London is designed to house as many family housing ‘units’ as possible, (re)producing spaces that reify the normalised ideal of the nuclear ‘family unit’ above all others. But we know the city contains a multitude of non-nuclear living setups and familial configurations. As a group of curious queers, we will ask ourselves questions such as “how can queer living de-construct traditionally gendered and partnered domestic spaces?”, “what do spaces that celebrate fluid, diverse and chosen families look like?”, “how can the built fabric we already have be reappropriated for poly-centric spaces?”, “where can we act in power against the affordability crisis?”, “what is the built legacy of queer collectivity as (spatial) reproduction?”
Inspired by feminist and queer challenges to domesticated norms, we will look to alternative governance models and spatial stewardship practices for empowerment to bend our spaces toward queer bodies. Over the session we will chop, stitch, translocate, reappropriate and overlay the blueprints of common housing typologies across London to collage new queer ideologies of shared space/s. The workshop will prompt us to reimagine living spaces, engaging first with a series of co-design prompts to interrogate our collective spatial needs, then translating these into 2D/3D patchworks of floor plans, sections and elevations, creating new prefigurative ideas of alternative domestic havens.
The session does not require previous experience of housing design or procurement beyond your lived experience of housing yourselves and each other. A rich variety of experiences and thinking styles is very welcome and highly encouraged. Please reach out with any questions or access needs in advance of the event.
FACILITATOR
Ruby Sleigh
Ruby (she/they) thinks in spatial politics, translating the design skills they developed through architectural education into the social and spatial patterns we experience today. She is also a member of Perennial housing co-op, a group of queer and trans people forming in North London to create a collectively owned home that decouples housing from profit. Ruby is currently working between teaching undergraduate architecture, regenerative design research, spatial justice for ecology and reducing reliance on capitalist work (!) They are a huge fan of the workshop format as a form of co-created knowledge and exchange.