Make it Queerer

Abstract

Spatial design is intrinsically and mutually influenced by our current ideologies, beliefs, and aspirations, manifesting themselves in walls, roofs, volumes, and voids. Consequently, at a glance, our spaces also reflect power: formal or informal institutions, governments, persuasive private actors, and economical flows. Monuments, public squares and avenues all hold the traces of this materially articulated dominance. However, as Michel Foucault states, “Where there is power, there is resistance”. How and where do we find traces of resistance in our existing spatial realms? Who is placed on the metaphorical outskirts of the city, left to adapt to the established built environment? And how does this very adaptation translate into resistance manifested in their own walls, roofs, volumes, and voids? With questions such as these in mind, this thesis turns to answers in the world and word of “queer”. A complex concept with a variety of disparate and contradictory definitions, the term “queer” resists being pinpointed in just a couple of sentences. In most definitions, however, “queer” and “queering” seek to understand loci of power structures, to deconstruct and destabilize them. In this thesis, the word is used to examine a semi-public space in Gothenburg, by abstracting a set of tools for analyzing and reimagining space with a queer perspective. The object of interrogation is the central shopping center of Nordstan, on which tools of queering extracted from literature and reference projects are tested. As a result, a visualization of the queer potentials of Nordstan is created. As such, the role of the architect in the research is also recognized as different from the traditional role of the ultimate and sole designer of space, into more of a generator of ideas, inspiration, and disruption