Yale University EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale Masters of Environmental Design Theses Yale School of Architecture Spring 5-2021 Space-Praxis: Towards a Feminist Politics of Design Mary C. Overholt Yale University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/envdesign Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Architectural History and Criticism Commons, Environmental Design Commons, Interior Design Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, United States History Commons, Visual Studies Commons, Women's History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Overholt, Mary C., "Space-Praxis: Towards a Feminist Politics of Design" (2021). Masters of Environmental Design Theses. 3. https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/envdesign/3 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Yale School of Architecture at EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters of Environmental Design Theses by an authorized administrator of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Space-Praxis: Towards a Feminist Politics of Design M.C. (Mary Carole) Overholt B.S. Stanford University, 2017 A thesis submitted to the faculty of the Yale School of Architecture in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Environmental Design Yale University May 2021 Keller Easterling Principal Advisor and M.E.D. Program Chair Elihu Rubin Reader Abstract Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space- praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day. Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners who are grounded in the environment-worlds they seek to reorganize and re-imagine. Though few of the space-practitioners discussed in this work would consider themselves architects, their work at the margin of design meaningfully expands contemporary definitions of architecture. Indeed, they exemplify the ways in which architecture could be retooled as a mode of activist engagement. The diverse array of spaces investigated include a handful of women’s centers in New York City, Cambridge, MA, and Los Angeles; the first feminist self-help gynecology clinic; an empty house in Oakland that was reclaimed by a group of Black mothers in 2019; and a series of pop-up block parties in Chicago. While this document in no way operates as an encyclopedia of feminist space- praxes, it highlights an array of such projects held together by their mutual investment in building feminist commons and infrastructures of care. In each project, survival is understood as a material practice, contingent on the affective relationship between bodies, space, and technologies. Though the direct object of each project’s intervention varies—from the clinic, to the house, to the neighborhood—each suggests alternative ways of living, surviving, and designing outside of the built environment’s hetero- patriarchal scripts. Overholt, 1 Table of Contents Introduction. Space-Praxis………………………………………...……………………... 3 Chapter 1. The Women’s Buildings: Designing Multidimensional Commons……...…. 23 Chapter 2. Self-Help Space: The (Un)Making of Clinical Space at the Feminist Women's Health Centers………………………………...……………………………… 65 Chapter 3. Black Feminist Repair: Moms for Housing, Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings, and Abolitionist Space-Praxis…....…………..…………………… 101 Conclusion. Feminist Failure………………………………………………………….. 140 Bibliography…………………….…………………………………...………...…….... 152 Appendix…………………….…………………………………...………….....…….... 163 Overholt, 2 Introduction Space-Praxis A group of homeless and marginally housed mothers squat in a house owned by a real estate speculation company in West Oakland. A woman sits on an intersection in Chicago that has been plagued by gun violence, serving hot dogs to local residents and dramatically reducing homicide rates over the course of a few years. In Cambridge, a collection of socialist feminists take over the Harvard Technology Workshop, claiming it as a women’s center. Another group transforms an Oakland church into a cafeteria, serving breakfast to impoverished children. Later that day, one of those kids who is battling sickle cell anemia goes to a public park where she is met by the same women, who have taught themselves to diagnose and mitigate her disease. In Los Angeles, a group of women assemble a do-it-yourself (DIY) abortion kit from parts found in grocery stores and a local school supplies retailer. They read literature hung on the wall of a feminist clinic that guides them as they complete a safe abortion for a friend. In another L.A. neighborhood, a group of feminist artists purchase and renovate a building, transforming it into a hybrid school, gallery space, and meeting place for local activists. Across the country, a group of transgender activists scrape together enough cash to rent a Manhattan apartment where they can shelter, feed, and care for trans and gender- nonconforming youth. Overholt, 3 These moments in time and space, which span from the late 1960s to present day, and from coast to coast of the United States, are brought together in this thesis as examples of women-led movements that have made the transformation of the built environment a focal point of their activism. Unlike traditional architectural projects— which are dictated by blueprints and construction phasing, and realized by hierarchically stratified workers—the projects explored herein are situated, adaptive, and sometimes unruly undertakings. They each embody an ethos of self-determination, radical collectivity, and care, and as such they are meaningful expressions of what I am calling an intersectional, feminist politics of design. Though the women, mothers, trans activists, and allies who have led these projects rarely considered themselves architects or spatial practitioners, their work at the margin of design meaningfully expands contemporary definitions of architecture. Indeed, these individuals and collectives exemplify the ways in which architecture—and spatial practice at large—might be retooled as an activist mode of engaging with the world. In his book The Practice of Everyday Life, philosopher Michel de Certeau provides a definition for his concept of spatial practice that will prove central for this thesis. Spatial practices, de Certeau claims, are everyday acts of appropriation which subvert and repurpose commodities and commodified space. These practices are necessarily “tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised.”1 Crucially, spatial practices are situated within dominant systems; they operate not through isolation from hegemonic, institutional scripts, but rather by becoming intimate with them, resisting by performing them 1 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 96. Overholt, 4 otherwise. The anti-disciplinarian nature of such practices is captured in de Certeau’s discussion of Charlie Chaplin, whose spatial practice manifested through the peculiar handling of his cane: rather than performing its conscripted, commercial use, as a bodily support, Chaplin “multiplies the possibilities of his cane” by transforming it into an instrument of comedic communication.2 Here, the environment around Chaplin is just as critical to his practice as the cane—it provides a theater for his performance, a sphere of action that inspires acts of improvisation and subversion. Similarly, the stage of the city becomes the site for spatial practices. Pedestrians appropriate the topographical system of the city by moving across its grid in myriad ways, corrupting its formulaic design. For feminist designers, historians, and theorists alike, de Certeau’s notion of spatial practices has been foundational to reconceptualizing architecture as more than just a professionalized field of work. As feminist architectural historian and theorist Jane Rendell states, de Certeau’s writing on spatial practice has produced an understanding of practice as a process which occurs not only through design of buildings but also through the activities of using, occupying and experiencing them, and through the various modes of writing and imaging used to describe, analyse and interrogate space.3 Spatial practices, as Rendell states, are not reserved for those with a degree in architecture. Instead, they are insinuated in everyday actions—dwelling, cooking, shopping—as well as in artistic, performative activities. Yet, if we follow de Certeau’s provocations faithfully, which I will advise against, not all spatial practices are of a piece. In defining the contours of spatial practice, he 2 Ibid. 3 Jane Rendell, “Only resist: a feminist approach to