The Implications of the Male and Female Design Aesthetic for Public Services (original) (raw)
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This essay was commissioned in 2010 by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in the U.K. as part of their project "People and Places: Public Attitudes To Beauty". Other material relating to this project is available on CABE's web archive at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http://www.cabe.org.uk/publications/people-and-places
2015
As creators in Space, architects and designers are given the ability to explore and expand from short-term architectural missions, to the eventual formation of the world, targeting the ultimate efficiency of human environment creating thoughtful spaces and smart functional systems for all the living people. The new ‘human intervention’ criteria needs to be developed, in order to approach a different strategy of physical and psychological requirements, framing multiple aspects that consciously should be influencing architectural aesthesis. The design of a living environment for long-living stay should take into account the quality-of-life, as well as the long term functionality of services that reflect gender quality co-existence. Architectural aesthetics should be able to resolve and monitor the spatial arrangement, the usage and functionality of the individual spaces and how they provide the user an easier and more pleasant experience of living. This research paper aims to question the architectural journey of male boundaries and the emergence of female realms in relation to architectural aesthetics. The paper will analyse important issues such as how do people visualise architecture, the primary goals of intervention in the architectural field and the reflection on the society. Additionally, in what ways is the evaluation of the design criticised, rather than just the building itself. Aaron Betsky claims that the society must create a living world which will consider the needs of both genders and all those beings whose gender we cannot and should not define. Being able to administer all the necessary aspects in order to process to the design, architecture enables issues such as aesthetics and the sensibility inside the developing form. Starting from the outer envelope to the inner environment also the different senses a space can provide, and all the characteristics that encourage the user to be able to experience space and embrace their personal experiences. To that end, this paper discusses the necessity of an aesthetic perspective within the general architectural intervention and the necessity of architectural cognition to achieve an efficient outcome.
Cities should be more Feminine: a case for " Quality of Space " in urban architecture
Carlos Goni's book Lo Femenino (EUNSA, 2008) points out the difference between men and women when it comes to clothing. For men, clothes are meant to cover their nakedness. Their value is purely functional. For women however, clothes are an expression of their personality. What she chooses to wear on a particular day is a woman's way of saying who she is; her values, personality, and what she wants other people to think of her. Now, if we consider cities from this perspective, some are certainly more feminine than others. I'm using this generalisation to make a point about where that dial on our architectural scale of values lies, and what approach public authorities have when planning and installing urban furniture.
In the past centuries the construction of gender identity was -and still is in many places- in the hands of the church, the segregated school, the army and the family. But it seems that the three first have lost their authority in educating youngsters while the traditional family is in question. Our paper explores how in our western industrial societies consumption and taste are constructing young female identity in an unexpected and powerful way. The patterns of taste and the aesthetical codes attached to women have no really changed so much in the last 100 years. Under the appearance of a “modern woman” we discover many traditional stereotypes but in a renewed way. This is because women’s consumption and taste are skillfully manipulated by fashion and media. Trough the Twentieth-Century female image and female identity has been more and more in the hands of marketing managers and designers. Are the leaders of taste, and not church, school, and family, who decide the “appropriate” image and behavior of women according to the aesthetic codes and patterns of consumption they are planning for the next season?
Formal Methods in Architecture and Urbanism, Volume 2, 2022
Based on Dolores Hayden concept that the house, as a reflection of the collective, mirrors the patriarchal structure of society by creating spaces that reinforce gender roles and stereotypes, we can argue that the service areas of a house is the spatial materialization of life support and family care activities. Considering that men and women should live and work equally, the feminist movement throughout the 20th century asserted that traditional constructions of gender relations should be destroyed and the house should function as a tool for social transformation. Domestic services in collective spaces then arise to enable the large-scale production of modernist housing and to dissociate women from domestic activities. Despite recognising the plurality of genres, this study is limited to the binarism between men and women, and seeks to understand how gender relations are manifested in the domestic space and how spatial relations relate to the construction of gender. Based on Julienne Hanson's spatial syntax methodology the analysis investigates the importance of the implementation of collective domestic service systems during the modern movement as a tool to minimize the inequalities imposed by the sexual division of labor. Specific objectives include: (i) Analyse the spatial structure of three emblematic modernist housing complexes through the analytical variables proposed by Hanson - Narkomfin, in Moscow (Moisei Ginzburg, 1928-1932), Mendes de Moraes complex, known as Pedregulho, in Rio de Janeiro (Afonso Reidy, 1946-1950), and the Unité d’habitacion, in Marseille (Le Corbusier, 1947-1952) - which all contain collective spaces, such as laundries and kitchens; (ii) compare the spatial configuration of modern residences studied by Luiz Amorim and Hanson with these three cases to verify if these structures contribute to the perpetuation of gender roles and the sexual division of labor; and (iii) contextualize the socioeconomic and political scenarios involved in the three cases that might have favoured minimisation of such inequalities within the domestic sphere. The expected contribution is to show, under an analytical approach, aspects related to the influence of the domestic space on the social construction of the role of women and on the sexual division of labor in emblematic social housing complexes, bringing light to the importance of contemplating non-sexist architectural solutions which consider women both as an user of space and a transforming agent.
Beyond the Call of Beauty: Everyday Aesthetic Demands Under Patriarchy
The Monist
This paper defends two claims. First, we will argue for the existence of aesthetic demands in the realm of everyday aesthetics, and that these demands are not reducible to moral demands. Second, we will argue that we must recognise the limits of these demands in order to combat a widespread form of gendered oppression. The concept of aesthetic supererogation offers a new structural framework to understand both the pernicious nature of this oppression and what may be done to mitigate it.