Both Freud and Stopes “counselled sexual satisfaction as a key to human happiness”, so if such happiness can be procured through sex, then why is this not exploited in the approach to designing the built environment? Historically, the alienation of sex in the built environment can be put down to the demarcated boundaries of space. According to Richard J Williams “to escape buildings for sex — to use a park, a beach, or the back seat of a car — is a transgression of one kind or another”, meaning that if the sexed individual expresses sex outside of the domicile, it is considered alien
This alienation is the product of not just centuries of imposed laws repressing sex and identity, but is also a product of the often monotonous, grey built environment in which we live, work and play. I hope to discover whether specific spatial conditions can have an immediate impact on sexual expression, and critique the implications of the methods employed.
Spectrums and Scales
The essay defines the city as being made up of two loci - public and private - of which both are placed at opposite ends of the architectural spectrum yet a priori, as Nancy Duncan writes in BodySpace, “both private and public spaces are heterogeneous…not all space is clearly private or public.”
As shown in figure 1, I have defined the characteristics of what is public and what is private space and I aim to discover how architecture can help limit how f is allowed to exist through (x) penetrating public space with components of private space. Private space can also be deemed as the chosen region around an individual of which they regard as psychologically theirs.
This alienation is the product of not just centuries of imposed laws repressing sex and identity, but is also a product of the often monotonous, grey built environment in which we live, work and play. I hope to discover whether specific spatial conditions can have an immediate impact on sexual expression, and critique the implications of the methods employed.