Space is instrumental in the arrangement of human geography, yet spatial arrangement alone is not powerful enough to engender an egalitarian society. This study is a result of the current push for multi-faceted societies and progressive human geography. Perplexingly, society has become more progressive in racial, gender and LGBTQ representations and more specifically, gender roles have become less restrictive and open expression of sexual orientation is more accepted, but sexual expression itself is not as equally represented.
This paper will critique the visible expressions of sex in the built environment using critical theory to illustrate specific case studies after and throughout the post-war (WWII) period, until the present day. The investigation will try to understand the often catalytic shifts in attitudes towards sex, inline with architectural change and also identify the spaces with highly-charged components of sexuality.
Feminist and queer theories will be applied to the social and political minefield which is the city. It can be established by the multiple layers of infrastructure which influence activity and discourse respectively, the most important of these layers being the invisible networks which enable an individual’s relationships with people and the urban environment.
Specifically, Duncan’s ‘public and private’ will be interpreted to illuminate my questioning of how the usage and determination of a space can provoke social politics, and how architecture revolves around a hegemony sought to organise us into boxes. This will be illustrated through an immersive study of how we can provoke space to become polymorphous like sexuality.