Only resist: a feminist approach to critical spatial practice | Thinkpiece | Architectural Review
▻https://www.architectural-review.com/rethink/only-resist-a-feminist-approach-to-critical-spatial-practice/10028246.article
Since the 1990s, a radical and interdisciplinary approach to spatial practice offers a rich and productive seam for feminism and architecture
In the 1990s, the drawn and written projects of the American architect and critic, Jennifer Bloomer, aimed to reveal the insufficiency of logical and rational structures such as spoken language to explain the world, and instead brought into operation the irrational and subversive elements in written texts – the feminine. Drawing parallels between the creation of a building, assumed to be a clean act of control and precision, and the mess of childbirth, Bloomer questioned the gender of creativity. Through her dirty drawings and her incorporation of parts of the female anatomy – breasts, milk, fluids, blood, hatching, udders – into architecture, Bloomer generated a critique of the sterility of the architectural drawing process. The feminine in her work was to be found in the so-called slippage of words, for example, the term ‘big jugs’ placed within an architectural context, suggested many things, including large breasts, but also the role of the feminine and female body as a container or empty signifier used to represent patriarchal ideologies. Bloomer’s work demonstrated that the feminine can be a radical element in architectural practice.