Issues in Architecture and Urbanism was a lecture series by Post-Professional Master of Architecture students in their final year at the Yale School of Architecture.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation following Adam Thibodeaux’s presentation, later published in Practice. From the editor: “Practice is, above all, an action. The post-professional students’ conversation each week contextualized their interest in varied practices and their ideas on future work. This booklet is a collection of these conversations.”
Changming Huang: What is defamiliarization with regards to queerness?
Adam Thibodeaux: So the idea of queerness is divorced from the idea of typical associations of gender and sexual minority. I think of the queer person or the queer object as something that is generally deviating from a system of expected function. And if you think about it in the sense of gender and sexual minority, it is basically that. If the basic function, based on a heteronormative societal structure, is for sexuality and gender to function in a particular way based on expectation, when something functions outside of that realm of expectation, it becomes abject, it becomes defamiliarized. [In] a lot of contexts, it is initially revolting, but what is suggested by some of the earlier defamiliarization studies, is that when you make that leap and that estrangement, it allows you to reconsider the broader systems that were making you think that in the first place.
Hojae Lee: There seem to be several ways you begin to define queer space. One example is talking about dysfunctionality of stuff that was originally purposed to work in a certain way. It also seems like you’re starting to think about juxtaposing different objects. Also, there are different ways to defamiliarize. Have you ever thought about combining those two? Do you have a specific method for how you’re going to achieve this?
AT: The idea of containment as the next step is pretty important. I think there are a lot of obvious things that will come up. I want to take a step forward by thinking really broadly about the ideas of the subconscious and containers, and that’s why I started with the trashcan. I do expect that it will move towards more familiar ideas like the idea of the bathroom as a site for cruising which could be considered because it is a very accepted, self-conscious container of the body where genitals are allowed to be exposed within these confined, closeted spaces. Those end up being the grounds for queer activity because they are able to function in the subconscious. That’s the obvious one, but I’m hoping that through the analysis of other containers like a blind, a curtain, or even a pipe, those things might come into play as other moments of subversion.
Aniket Shahane: Could you create an archive of objects of failure, objects of disfunction? What is the relationship between failure and disfunction to scale? Everything you’ve looked at thus far is object-like. What about when a city fails?
AT: I’ve actually found that most discussion of queerness and the way it manifests through failure in architecture has been at the scale of the city – the open park space as cruising ground, for example. Even still, there’s a lot of current discussion around technology, dating and hook-up apps in particular, as a something that is an urban-scale failure, or disruption of an existing urban condition. So that’s where a lot of the literature exists currently, and I think my work is interested in stripping back to the fundamental subject-object relationships and starting with something very small, like an object, as a different point of entry. I think architects have typically been, and will always be, fascinated by cities. I’m definitely one of them, but I also feel like I’m a part of a younger camp that is also very interested in the object. Since it’s the hot thing, I think object study is a great avenue for queerness to invade architectural discourse in a way that it hasn’t yet.
AS: Given how you’re approaching this, it does seem like there is a reason to draw a line – that the kind of queerness you’re looking at can’t go beyond the size of a bathroom, and the failure of lower Manhattan isn’t a part of that.
