ABSTRACT
As polarizing an issue as abortion is in various parts of North America, abortion provides an interesting platform to think through complex relationships of space, a woman’s body, varying degrees of state control, potentials of design thinking in transforming spatial relationships and ways to radically rethink and find agency within them. This research has led to other research tangents including design work for several US clinics, abortion clinic building code analyses and interdisciplinary collaborations exploring reproductive healthcare access extending architecture’s engagement beyond the discipline. This essay will discuss these tangents and ways research and spatial inquiry create possibilities for expanded scholarship. Influenced by research methodologies from feminist geography who seek to foster as non-hierarchical relationships as possible with their research subjects, the expanded and ongoing trajectories discussed use design strategies for real world application. By collaborating with those for who design may not seem like the most obvious fit, the discipline’s diverse scope of intellectual inquiry and spatial expertise has produced unforeseen real world collaborations in the creation of spatial agency within our built environment.
