For queer bodies that are displaced because of their resistance to normative expectations, how can architecture support a sense of respite and inhabitation?
What does the making of home look like for them?
How do they enact resistance and resilience through the process of homemaking?
making home in dis-place-m∙e∙a∙n∙t 2024 (ongoing) Master’s thesis ETH Zurich
with Giacomo Rossi
In this thesis “Homemaking in Displacement”, we want to look into displacement as an intrinsic part of the queer experience and how homemaking for displaced queer bodies can be a conscious act of resistance and resilience. Building on Sara Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology, displacement is not seen as a “one-off” or exceptional event but as a constant ongoing process (moving out of place) and condition (being out of place). It is about being unable to settle and belong in the long term. For those queer bodies that are displaced because of their resistance to normative expectations, how can architecture support a sense of respite and inhabitation? What does the making of home look like for them? How do they enact resistance and resilience through the process of homemaking? Starting from our own personal stories and trajectories, we aim to build a theoretical reflection that stems from our contexts of China and Italy and de-centers Anglo-American queer theory. Queering the home by introducing the immaterial structures that furnish these spaces, we would expand onto case studies through methods that would allow us to encounter the intangible layers of home space, thus incorporating emotions, memories, hopes, and the unspoken that are at the base of day-to-day practices of homemaking.
The thesis is under the supervision of prof. An Fonteyne (ETH Zurich), prof. S.E. Eisterer (Princeton University) and prof. Menna Agha (Carleton University).
Giacomo Rossi, Qianer Zhu © 2024