 2 (1998): 160. ———. "Sexing the City." Chap. 8 In Cities of Difference, edited by Ruth Fincher and Jane M. Jacobs. 177-200. New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1998. Bonnemaison, Sarah, and Ronit Eisenbach. Installations by Architects : Experiments in Building and Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. Bonnemaison, Sarah, Ronit Eisenbach, and Robert Gonzalez. "Introduction." Journal of Architectural Education 59, no. 4 (May 2006): 3-11. Bonnemaison, Sarah, and Christine Macy. "Queering the Grid: Transgression and Liminality in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade." Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 27, no. 1, 2 (2002): 21-26. Bonnevier, Katarina. Behind Straight Curtains : Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture. Stockholm: Axl Books, 2007. ———. "Out of the Salon: With Natalie Barney Towards a Critically Queer Architecture." In Critical Architecture, edited by Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser and Mark Dorrian. Ahra Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities, 200-05. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

269

———. "A Queer Analysis of Eileen Gray's E.1027." Chap. 9 In Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture, edited by Hilde Heynen and Gulsum Baydar. 162-80. London & New York: Routledge, 2005. BOOM. "Design : Architecture / Joel Sanders Architect." Accessed July 13, 2012. http://boompalmsprings.com/design/joelsandersarchitect/#3. Boorstein, Jonathan. "Queer Space." In Building Bridges: Diversity Connections: American Institute of Architects National Diversity Conference Proceedings. 27. Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects, 1995. Booth, Chris. "Breaking Down Barriers." Chap. 13 In Changing Places: Women's Lives in the City, edited by Chris Booth, Jane Darke and Susan Yeandle. 167-82. London: Paul Chapman Publishing, 1996. Borbridge, Richard. "Sexuality and the City: Exploring Gaybourhoods and the Urban Village Form in Vancouver, Bc.", University of Manitoba, 2007. Borden, Iain. "No Place Like Home the Un-Private House at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 5 October." Architects Journal, August 26, 1999, 48. Bose, Shumi. "Golden Boys." Blueprint, September/October 2013, 150-60. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. ———. La distinction : critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Esthétique relationnelle. Documents Sur L'art. Paris: Les presses du réel, 1998. Bowlby, Sophie R., Jo Foord, and Linda McDowell. "The Place of Gender in Locality Studies." Area 18, no. 4 (1986): 327-31. Bridge, Gary. "Pierre Bourdieu." Chap. 8 In Key Thinkers on Space and Place, edited by Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin and Gill Valentine. 59-64. London: SAGE, 2004. Brooke, Kaucyila, and Dorit Margreiter. Gendered Geographies [in English and German]. Zurich, Switzerland: Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, 2002. Brotman, Shari, Bill Ryan, Shannon Collins, Line Chamberland, Robert Cormier, Danielle Julien, Elizabeth Meyer, Allan Peterkin, and Brenda Richard. "Coming out to Care: Caregivers of Gay and Lesbian Seniors in Canada." The Gerontologist 47, no. 4 (2007): 490-503.

270

Brotman, Shari, Bill Ryan, and Robert Cormier. "The Health and Social Service Needs of Gay and Lesbian Elders and Their Families in Canada. ." The Gerontologist 43, no. 2 (2003): 192202. Brotman, Shari, Bill Ryan, Yves Jalbert, and Bill Rowe. "The Impact of Coming out on Health and Health Care Access: The Experiences of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Two-Spirit People. ." Journal of Health and Social Policy 15, no. 1 (2002): 1-29. Brown, Lori A., ed. Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture. Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Browne, Kath. "Challenging Queer Geographies." Antipode 38, no. 5 (November 2006): 885-93. Browne, Kath, Jason Lim, and Gavin Brown. Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007. Buchmann, Sabeth. "Eyes on the World." In 10104 Angelo View Drive, edited by Dorit Margreiter. 93-109. Vienna: MUMOK, 2004. Burton, Anthony. Vision & Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V&A Publications, 1999. Busch, Akiko. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Interiors, August 1999, 32-33. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York: Routledge, 1993. ———. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1st ed. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. ———. "Imitation and Gender Insubordination." Chap. 1 In Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, edited by Diana Fuss. 13-31. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. ———. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 519-31. Cahill, Sean, and Ken South. "Policy Issues Affecting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People in Retirement." Generations 26, no. 2 (2002): 49-54. Campbell-Lange, Barbara-Ann. John Lautner. Köln: Taschen, 1999. Carley, Rachel. "Domestic Afterlives: Rachel Whiteread's Ghost." Architectural Design 78, no. 3 (May/June 2008): 26-29. Castells, Manuel. The City and the Grassroots : A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. 271

Castiglia, Christopher, and Christopher Reed. If Memory Serves: Gay Men, Aids, and the Promise of the Queer Past. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Chamberland, Line. "Remembering Lesbian Bars: Montreal, 1955-1975." In Gay Studies from the French Cultures: Voices from France, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and the Netherlands, edited by Rommer Mendès-Leite and Pierre-Olivier de Busscher. Research on Homosexuality, 231-69. New York, London, & Norwood (Australia): The Haworth Press, 1993. Chamberland, Line, and Johanne Paquin. "Vieillir en étant soi-même : adaptation des services résidentiels aux besoins des lesbiennes âgées." Montréal: Alliance de recherche IREF/Relais-femmes/UQAM, 2004. Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. ———. "'Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public': Gay Uses of the Streets." In Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, edited by Joel Sanders. 224-60. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Clausen, Barbara. "Dorit Margreiter." Artforum, September 2008, 445-47. Coates, Nigel. Guide to Ecstacity. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. ———. "New Clubs at Large." AA Files, no. 1 (1981): 4-8. Cocoloco. "Cocoloco Performance." Accessed July 24, 2013, http://www.cocoloco.co.uk/. Codrington, Andrea. "Home Peep Show." Metropolitan Home, July-August 1999, 84,86. Coleman, Debra, Elizabeth Danze, and Carol Henderson, eds. Architecture and Feminism, Yale Publications on Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Collins, Alan. "Sexual Dissidence, Enterprise and Assimilation: Bedfellows in Urban Regeneration." Urban Studies 41, no. 9 (August 1, 2004): 1789-806. Colomina, Beatriz. "Battle Lines: E.1027." In The Sex of Architecture, edited by Diana I. Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman. 167-82. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. ———. "Double Exposure: Alteration to a Suburban House (2001)." In Dan Graham, edited by Alex Kitnik. October Files, 163-71. Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2011. ———. "The Exhibitionist House." In At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture, edited by Russell Ferguson. 127-65. Los Angeles & New York: The Museum of Contemporary Art & Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

272

———. Privacy and Publicity : Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994. ———, ed. Sexuality & Space, Princeton Papers on Architecture, vol. 1. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. ———. "The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism." In Sexuality & Space, edited by Beatriz Colomina. Princeton Papers on Architecture, 73-128. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. Colomina, Beatriz, Dennis Dollens, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Cindi Patton, Henry Urbach, and Mark Wigley. Queer Space. New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994. Exhibition catalogue. Colomina, Beatriz, Dennis Dollens, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Henry Urbach, and Mark Wigley. "Something About Space Is Queer." In Queer Space, edited by Beatriz Colomina, Dennis Dollens, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Cindi Patton, Henry Urbach and Mark Wigley. n.p. New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994. Comeforo, Kristin. "Mis(Sed) Representations: Lgbt Imagery in Mainstream Advertising." Chap. 6 In Coming out of the Closet: Exploring Lgbt Issues in Strategic Communication with Theory and Research, edited by Natalie T.J. Tindall and Richard D. Waters. 90-107. New York: Peter Lang, 2013. Compton, Nick. "Elmgreen & Dragset: Fictional Homes & Home Truths." Wallpaper*, October 2013, 219-24. Cook, Matt. Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Cramer, Ned. "Someone to Watch over Me." Architecture, June 1999, 43-46. Crary, Jonathan, and Joel Sanders. "Sight Specific." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 40-47. Crawford, Lucas Cassidy. "Archive, Transgender, Architecture: Woolf, Beckett, Diller Scofidio + Renfro." PhD Dissertation, University of Alberta, 2012. ———. "Breaking Ground on a Theory of Transgender Architecture." Seattle Journal for Social Justice 8, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 515-39. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241-99. Critton, Benjamin, ed. Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films. Vol. 1. New Haven, CT: Number One, 2010. 273

Croft, Catherine. "Conservative Measures." Architectural Review, 2014, 17. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Eugene Rochberg-Halton. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Cuff, Dana. Architecture : The Story of Practice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. Curtis, Penelope. "Revival Hepworth, or Speaking for Sculpture." Sculpture Journal 17, no. 2 (2008): 125-33. Dall, Rhea. "'The Collectors', the Danish & Nordic Pavilions - La Biennale Di Venezia 2009. Final Evaluation Report for the Commissioners: The Danish Arts Council's Committe for International Visual Art & Office for Contemporary Art Norway." 21. unpublished: Danish Arts Council & Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2009. Davidsen, Judith. ""House Rules" Show at the Wexner Challenges the Comeback of 1950s Family Values [Exhibition Review]." Architectural Record, September 1994, 13. Davidson, Cathy N., and Jessamyn Hatcher. "Introduction." In No More Separate Spheres!, edited by Cathy N. Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher. Next Wave: Women's Studies Beyong the Disciplines, 7-26. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002. Davies-Crook, Susanna. "Elmgreen & Dragset: The One and the Many." In Dazed Digital (2011). http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/10477/1/elmgreen-dragset-the-one-andthe-many. Davis, Tim. "The Diversity of Queer Politics and the Redefinition of Sexual Identity and Community in Urban Spaces." Chap. 18 In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, edited by David Bell and Gill Valentine. 284-303. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. de Lauretis, Teresa. "Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Studies: An Introduction." differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991): 3-28. Deitz, Paula. "House Rules." Metropolis, October 1999, 167-69,79. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: pour une littérature mineure. Critique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1975. Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Diederichsen, Diedrich. "When Worlds Elide." Artforum, September 2009, 240-45. Diller, Elizabeth, Ricardo Scofidio, and Georges Teyssot. Flesh: Architectural Probes. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. 274

Donnelly, Joe. "Goldsteinland." In treats! no. 2 (2011). Doubilet, Susan. "Living in Modern Monuments." Town and Country, October 2001, 168-75+. ———. "A Preview of Moma's Splashy Summer Show, Which Examines Innovative Houses from around the World." Architectural Record, April 1999, 43-44. Doyle, Jennifer, and Amelia Jones. "Introduction: New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture." Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 607-15. Drucker, Susan J., and Gary Gumpert. "Shopping Women, and Public Space." Chap. 7 In Voices in the Street: Explorations in Gender, Media, and Public Space, edited by Susan J. Drucker and Gary Gumpert. Communication and Public Space, 119-35. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1997. ———, eds. Voices in the Street: Explorations in Gender, Media, and Public Space. edited by Gary Gumpert, Communication and Public Space. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1997. Duggan, Lisa. "The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism." In Materializing Democracy : Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, edited by Russ Castronovo and Dana D Nelson. 175-94. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Duncan, Nancy. "Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces." Chap. 8 In Bodyspace : Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, edited by Nancy Duncan. 12745. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Durning, M. L., and Richard Wrigley. Gender and Architecture. Chichester; New York: Wiley, 2000. Edwards, Jason, and Imogen Hart. "The Victorian Interior: A Collaborative, Eclectic Introduction." Chap. Introduction In Rethinking the Interior C. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts, edited by Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart. 1-24. Farnham, Surrey & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. Eicher, Jürgen. "Das Ende Der Privatheit: 'The Un-Private House' Im Mak in Wien." Deutsche Bauzeitung, April 2000, 22. Eichler, Dominic. "Another Death in Venice." In The Collectors: Calendar, edited by Elmgreen & Dragset. [13-14]. [København, Denmark]; [Oslo, Norway]: [The Danish Arts Council] ; [Office for Contemporary Art Norway], 2009. Eisenman, Peter. House X. New York: Rizzoli, 1982. Elmgreen & Dragset. Gayhouse by Elmgreen & Dragset. Paris: Septembre éditions, 2011. Artist book. 275

———. "Halfway Houses." Wallpaper*, October 2013, 226-33. ———. Tomorrow: Scenes from an Unrealised Film. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2013. ———. "The Welfare Show." edited by Bergen Kuntshall & The Power Plant. Köln: Walther König, 2005. Elmgreen, Michael, and Ingar Dragset. The Incidental Self. Artreview Artist Publications. London: ArtReview, 2008. Elmgreen, Michael, Ingar Dragset, Massimiliano Gioni, Amelia Saul, and Tony Benn. Elmgreen & Dragset: This Is the First Day of My Life. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008. Elmgreen, Michael, Ingar Dragset, Jochen Volz, Jens Hoffmann, and Dorothea Von Hantelmann. Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main] [in German & English]. Frankfurt Am Main: Portikus, 2003. Exhibition catalogue. Eng, David L., Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz. "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?". Social Text 23, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2005): 1-17. Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. New York: International Publishers, 1972. Fabricius, Jacob. "Hidden Secrets in Brick Houses." In The Collectors: Calendar, edited by Elmgreen & Dragset. [11]. [København, Denmark]; [Oslo, Norway]: [The Danish Arts Council] ; [Office for Contemporary Art Norway], 2009. Filler, Martin. "Moma Comes Home." House Beautiful, July 1999, 40. Senior Planet (2014). Published electronically January 13. http://seniorplanet.org/meet-the-new-old-age-matthias-hollwichscontrary-vision/. Fortin, Andrée, Denys Delage, Jean-Didier Dufour, and Lynda Fortin. Histoires De Familles Et De Réseaux : La Sociabilité Au Québec D'hier À Demain. Montréal: Éditions Saint-Martin, 1987. Foucault, Michel. "Des espaces autres (conférence au cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967)." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, octobre 1984, 46-49. ———. Histoire de la sexualité Gallimard, 1976.

́ de savoir, Paris:

———. Histoire de la sexualité. Bibliothèque Des Histoires. 3 vols Paris: Gallimard, 1976-1984. 276

———. Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison. Bibliothèque Des Histoires. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22-27. Fowler, Pauline. "The Public and the Private in Architecture: A Feminist Critique." Women's Studies International Forum 7, no. 6 (1984): 449-54. Frampton, Kenneth. "Labour Work & Architecture." In Meaning in Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird. London: Barrie & Rockliff, The Cresset Press, 1969. ———. "That Status of Man and the Status of His Objects." Architectural Design 52, no. 7/8 (1982): 619. Frederickson, Mark Paul. "Gender and Racial Bias in Design Juries." Journal of Architectural Education 47, no. 1 (1993): 38-48. Fredriksen-Goldsen, Karen I., and Anna Muraco. "Aging and Sexual Orientation: A 25-Year Review of the Literature." Research on Aging 32, no. 3 (2010): 372-413. Freedman, Estelle. "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930." Feminist Studies 5, no. 3 (Automn 1979): 512-29. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963. Friedman, Alice T. American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010. ———. "People Who Live in Glass Houses: Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, and Philip Johnson." Chap. 4 In Women and the Making of the Modern House : A Social and Architectural History. 128-59. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. ———. Women and the Making of the Modern House : A Social and Architectural History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. ———. "Your Place or Mine? The Client's Contribution to Domestic Architecture." Chap. 4 In Women's Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, edited by Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke. 69-86. London & New York: Routledge, 2003. Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out." In Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, edited by Diana Fuss. 1-10. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. ———. The Sense of an Interior: Four Writers and the Rooms That Shaped Them. New York & London: Routledge, 2004.

277

Fuss, Diana, and Joel Sanders. "Berggasse 19: Inside Freud's Office." In Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, edited by Joel Sanders. 112-39. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Gianni, Benjamin. "Queering (Single Family) Space." Sites 26 (1995): 54-57. Gisbourne, Mark, and Ulf Meyer zu Küingdorf. Double Act : Two Artists, One Expression. Munich; New York: Prestel, 2007. Goldstein, James. "James Goldstein." Accessed November 19, 2013. http://www.jamesfgoldstein.com/. Gorlin, Alexander. "The Un-Private House: Moma's House Party." Oculus, September 1999, 10-11. Graham, Dan. "Alteration of a Suburban House, 1978." In Dan Graham : Architecture, edited by Dan Graham. 24-25. London: Camden Arts Centre & Architectural Association, 1997. ———. "Homes for America, Early 20th Century Possessable House to the Quasi-Discrete Cell of '66." Arts Magazine, December - January 1966-1967, 21-22. Grant, Bradford C. "Accomodation and Resistance: The Built Environment and the African American Experience." Chap. 5 In Reconstructing Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices, edited by Thomas A. Dutton and Lian Hurst Mann. 202-33. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Grdadolnik, Helena. "Welfare State: Berlin-Based Scandinavian Artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset Challenge the Conventional Perception of Space... [Exhibition Review]." Canadian Architect, April 2006, 74. Griffin, Jonathan. "Escape from New York." Apollo, July-August 2013, 62-67. Groat, Linda N. "Architecture's Resistance to Diversity: A Matter of Theory as Much as Practice." Journal of Architectural Education 47, no. 1 (1993): 3-10. Grosz, Elizabeth. "Bodies-Cities." In Sexuality & Space, edited by Beatriz Colomina. Princeton Papers on Architecture, 241-53. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. ———. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York: Routledge, 1995. Grote, Janie. "Matrix: A Radical Approach to Architecture." Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 9, no. 2 (1992): 158-68. Guggenheim Museum, and National Gallery of Art. "Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology / Bedroom Ensemble." Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Accessed December 15, 2013. http://www.artnetweb.com/oldenburg/bedroom.html. 278

Gürel, Meltem Ö, and Kathryn H. Anthony. "The Canon and the Void: Gender, Race, and the Architectural History Texts." Journal of Architectural Education 59 (2006): 66-76. Haar, Sharon, and Christopher Reed. "Coming Home: A Postcript on Postmodernism." Chap. 17 In Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, edited by Christopher Reed. 253-73. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Haber, David. "Gay Aging." Gerontology & Geriatrics Education 30, no. 3 (2009): 267-80. Halperin, David M. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s." Socialist Review, no. 80 (March-April 1985). Harris, Steven. "Everyday Architecture." In Architecture of the Everyday, edited by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke. Yale Publications on Architecture, 1-8. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Harris, Steven, and Deborah Berke, eds. Architecture of the Everyday, Yale Publications on Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Haskell, Douglas. "Googie Architecture." House and Home, February 1952, 86-88. Häussler, Iris. "He Named Her Amber." edited by The Grange / Art Gallery of Ontario. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011. Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for America Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities. Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1981. ———. "What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work." Signs 5, no. 3 (1980): 170-87. Hayward Gallery. Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture. London: Hayward Publishing, 2008. Exhibition catalogue. Hébert, William Billy, Line Chamberland, and Mickael Chacha Enriquez. "Accueillir les personnes âgées transsexuelles et transgenres dans le milieu de la santé et des services sociaux : données de recherche sur quelques barrières et stratégies." Pluriâges 4, no. 1 (2013): 13-18. "Helen Taylor Sheats: Biography." Accessed October 17, 2010. http://www.helenart.com/bio.php. Herbert, Martin. "Tomorrow Is Here." V&A Magazine, Autumn/Winter 2013, 46-57.

279

Hertz, Betti-Sue, Ed Eisenberg, and Lisa Maya Knauer. "Queer Spaces in New York City: Places of Struggle/Places of Strength." In Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, edited by Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette and Yolanda Retter. 356-70. Seattle: Bay Press, 1997. Hess, Alan. The Architecture of John Lautner. New York: Rizzoli, 1999. ———. Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004. Heynen, Hilde, and Gulsum Baydar, eds. Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture. London & New York: Routledge, 2005. Higgins, Ross. "Baths, Bushes, and Belonging: Public Sex and Gay Community in Pre-Stonewall Montreal." Chap. 9 In Public Sex/Gay Space, edited by William Leap. 187-202. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Hine, Thomas. "The Search for the Postwar House." In Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses, edited by Elizabeth A.T. Smith. 167-82. Los Angeles & Cambridge, MA: Museum of Contemporary Art & MIT Press, 1989. Hines, Thomas S. "Regionalism and Expressionism: The Modernism of John Lautner." Chap. 12 In Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, edited by Thomas S. Hines. 60851;731. New York: Rizzoli, 2010. hooks, bell, Julie Eizenberg, and Hank Koning. "House, 20 June 1994." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 22-29. Hornstein, Shelley. Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place. Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. ———. "Memorializing Site: On the Grounds of History." Chap. 2 In Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place. 25-59. Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Horrigan, Bill. "Villas and Cottages." In Households, edited by Mark Robbins. 16-19. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006. Houlbrook, Matt. Queer London : Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957. The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Huffer, Lynne. Mad for Foucault : Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

280

Hughes, Anne K., Rena D. Harold, and Janet M. Boyer. "Awareness of Lgbt Aging Issues among Aging Services Network Providers." Journal of Gerontological Social Work 54, no. 7 (2011): 659-77. Hughes, Francesca. The Architect : Reconstructing Her Practice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. Huguet, Vincent. "Les hommes nus dans l'art sont-ils tous gay-érotiques?" Beaux-Arts Magazine, Septembre 2013, 66-73. Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. HWKN. "New Aging." Accessed January 16, 2014. http://hwkn.com/NEW-AGING. Iannacchione, Anita, and Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, eds. Elmgreen & Dragset | Performances 1995-2011. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011. Ingram, Gordon Brent, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yoalanda Retter. "Strategies for (Re)Constructing Queer Communities." In Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, edited by Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette and Yoalanda Retter. 447-56. Seattle: Bay Press, 1997. Ingram, Gordon Brent, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter, eds. Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance. Seattle: Bay Press, 1997. Isenstadt, Sandy. "Four Views, Three of Them through Glass." Chap. 10 In Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision, edited by Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles. 213-40;303-6: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Jackson, Nick C., Michael J. Johnson, and Roe Roberts. "The Potential Impact of Discrimination Fears of Older Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender Individuals Living in Small- to Moderate-Sized Cities on Long-Term Health Care." Journal of Homosexuality 54, no. 3 (2008): 325-39. Jackson, Shannon. "Elmgreen & Dragset's Theatrical Turn." In Elmgreen & Dragset | Performances 1995-2011, edited by Anita Iannacchione and Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. 10-28. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011. ———. Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. ———. "Welfare Melancholia: The Public Works of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset." Chap. 6 In Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. 182-209. New York & London: Routledge, 2011. 281

Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Jencks, Charles. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. First ed. New York: Rizzoli, 1977. Jennings, Will. "A Deftly-Curated "House": Tomorrow by Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&a Museum." In One Stop Arts (2013). http://onestoparts.com/review-elmgreen-dragsettomorrow-victoria-and-albert. Jodidio, Philip. Architecture Now! 5. Köln & London: Taschen, 2007. Joel Sanders Architect. "Joel Sanders Architect / the Commons." Accessed January 30, 2014. http://www.joelsandersarchitect.com. "John Lautner: Goldstein Residence." GA Houses, 2008, 78-80. Johnson, Michael J. , Nick C. Jackson, J. Kenneth Arnette, and Steven D. Koffman. "Gay and Lesbian Perceptions of Discrimination in Retirement Care Facilities." Journal of Homosexuality 49, no. 2 (2005): 83-102. Johnson, Philip. "House at New Canaan, Connecticut." Architectural Review, September 1950, 15259. Johnston, Stephen. "Interview: Matthias Hollwich Wants to Start a Revolution." In Aging 2.0 (2011). Published electronically October 10. http://aging2.com/2011/10/10/hollwich/. Johnstone, Lesley. Les Lendemains D'hier / Yesterday's Tomorrows. Montréal: Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2010. Jones, Amelia. Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. ———. "The Now and the Has Been: Paradoxes of Live Art in History ". In Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History, edited by Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield. 10-25. Bristol & Chicago: Intellect, 2012. ———. ""Postfeminism" a Remasculinization of Culture?". In Writings, Theory, and Criticism, edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor. 7-23. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2000. ———. "Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art." In New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, edited by Joana Frueh, Cassandra L. Langer and Arlene Raven. 16-41. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. ———. ""Presence" in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation." Art Journal 56, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 11-18. 282

———. Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts. Abingdon, UK & New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. "Unpredictable Temporalities: The Body and Performance in (Art) History." In Performing Archives/Archives of Performance, edited by Gundhild Borggreen and Rune Gade. In between States, 53-72. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press & University of Copenhagen, 2013. Jones, Kay Bea. "House Rules: House Holds New Rules." Journal of Architectural Education 49, no. 1 (September 1995): 53-56. Jones, Will. Unbuilt Masterworks of the 21st Century: Inspirational Architecture for the Digital Age. London: Thames & Hudson, 2009. Judd, Donald. "Reviews and Writings." In Claes Oldenburg, edited by Nadja Rottner. October Files, 149-58. Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2012. Kahn, Eve M. "A Blueprint for Misery." The New York Times, October 24, 2013, D2. Kapsenberg, Jan. "Erotic Manoeuvres: Transforming Zumthor's Thermal Baths in Vals." Daidalos, no. 69/70 (1998): 76-81. Katz, Cindi. "Towards Minor Theory." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, no. 4 (1996): 487-99. Kenney, Moira. Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics. American Subjects. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Kerber, Linda K. "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History." In No More Separate Spheres!, edited by Cathy N. Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher. Next Wave: Women's Studies Beyong the Disciplines, 29-65. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002. "A Kind of Queer Geography/Räume Durchqueeren: The Doreen Massey Reading Weekends." Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 13, no. 2 (2006): 173-86. Knapp, Steven. "Collective Memory and the Actual Past." Representations, no. 26 (1989): 123-49. Kostof, Spiro. The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. ———. A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Kraditor, Aileen S. , ed. Up from the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968. 283

Krauss, Rosalind. "Sculpture in the Expanded Field." October 8 (Spring 1979): 30-44. Kuhlmann, Dörte. Gender Studies in Architecture: Space, Power and Difference. London & New York: Routledge, 2013. Kuzma, Marta, and Peter Osborne, eds. Art of Welfare, Verksted. Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006. Lapovsky Kenne, Elizabeth. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community 1993. Larsen, Lars Bang. "Questioning the Social: Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Art." In Momentum International Art Conference. Moss, Norway, 2000. Lavin, Sylvia. "Colomina's Web: Reply to Beatriz Colomina." In The Sex of Architecture, edited by Diana I. Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman. 183-90. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. ———. Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture. Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 2004. ———. Kissing Architecture. Point Series. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. Le Corbusier. Une maison - un palais : "à la recherche d'une unité architecturale". Collection De L'esprit Nouveau. Paris: Les éditions G. Crès, 1928. Lefebvre, Henri. Critique de la vie quotidienne. Vol. 1, Paris: L'Arche, 1958. ———. Critique de la vie quotidienne. Vol. 2. Fondements d'une sociologie de la quotidienneté, Paris: L'Arche, 1968. ———. Critique de la vie quotidienne : pour une métaphilosophie du quotidien. Vol. 3. De la modernité au modernisme, Paris: L'Arche, 1981. ———. "The Everyday and Everydayness." Translated by Christine Levich. In Architecture of the Everyday, edited by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke. Yale Publications on Architecture, 3237. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997 (1972). ———. La production de l'espace. 2nd ed. Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1981 (1974). Lefkowitz Horowitz, Helen. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginning to the 1930s. New York: Knopf, 1984. ———. "Designing for the Genders: Curricula and Architecture at Scripps College and the California Institute of Technology." The Pacific Historical Review 54, no. 4 (November 1985): 439-61. 284

Lerner, Gerda. "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson." Midcontinent American Studies Journal 10 (Spring 1969): 5-15. Lévesque, Carole. À propos de l'inutile en architecture. Ouverture Philosophique. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2011. Lewis, Paul, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis. Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis: Intensities. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013. ———. Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis: Opportunistic Architecture. New Voices in Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. ———. Situation Normal. Pamphlet Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. Litt, Steven. "Reimagining the Single-Family House." Progressive Architecture, November 1994, 4748. Long, Kieran. "Home Truths." Wallpaper*, October 2013, 234-41. LOT-EK. "Lot-Ek / Boom." Accessed February 7, 2014. http://www.lotek.com/filter/residential/BOOM. Lüthy, Michael "The Consumer Article in the Art World: On the Para-Economy of American Pop Art." In Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, edited by Max Hollein and Christoph Grunenberg. 148-53. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002. MacNair, Andrew. "The Un-Private House." Archis, August 1999, 60-63. Macritchie, Lynn. "Melancholy Giardini: The National Pavilions." Art in America, September 2009. Marcus, Clare Cooper. House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home. Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1995. Margreiter, Dorit. "10104 Angelo View Drive." Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.doritmargreiter.net/projects/10104_txt.html. ———. 10104 Angelo View Drive. Vienna: MUMOK, 2004. Margreiter, Dorit , Eva Maria Stadler, and Yvonne Volkart. Dorit Margreiter: Short Hills [Grazer Kunstverein, 19. Nov. 1999 - 20. Jan. 2000]. Frankfurt am Main; Graz: Revolver; Grazer Kunstverein, 2002. Margreiter, Dorit, and Kaucyila Brooke. Two or Three Things You Know About Me. Vienna, Austria: Typodruck Sares, 2003.

285

Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Matrix. A Job Designing Buildings: For Women Interested in Architecture and Buildings. London: Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, 1986. ———. Making Space: Women and the Man Made Environment. London: Pluto Press, 1984. Matthewson, Gill. "Breaking Clichés: The Human Accessory in the Work of Julius Shulman." Hunch: the Berlage Institute Report, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 78-81.

Dealing with fear: promise, practice, protocol - performing future presences. Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, 2009. Mayer Hermann, Jürgen. "Data-Protection Pattern Family." Assemblage, no. 38 (April 1999): 42-47. McCorquodale, Duncan, Katerina Ruedi, and Sarah Wigglesworth. "Desiring Practices." edited by Arts Council of England. London: Black Dog Publishing, 1995. McDowell, Linda. "Towards an Understanding of the Gender Division of Urban Space." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1, no. 1 (1983): 59-72. McLeod, Mary. "The Battle for the Monument: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial." In The Experimental Tradition: Essays on Competitions in Architecture, edited by Helen Lipstadt. 11538. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989. ———. "Everyday and "Other" Spaces." In Architecture and Feminism, edited by Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson. Yale Publications on Architecture, 1-37. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. McNeil, Peter. "Crafting Queer Spaces: Privacy and Posturing." Chap. 1 In Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, edited by Alla Myzelev and John Potvin. 19-41. Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. ———. "Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, C. 1890-1940." Art History 17, no. 4 (December 1994): 631-57. McRobbie, Angela. "Post-Feminism and Popular Culture." Feminist Media Studies 4, no. 3 (2004): 255-64. Mehring, Christine, Flavin Judd, Guy Nordenson, Rainer Judd, and Rob Beyer. "Minimal Impact." Artforum International, May 2013, 151-52.

286

MetLife Mature Market Institute. "Still out, Still Aging: The Metlife Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Baby Boomers." New York: MetLife Mature Market Institute, 2013. Michalka, Matthias. "10104 Angelo View Drive." In 10104 Angelo View Drive, edited by Dorit Margreiter. 83-91. Vienna: MUMOK, 2004. Miller, Jenna E. "[Gender]Queer Space." Unpublished seminar paper, Columbia University, 2013. Minor, Vernon Hyde. Art History's History. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994. Miranne, Kristine B., and Alma H. Young. Gendering the City: Women, Boundaries, and Visions or Urban Life. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Modleski, Tania. Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age. New York: Routledge, 1991. Moon, Michael, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Benjamin Gianni, and Scott Weir. "Queers in (SingleFamily) Space." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 30-37. Moorehead, Eloise. "Claes Oldenburg, Bedroom Ensemble, 1963." Accessed December 15, 2013. http://eloisemoorehead.com/post/182476026/claes-oldenburg-bedroom-ensemble-1963wood. Morton, P.A. "The Building That Looks Back." In Angles of Incidence, edited by Mark Robbins. 1720. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. Morton, Pat. "A Visit to Womenhouse." In Architecture of the Everyday, edited by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke. Yale Publications on Architecture, 166-79. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Mumford, Kevin J. "Interracial Intersections: Homosexuality and Black/White Relations." Chap. 5 In Interzones : Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century. 73-92. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Munt, Sally. "The Lesbian Flâneur." Chap. 8 In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, edited by David Bell and Gill Valentine. 114-25. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. Muschamp, Herbert. "Designing a Framework for Diversity." New York Times, June 19, 1994, H34. ———. "Peeking inside Other People's Dream Houses." The New York Times, September 19, 1999, AR37-38. ———. "Ten Little Houses and How They Grew." New York Times, October 16, 1994, H40. 287

Nast, Heidi J., and Mabel O. Wilson. "Lawful Transgressions: This Is the House That Jackie Built." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 49-55. National Research Council. "Later Adulthood." Chap. 6 In The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding. 251-92. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2011. Nedo, Kito. "We Never Wanted to Do a Normal Job: Elmgreen & Dragset." db artmag, 2007.

Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People's Accommodation Plans for Old Age." International Journal of Nursing Practice 16, no. 6 (2010): 586-94. Nicolin, Paola. "Ricostruzioni Radicali = Radical Reconstructions." Abitare, June 2009, 36-41. Nicolin, Paola, Michael Elmgreen, Ingar Dragset, and Didier Fiuza Faustino. "Monumento E Delitto? Pro E Contro La Costruzione Di Monumenti Nella Città Contemporanea = Monument and Crime? Pro and Con Building Monuments in Contemporary City." Abitare, October 2007, 94-97. Nigel Coates Studio. "Boom Costa Del Sol." Accessed February 7, 2014. http://nigelcoates.com/project/boom_andalucia. Nora, Pierre. "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoire." Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7-24. O'Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. Santa Monica: Lapis Press, 1986. Obrist, Hans-Ulrich. "Performative Constructions: Interview by Hans-Ulrich Obrist." In Powerless Structures: Works by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, edited by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. 27-43. Reykjavik: Kjarvalsstadir / Reykjavik Art Museum / Wide Screen, 1998. Ockman, Joan. "Toward a Theory of Normative Architecture." In Architecture of the Everyday, edited by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke. Yale Publications on Architecture, 122-52. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Ofield, Simon. "Cruising the Archive." Journal of Visual Culture 4, no. 3 (December 2005): 351-64. Oldenburg, Claes, and Emmett Williams, eds. Store Days: Documents from the Store, 1961, and Ray Gun Theatre, 1962. New York: Something Else Press, 1967. "On the House." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 6-7. 288

Orel, Nancy A. "Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Elders: Expressed Needs and Concerns across Focus Groups." Journal of Gerontological Social Work 43, no. 2-3 (2004): 57-77. Osborne, Peter. "Elmgreen and Dragset's the Welfare Show: A Historical Perspective." In Art of Welfare, edited by Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne. Verksted, 19-40. Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006. Osgerby, Bill. "The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon: Masculinity, Consumption and Interior Design in American Men's Magazines, 1930-65." Journal of Design History 18, no. 1 (2005): 99113. Oswin, Natalie. "Critical Geographies and the Uses of Sexuality: Deconstructing Queer Space." Progress in Human Geography 32, no. 1 (February 1, 2008): 89-103. ———. "The Modern Model Family at Home in Singapore: A Queer Geography." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35, no. 2 (2010): 256-68. ———. "Towards Radical Geographies of Complicit Queer Futures." ACME: An International EJournal for Critical Geographies 3, no. 2 (2005): 79-86. Outfest. "Shorts: Ends of Gays." Outfest, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. Accessed January 22, 2014. http://www.outfest.org/tixSYS/2006/filmguide/eventnote.php?EventNumber=4894. Palladio, Andrea. I Quattro Libri Dell'architettura. Venetia: [s.n.], 1616. "Panel Discussion: Marta Kuzma / Peter Osborne / Claire Bishop / Thomas Hylland Eriksen / Victor D. Norman / Michael Elmgreen / Ingar Dragset." In Art of Welfare, edited by Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne. Verksted, 115-32. Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006. Parnell, Steve. "Space-Age Screen Idol Architecture." The Architect's Journal, March 19, 2009, 4547. Pascucci, Ernest. "Mapping the St. Patrick's Day Parade." Thresholds, no. 6 (May 1993): 3. Pearson, Clifford A. "Soho Time Capsule." Architectural Record, May 2013, 83. Petit, Emmanuel. Irony, or, the Self-Critical Parody of Postmodern Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Petrescu, Doina. Altering Practices : Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space. London; New York: Routledge, 2007.

289

Picon, Antoine. Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010.

in Montréal." Social & Cultural Geography 7, no. 4 (2006): 595-625. ———. "Lesbians in the Crowd: Gender, Sexuality and Visibility Along Montreal's Boul. St-Laurent." Gender, Place and Culture - A Journal of Feminist Geography 8 (2001): 333-55. Podro, Michael. The Critical Historians of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. London: Routledge, 1988. Potvin, John. "The Aesthetics of Community: Queer Interiors and the Desire for Intimacy." Chap. 8 In Rethinking the Interior C. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts, edited by Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart. 169-84. Farnham, Surrey & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. ———. "Askesis as Aesthetic Home: Edward Perry Warren, Lewes House, and the Ideal of Greek Love." Home Cultures 8, no. 1 (2011): 71-89. ———. Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. Studies in Design. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014. ———. "Vapour and Steam: The Victorian Turkish Bath, Homosocial Health, and Male Bodies on Display." Journal of Design History 18, no. 4 (2005): 319-33. Preciado, Beatriz. "Architecture as a Practice of Biopolitical Disobedience." Log, no. 25 (Summer 2012): 121-34. Preuss, Sebastian. "A Monument." 032c, Winter 2008/2009, 234-35. Preziosi, Donald, ed. The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Raizada, Kristen. "An Interview with the Guerrilla Girls, Dyke Action Machine (Dam!), and the Toxic Titties." NWSA Journal 19, no. 1 (2007): 39-58. Rattenbur, Kester. "Architect Manqué: Elmgreen & Dragset's Installation at the V&a, London." Accessed October 14, 2013. http://www.uncubemagazine.com/blog/10921441. Rault, Jasmine. "Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects." Chap. 9 In Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, edited by Alla Myzelev and John Potvin. 185-203. Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. 290

———. Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In. Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Reckitt, Helena. "Forgotten Relations: Feminist Artists and Relational Aesthetics." In Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions., edited by Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. Reed, Christopher. "Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment." Art Journal 55, no. 4 (1996): 64-70. ———. "Introduction." In Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, edited by Christopher Reed. 7-17. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Reese, John. "Dream House or Nightmare?" Saturday Evening Post, August 20, 1960, 30;62-64. Reiss, Julie H. From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art. Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1999. Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture: A Place Between. London: I.B.Tauris & Co, 2006. REPOhistory Collective. "Queer Spaces." REPOhistory Collective. Accessed 2010-04-07, 2010. http://www.repohistory.org/queer_spaces/index.php3. ———. "Queer Spaces." New York, 1994. Ricco, John Paul. "Coming Together: Jack-Off Rooms as Minor Architecture." A/R/C, Architecture, Research, Criticism 1, no. 5 (1994): 26-31. ———. "Fag-O-Sites: Minor Architecture and Geopolitics of Queer Everyday Life." Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998. ———. The Logic of the Lure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. ———. "Parasol, Setas, Parasite, Peasant." In forthcoming in a monograph on Jürgen Mayer H., edited, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/4999063/Parasol_Setas_Parasite_Peasant. Riggins, Stephen Harold. "Fieldwork in the Living Room: An Autoethnographic Essay." In The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-Semiotics of Objects, edited by Stephen Harold Riggins. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. Riley, Terence. The Un-Private House. New York: The Museum of Modern Art & Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Exhibition catalogue. Robbins, Mark. Angles of Incidence. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. 291

———. "Building Like America: Making Other Plans." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 8-11. ———. Households. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006. ———. "Import/Export." Architectural Design, March 2002, 68-69. ———. "Life in Quotes." Architectural Design, March 2002, 92-93. ———. "Model Homes." In Households, edited by Mark Robbins. 8-11. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006. ———. "Of Mies and Men." Architectural Design, March 2002, 70-71. Robbins, Mark, and Benjamin Gianni. "Family Values (Honey, I'm Home)." In Architecture of the Everyday, edited by Steven Harris and Deborah Berke. Yale Publications on Architecture, 217-21. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Robbins, Mark, and Bill Horrigan. "Fashion Plate." In Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, edited by Joel Sanders. 292-303. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Robertson, Bruce. "The South Kensington Museum in Context: An Alternative History." Museum and Society 2, no. 1 (March 2004): 1-14. Rohan, Timothy M. "Public and Private Spectacles / Paul Rudolph: Casa Rudolph, New York 1977-1997." Casabella 63, no. 673/674 (December 1999/January 2000): 138-49, 71-2.

Sex Roles 46, no. 3/4 (February 2002): 61-74. Rosa, Joseph. A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman. New York: Rizzoli, 1994. ———. "Tearing Down the House: Modern Homes in the Movies." In Architecture and Film, edited by Mark Lamster. 159-67. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. Rose, Gillian. Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Røssaak, Eivind. "Queer Space I Venezia." In Kunstkritikk (2009). Published electronically June 12. http://www.kunstkritikk.com/kritikk/queer-space-i-venezia/. Rothenberg, Tamar. "'And She Told Two Friends': Lesbians Creating Urban Social Space." Chap. 11 In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, edited by David Bell and Gill Valentine. 165-81. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. 292

Rottmann, André. "The Artist as Topologist: Notes on the Work of Dorit Margreiter." In 'Dorit Margreiter. Description, edited by Lynne Cooke. 99-111. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2011. Rubinstein, Dan. "Top Grades." Dwell, March 2014, 90-97. Ruting, Brad. "Economic Transformations of Gay Urban Spaces: Revisiting Collins' Evolutionary Gay District Model." Australian Geographer 39 (2008): 259-69. Ryan, Mary P. Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Ryan, Raymund. "Seeing through the Modern Home." Blueprint, September 1999, 81. Rybczynski, Witold. Home : A Short History of an Idea. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1986. Sadar+Vuga. "Boom, a Bold New Community." Accessed February 7, 2014. http://www.sadarvuga.com/news-archive/985-boom-a-bold-new-community. Saint, Andrew. The Image of the Architect. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Sanders, Joel. "Curtain Wars: Architects, Decorators, and the Twentieth-Century Domestic Interior ". In Joel Sanders: Writings and Projects, edited by Joel Sanders. 86-96. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2004. ———. "Introduction." In Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, edited by Joel Sanders. 11-25. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. ———. Joel Sanders: Writings and Projects. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2004. ———, ed. Stud: Architectures of Masculinity. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Sangild, Torben. "Stærkt Dansk Bidrag Til International Kunstudstilling " In iBYEN.dk (2009). Published electronically June 7. http://ibyen.dk/kunst/anmeldelser/ECE727063/staerktdansk-bidrag-til-international-kunstudstilling/. Savage, Kirk. Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. Berkeley, CA & London: University of California Press, 2009. Schaer, Cathrin. "On Location: Berlin, with Few Walls." The New York Times, October 15, 2009, D6. Schaschl-Cooper, Sabine, Bettina Steinbrügge, Ruth Zechlin, Baselland Kunsthaus, Gallery Lewis Glucksman, and V. Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e. Cooling Out : On the Paradox of Feminism

293

[in English and German.]. Zurich; New York, NY: JRP/Ringier; [Distributed in USA by] D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2008. Schulze, Franz. "Redesigning the Domestic." Art in America, February 2000, 45,47. Schwartz, Madeleine. "The Art of Gentrification." Dissent 61, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 5-8. Schwarzer, Mitchell. "History and Theory in Architectural Periodicals: Assembling Oppositions." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58, no. 3 (September 1999): 342-48. Scorzin, Pamela C. "Elmgreen & Dragset: The White Cube Recoded." In Kuenstler: Kritisches lexikon der gegenwartskunst (2011): 2-8. Scott Brown, Denise. "Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture." Chap. 20 In Architecture: A Place for Women, edited by Ellen Perry Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid. 23746. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Searing, Helen. "The 'Un'-Private House." Architectural Review, September 1999, 29. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Gender and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. ———. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. ———. "Wanted: Queer Space Manifestos / Proposals." In Queer Space, edited by Beatriz Colomina, Dennis Dollens, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Cindi Patton, Henry Urbach and Mark Wigley. n.p. New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 1994. Sep

Accessed December 17, 2013. http://www.gayhouse-building.com/elmgreen-dragsets-gayhouse-3/?lang=en.

Sharp, Jasper. "The House That Judd Built." Art Review, 2004, 54-59. Shonfield, Katherine, Adrian Dannatt, Rosa Ainley, and Muf. This Is What We Do : A Muf Manual. London: Ellipsis, 2001. Silver, Kenneth E. "Master Bedrooms, Master Narratives: Home, Homosexuality and Post-War Art." Chap. 14 In Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, edited by Christopher Reed. 206-21. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Simmins, Geoffrey. "Gendered Space and Social Conformity in Selected Modern Architectural Photographs." Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 33, no. 2 (2008): 3-10.

294

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America." In Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America, edited by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg. 53-76. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Smith, Aileen. "New Media / Digital Architecture: A Selective Bibliography." London: Architectural Association Library, 2005. Sommariva, Elena. "The Collectors: Elmgreen & Dragset." Domus, July/August 2009, 1. Somol, R.E. "One or Several Masters?". In Hejduk's Chronotope, edited by K. Michael Hays and Centre Canadien d'Architecture. 99-128. New York: Princeton Architectural Press [for the] Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1996. Sparke, Penny. "Elsie De Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905-15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator." Chap. 3 In Women's Places: Architecture and Design 18601960, edited by Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke. 47-68. London & New York: Routledge, 2003. Splidsboel, Jannik. "How Are You." 70 min. Denmark: Radiator Film, 2011. Stanek, Lukasz. Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Stead, Naomi, and Jason Prior, eds. Queer Space: Centres and Peripheries. Sydney: University of Technology Sydney, 2007. Stein, Gary L., Nancy L. Beckerman, and Patricia A. Sherman. "Lesbian and Gay Elders and LongTerm Care: Identifying the Unique Psychosocial Perspectives and Challenges." Journal of Gerontological Social Work 53, no. 5 (2010): 421-35. Steinmetz, Julia, Heather Cassils, and Clover Leary. "Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 31, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 753-83. Stimpson, Catharine R. Women and the American City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Stone, Allucquere Rosanne, Steven Fong, and Suzan Selçuk. "X + Y - Knots: Sideyardbungalow." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 68-75. Stoner, Jill. Toward a Minor Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Storefront for Art and Architecture. "Past Exhibition: Queer Space." Storefront for Art and Architecture. Accessed 2010-04-07, 2010. http://www.storefrontnews.org/archive_dete.php?objID=83. 295

Stratigakos, Despina. "Why Architects Need Feminism." In Places (2012). Published electronically September 12. http://places.designobserver.com/feature/why-architects-needfeminism/35448/. Stryker, Susan. "Queer Nation." In glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, edited by Claude J. Summers. Chicago: glbtq, Inc., 2004. Suderburg, Erika, ed. Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Sullivan, Ann C. "Design Community Celebrates Gay Rights." Architecture, August 1994, 24. Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. Tattelman, Ira. "The Meaning at the Wall: Tracing the Gay Bathhouse." In Queers in Space: Communities | Public Places | Sites of Resistance, edited by Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette and Yoalanda Retter. 391-406. Seattle: Bay Press, 1997. ———. "Speaking to the Gay Bathhouse: Communicating in Sexually Charged Spaces." Chap. 4 In Public Sex/Gay Space, edited by William Leap. 71-94. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ———. "Staging Sex and Masculinity at the Mineshaft ". Men and Masculinities 7, no. 3 (2005): 30009. Teyssot, Georges. A Topology of Everyday Constellations. Writing Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013. The John Lautner Foundation. "Movies Featuring Lautner Buildings." The John Lautner Foundation. Accessed November 27, 2013. http://www.johnlautner.org/wp/?p=32. The Museum of Modern Art. "The Un-Private House: Credits." The Museum of Modern Art. Accessed December 23, 2013. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/unprivatehouse/credits.html. Torre, Susana. Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective / a Publication and Exhibition Organized by the Architectural League of New York through Its Archive of Women in Architecture. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1977. Toxic Titties. "Domestic Bliss at 10104 Angelo View Drive." Accessed February 2, 2011. http://www.toxictitties.com/projects/invasion.html. ———. "Toxic Titties Take on Gay Marriage." Accessed February 2, 2011. http://www.toxictitties.com/projects/toxicunion.html. 296

———. "Toxic Titties: Mission." Accessed February 2, 2011. http://www.toxictitties.com/mission.html. Travis, Jack. African American Architects in Current Practice. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991. Tsang, Wu. "Wildness." 72 min. USA, 2012. Tsionov Vitkon Architects. "L2 Tsionov-Vitkon Architects / Palm Springs Lgbt Retirement Community." Accessed February 7, 2014. http://www.tsionov-vitkon.com/index.php. Tucker, Chris, Michael Chapman, and Michael Ostwald. "Homosexuality and the Star Hotel: Exploring the Traces of Queer Space in Newcastle in the 1970s " Paper presented at the Queer Space: Centres and Peripheries, University of Technology Sydney, 2007. "Untitled: Elmgreen and Dragset." Tate. Accessed March 22, 2014. http://www.tate.org.uk/whatson/tate-modern/exhibition/untitled-elmgreen-and-dragset. Upton, Dell. "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia." Places 2, no. 2 (1984): 59-72. Urbach, Henry. "Closets, Clothes, Disclosure." Assemblage, no. 30 (1996): 63-73. ———. "Peeking at Gay Interiors." Design Book Review: DBR 25 (1992): 38-40. ———. "Spatial Rubbing: The Zone." Sites, no. 25 (1993): 90-95. Urbach, Henry, John Randolph, and Bruce Tomb. "In Medias Res." Assemblage, no. 24 (August 1994): 79-85. Vallerand, Olivier. "Home Is the Place We All Share: Building Queer Collective Utopias." Journal of Architectural Education 67, no. 1 (March 2013): 64-75. ———. "Homonormative Architecture & Queer Space: The Evolution of Gay Bars and Clubs in Montréal." M.Arch. research project, McGill University, 2010. ———. "Living Pictures: Dragging the Home into the Gallery." Interiors: Design | Architecture | Culture 4, no. 2 (2013): 125-48. ———. "Un baiser en continu dans un parc: le mémorial aux homosexuels persécutés par les nazis, entre passé et présent." Inter, Art Actuel, no. 112 (2012): 40-43. van Schaik, Leon. "Home Body." Architectural Design 77, no. 5 (September/October 2007): 146-48.

297

Von Hantelmann, Dorothea. "Production of Space Space of Production." In Spaced Out : [Anläßlich Der Ausstellungen Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Powerless Structures, Fig. 111; 3. Februar - 18. März 2001 Und Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : Spaced out / Powerless Structures, Fig.211; 23. Mai 2003 Im Portikus Frankfurt Am Main], edited by Michael Elmgreen, Ingar Dragset, Jochen Volz and Jens Hoffmann. 58-63. Frankfurt Am Main: Portikus, 2003. Vytlacil, Anne. "The Studio Experience: Differences for Women." Chap. 22 In Architecture: A Place for Women, edited by Ellen Perry Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid. 261-69. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Wagner, George. "The Lair of the Bachelor." In Architecture and Feminism, edited by Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson. Yale Publications on Architecture, 183220. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Walker, Lynne. "Home and Away: The Feminist Remapping of Public and Private Space in Victorian London." Chap. 5 In New Frontiers of Space, Bodies and Gender, edited by Rosa Ainley. 65-75. London & New York: Routledge, 1998. ———. "Home Making: An Architectural Perspective." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 823-35. Ward, Jacob. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Architecture, 2002, 72-81. Ward, Ossian. "Broken Homes [Exhibition Review]." World of interiors, November 2009, 86-91. Webb, Michael. "The Un-Private House." LA Architect, November-December 2000, 32-33. Weibel, Peter, and Andreas F. Beitin. "Introduction." In Trilogy, edited by Peter Weibel and Andreas F. Beitin. 7-9. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011. ———, eds. Trilogy. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011. Weightman, Barbara A. "Gay Bars as Private Places." Landscape 24, no. 1 (1980): 9-16. Weisman, Leslie Kanes. Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Wellman, Barry, and Barry Leighton. "Networks, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Approaches to the Study of the Community Question." Urban Affairs Quarterly 14, no. 3 (March 1979): 363-90. Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 151-74. 298

Wenk und Wiese Architekten. "Pumpwerk Neukölln." Arch+, no. 201/202 (March 2011): 138-41. Whiteley, Nigel. "Intensity of Scrutiny and a Good Eyeful: Architecture and Transparency." Journal of Architectural Education 56, no. 4 (May 2003): 8-16. Whiting, Cécile. "The Erotics of the Built Environment." Chap. 3 In Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s. 107-37. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2006. ———. A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender, and Consumer Culture. Cambridge Studies in American Visual Culture. Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Whittle, Stephen, ed. The Margins of the City: Gay Men's Urban Lives. edited by Justin O'Connor, Steve Redhead and Derek Wynne, Popular Cultural Studies. Aldershot: Arena, 1994. Williams, Richard J. "Pornomodernism." Chap. 5 In Sex and Buildings: Modern Architecture and the Sexual Revolution. 107-27. London: Reaktion Books, 2013. Wolfe, Bernard. "Swimming in Red Ink." Playboy, July 1964, 93, 98, 100, 16. Wolfe, Maxine. "Invisible Women in Invisible Places: Lesbians, Lesbian Bars, and the Social Production of People/Environment Relationships." Architecture & comportement / Architecture & Behaviour 8, no. 2 (1992): 137-58. Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981. Wollheim, Richard. Art and Its Objects. 2nd ed. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. "Womanhouse." Accessed January 23, 2014. http://womanhouse.refugia.net/. "Womenhouse." UCR/California Museum of Photography. Accessed January 23, 2014. http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/education/programs/digitalstudio/studio_projects/webworks/wome nhouse/default2.html. Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981. ———. Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 18731913. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. ———. "On the Fringe of the Profession: Women in American Architecture." In The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, edited by Spiro Kostof. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

299

éal. Accessed November 12, 2013. http://www.macm.org/en/expositions/yesterday%E2%80%99s-tomorrows/. Yoder, Jon. "John Lautner: Diagramming Vision in Los Angeles." ArcCA: the journal of the American Institute of Architects, California Council. 5, no. 3 (2005): 26-29. ———. "A View to Kill For." Modern Painters, July-August 2008, 60-65. Zeiger, Mimi. "Assume They Want to Have Fun." Architect, January 2011, 150-51.

300

In the future everyone will only get to go home once a year. In the future everyone will stay home all the time. - David Byrne, 1985

301