ABSTRACT

Feminism has entered its third wave, somewhat stealthily, unwilling to disappear as the agendas of its first wave (suffrage) and second wave (equal opportunity) appear to many to have been fulfilled. The aims of the third wave are no longer singular, having broadened to address multiple issues in the wake of post-structural critique. For feminist architects issues include the gendered body as a mediator of spatial experience, the intersection of gender with other forms of marginalities including race, class, and poverty, critiques of hierarchies of authorship (through collaboration) and critiques of traditional modes of practice that essentialize site and privilege object-making over process and other sensory experiences. This chapter explores one project in light of the writings of Jennifer Bloomer, Elizabeth Grosz, Susan Buck-Morss and Jane Rendell, four theorists who have helped prise open the cannon of architecture to dissident practices over the past two decades. It is a project that Rendell might describe as a “critical spatial practice”, a term that she invented to describe “a work that transgresses the limits of art and architecture and engages with the social and the aesthetic, the public and the private” (Rendell 2006). This chapter explores just one project, an urban installation in Melbourne’s alcoves and back lanes, that engages with many of these third wave feminist issues. “Urban Threads” was a collaboration in October 2004 between the author of this chapter and five women who had experienced homelessness and marginalization. It consisted of nine domestic ‘rooms’ and a path that connected them, exploring the discursive ways in which private place is staked out in the public realm. 1 Paul Carter defines discursive place-making as a “flight of words, hands and feet,” suggesting an interpersonal context, an iterative process of fabrication, a performative process of assembly, installation, and disassembly, as well as an invitation to passers by to enter into “dialogue”. 2 Textual discourse preceded the fabrication and framed the project conceptually. In particular the writings of a number of feminist theorists whose theories and practice have prised open the cannon of architecture to dissident practices over the past two decades. This chapter will tell the story of the installation and reflect on the work of these women who unknowingly shaped its development.