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Intersections of gender with architecture

Concept: investigating ways in which architecture can either


(i) contribute to the social progress of women
(ii) Place-make for women

Studying the distinct spatial needs of a gender group.

Production of Space: Henry Lefebvre

Space is culturally produced.


Social Relations are reproduced in space.
Power Dynamics, Hierarchies and Relations such as Class, Gender,
Capitalism.

His critique allows one to shift focus from space itself to the process of it’s
production.

Three part dialectic


Everyday practices and perceptions
Representations or theories of Space
The spatial imaginary of time

every society—and, therefore, every mode of production—produces a certain


space, its own space. The city of the ancient world cannot be understood as a
simple agglomeration of people and things in space—it had its own spatial
practice, making its own space
Making connections between space and gender relations resonates with
the earlier research of anthropologists on “public” and “private”
realms, kinship networks, and social relations of exchange, which argues
that the relation between gender and space is defined through
power—that is, the social status of women defines the spaces they
occupy.

Shirley Ardener’s work, for example, has been particularly important


in developing studies that examine both the differing spaces men and
women are allocated culturally and the particular role space has in
symbolizing, maintaining, and reinforcing gender relations.

Considering that space is socially produced and that gender relations are
reinforced and rearticulated in space, how can we articulate space in a way that
is specific to a gender, can celebrate or place-make for that g ender?

boundary, which acts as an agency of power, control, and bifurcation be


it of geography, color, gender, religion, or otherwise.

-identifying spatial constructs which foster sexism through social


inhibitions

-reexamining how gender is represented: gender essentialism vs. Feminist


architecture?

Deborah Fausch “An architecture that requires that it be experienced with senses other than
vision… could be claimed as strategically feminist”

‘feminist ways of knowing’ emphasis connectedness, inclusiveness, complexity, acknowledgement


of the value of everyday life, care for others

Acceptance of subjectivity, flexibility and change

-identifying female users among the demographic in karachi that I want


to cater to e.g. single mothers, domestic abuse/sexual abuse survivors,
lack of women hostels, single mother housing, panah shelter, public spaces
for women

Lines of Control by Surekhah

In this spontaneous one shot work, the artist contemplates the being’s
behavior when confronted with boundaries: real, imagined, and metaphoric.
Boundaries are made by human conditions. They are often imposed, assumed,
accepted, and acknowledged.
Umoja, a village in Kenya where only women live.

These women are survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence and began to live together in this
village. The writer of the article talks about women sitting in a circle conversing and working together.

‘The tree of speech’ is the space where they discuss village matters something that they had no
access to in their older villages.
Local Context

The Panah Shelter for Women who need refuge


Girls at Dhaba initiative that reflects the desire of occupying public
space

Lack of women hostels, the lack of housing for single mothers

Kuhlmann references several historic examples, such as churches, homes,


and public baths that featured separate, inferior areas dedicated solely
to women. Two strategies for expressing sexual hierarchy in architecture
are by using women’s bodies as alluring embellishments (in
advertisements, renderings, ornamentation) or excluding them entirely
from specific areas (Kuhlmann, pg. 4). Kuhlmann also discusses the
importance of spatial arrangement in the control of women

Space determines and affects behaviour, just as the organization of space


is produced by and in relation to behaviour.”

CBF Women’s Health Centre by FARE Studio. This project is a located in


Burkina Faso, where the female genital mutilation rate is 76.6%
(Demographic Health Survey, 2010). This resource center provides medical,
legal, psychological, and awareness services to the affected women and
their families within the surrounding community.

urban space, was an understanding of the public space as not just an empty
physical container but as a holistic product and social process where
planners play a crucial role in producing representations that have a
direct bearing on spatial practice (the built environment) and routine
ways of life. His contribution to planning theory therefore is potentially
profound. In seeking to redevelop urban public space and in abandoning
urban space; public and private institutions it seems produce
inadvertently the potential for differential space.
Counter spaces that consider how bodies should behave to empower and
become counter spaces vs. Designing counter spaces, planning counter
spaces.

https://issuu.com/almaiflores/docs/sm_counterspaces

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