For this reason, over the course of American history the bathroom has been a crucible registering fears triggered by the threat of non-conforming bodies entering into public space. In addition, it raises thorny cultural and psychological questions about abjection, disability, and embodied difference. Not only does the sex-segregated bathroom “naturalize” the male/female binary, but it also taps into deep-rooted and longstanding societal anxieties about sexuality including misogyny and homophobia. Bathrooms are over-determined sites where a series of cultural, psychological, and technological forces converge. Well, that’s a very rich and complicated question. More recently, Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (2011), co-edited with the late Diana Balmori, includes an essay that explores a similar theme: the impact of gender on the arbitrary segregation of two allied disciplines: architecture and landscape. In Curtain Wars (2002), I explored how the false opposition between two overlapping practices - architecture and interior design - stemmed from deep-rooted prejudices about women, decoration, and gay men. At the same time I began to speculate about how gender, as it intersects with race and class, shapes design approaches and professional conduct. Gradually my approach shifted: I brought a queer perspective to bear on a broader issue - the role architecture plays in the performance of a spectrum of human identities, both personal and professional. However, back in the early days of STUD, my work dealt explicitly with gay male issues. In short, “Stalled!” is the product of the coincidental convergence of my academic, theoretical, and professional interests, which have led me back full circle to exploring LGBTQ issues.Īlthough I don’t wear a pink triangle at interviews and discussions with clients, I bring to the table values and a design approach that stem in part from my own experience as a gay man. We co-authored an essay which soon mushroomed into “Stalled!,” a design/research project dedicated to coming up with best practice guidelines and prototypes for inclusive public restrooms. Bathroom politics led me to immerse myself in transgender studies and rekindle a dialogue with Susan Stryker, a leading transgender historian, theorist, and activist, about the design implications of this social justice issue. These professional frustrations coincided with national debates that I was reading about in the media, controversies triggered by the threat of transgender people gaining access to public restrooms. Building codes coupled with an uncooperative landlord prevented us from implementing the all-gender bathrooms that were central to our client’s mission.
In 2015, Joel Sanders Architect (JSA) was invited to design the New York City headquarters for GLSEN (the gay, lesbian, straight education network), a non-profit dedicated to making schools safe and nurturing environments for K-12 students. In this interview with representatives from the organizations QSPACE and QSAPP, together with Intersections guest editor Jacob Moore, he explains the ways that an updated approach to bathroom design, while critiquing and expanding society’s rigid definitions of gender, can and should additionally address issues of inclusivity, ability, and access that reach well beyond bathroom walls (or corridors, as the case may be).įor more, check out the livestream of Noncompliant Bodies: Social Equity and Public Space, a symposium Sanders organized at the Yale School of Architecture, April 6-7, 2018. In over twenty years of academic and professional practice, Joel Sanders has thought carefully about the ways that gender and sexual identity interact with architectural design, and over the last several years this focus has honed in on the bathroom. The design of bathrooms - “men’s rooms” and “ladies’ rooms” as they are still commonly known - seems to be, first and foremost, all about gender.
0 kommentar(er)
