Space-Espace-Escape: An Interview With Anne Troutman 70 EROS 71 erotic interiors—there was only one book SPACE- on him then—and initially I thought I would research his career. I was working with Tony Vidler at that time, and he suggested I look ESPACE- deeper into the history of eroticism and space. After a year of research, I chose to focus on the eighteenth-century French boudoir, a ESCAPE: unique and unexamined spatial type. The story of the boudoir—a space that came into existence specifically for female retreat in the AN aristocratic hôtel—led me back into the realm of relational space. SG When you say “relational space” what do you INTERVIEW mean? AT I wanted to understand the architectural and spatial dynamics of intimate experience— WITH ANNE of “felt space” in which structure, surface, and the play of light work together to create an experience of intimacy and connectedness. TROUTMAN But the phenomenal is extremely difficult to put into words. Gaston Bachelard did a Christie Pearson on behalf of Scapegoat Journal masterful literary job in The Poetics of Space. What started you on your journey into erotic However, I found that apart from Le Corbusier’s space? exuberant writings (on l’espace indicible and Anne Troutman I taught a design studio at so on), architectural history rarely captured in SCI-Arc for many years and at a certain point a satisfying way how the haptic and the visual became critical of the formal strategies being work together architecturally and spatially to used, so I began focusing my design studios produce intimate experience. Since my chosen on direct experience, assigning my students subject was the erotic space of the boudoir, I to build (and perform) in actual scale, in real decided to try to come up with a vocabulary time. Site-specific installation work wasn’t to describe how this space type worked. I common at the time—we were cutting into did a spatial and architectural analysis of walls at the school, appending structures to the boudoir but soon realized the underlying the building—barely avoiding being shut down experience I was trying to describe—the by the fire marshal! A couple of these studios I erotic—like space itself was not easily put into called Intimate Space—the idea was to explore words. Eros always exceeds Logos. The erotic how each individual might materially and experience of the boudoir certainly exceeded spatially express her or his relationship to the the methods by which its effect was created. world—to architecturally evoke how individuals Slowly my investigation into the construction navigate the space between self-within and of erotic space began to morph beyond the world-at-large. As an architect teaching studio boudoir into a theory of spatial dynamics—or Damenzimmer of the Müller House, by Adolph Loos and not a theoretician, I was operating mostly what I came to think of as spatial erotics—so (photo credit Anne Troutman) intuitively. Later, to deepen my understanding I coined the phrase “erotics of space.” The of the historical underpinnings of my intuitions boudoir as a space type kept unfolding... regarding how personal, intimate, and SG How did the boudoir start? relational space is constructed, I decided go to AT The boudoir was initially a transitional UCLA for a Masters in architectural history and space, a hesitation between rooms—not a cultural theory. I was aware of Carlo Mollino’s hallway (those didn’t yet exist)—but a tiny area Christie Pearson / Anne Troutman SCAPEGOAT 9 Space-Espace-Escape: An Interview With Anne Troutman 72 EROS 73 with perhaps a cushioned seat, little more than There is also the way the aesthetics of the buildings the proportion and surface material Cedric Price’s Fun House, which was supposed to a threshold which allowed momentary escape space itself worked. It had to do with creating of a column make you feel the weight the be program-free and dynamic, although it has a from the incessant visibility of daily life. In the liminality. How did they create liminal space? column supports. Mies created an integrated, machine-like quality. It was only supposed to have aristocratic eighteenth-century hôtel, all the Flickering candlelight, the play of reflections deeply aesthetic, and dynamic spatiality you the program or activities that people created for rooms were public and organized enfilade: on the mirrored walls, yards and yards of soft can’t really pull apart. themselves. one opening onto another. The concept of voluptuous fabric, minimal furnishings, nature SG When you were talking before about a AT Great examples... individual privacy had barely come into being. itself or scenes from nature: all blended into language you could use around spatial erotics, SG I wonder about the role of the public when Hallways only appeared in the nineteenth- an atmosphere of intimacy and anticipation. you mentioned a few key points: program, you say the boudoir emerged from a building century bourgeois house. As the notion of The boudoir had this kind of oneiric or dream- dynamics, tactility, and integration. where every space was public. You may know privacy came to assert itself, a suite of smaller like quality from the beginning. AT Yes. The historic boudoir was program- that people would receive visitors in the toilet or rooms developed alongside and parallel to the Details aside, this feminine space was in matically flexible, visually dynamic, while in the bathtub, that these were not hidden public rooms. These were usually entered by essence a visually integrated, spatially dynamic, spatially integrated, tactile and haptic. In spaces. There was a degree of “publicness” in a door within a wall panel. Among those rooms and flexible space—a vocabulary that is the twentieth century this space type was everything that you did. How do spatial erotics there was a small sleeping area, a dressing particularly interesting in light of the features generalized over the entire house, and overt relate to the cultivation of private life? There’s room, toilet or bath area, and the boudoir. of high modernist architecture. Loos’s Müeller tactility was replaced by visual texture and the public and the private, and you need some The boudoir was usually located between the House of 1929, which actually had a boudoir, spatial integration; the boudoir effectively sort of relationship between them to activate it. sleeping and dressing areas—a connective is a wonderful example. Directly over the front transformed into an erotics of space. The Damenzimmer is not a windowless pod: it’s a space. The word boudoir likely came from door with views to both inside and outside SG So what does the “erotics of space” mean to place that oversees other rooms where you have the French bouder, meaning “to pout,” the entrances, the Damenzimmer was hidden you right now? visual and acoustic relationships to others. idea being that it was a space in which to in plain sight, poised between inside and AT We are in an era now when categories that AT Spatial erotics has to do with relational feel—to pout, to withdraw. It was a specifically out, where its occupant could observe while were being questioned in the last couple of space, as opposed to rooms, functions, and female space. Men had studies, but before unobserved—giving it a voyeuristic dimension. decades are being destroyed, or perhaps types. The dynamic and immersive boudoir the boudoir women didn’t have a space for Loos’s Raumplan, which is condensed in the just losing relevance. I think the historical created the illusion of unbounded space, a withdrawal, reading, or private conversation. Damenzimmer, is an integrated spatial system. boudoir has significance in this regard, in sense of release from reductive and defining In her boudoir, the lady of the house enjoyed Loos was a bridge figure between the Victorian that it broke out of historical strictures and roles of daily life. It was an erotic space, but informal time and intimate conversation, and modern eras. His very early interiors gave place to new social phenomena. Today, it also suggests an overall erotics of space… an escape from the formal, visible, official borrow from eighteenth-century boudoirs, are maybe an “incubator space” is an example. space—espace—escape… Maybe we could program of the day. Over time the boudoir covered with fabrics and furs, and were later to Incubators are spatially and programmatically think of the eighteenth-century boudoir morphed along with shifts in gender and be transformed, hardened, and flattened into indeterminate, flexible spaces—not only as a sort of trans-space? When we give up politics. During the French Revolution it continuous surfaces, highlighting the spatial as a marketplace of sorts (food for venture categorizing, we gain a sense of freedom and became associated with the illicit—the space dynamics of the Raumplan. A close study of capitalists) but as places of rendezvous in newfound clarity about what really matters. of rendezvous, sexual encounter, and deal the work of Le Corbusier, Mies, Charreau, Loos, which different disciplines are invited to cross- SG The boudoir was a space of freedom for a making—a place of feminine power. Where it and Mollino allowed me to begin to develop a fertilize! A corporate boudoir? particular group of aristocratic women that had survived in the nineteenth century, it changed theory of modernist spatial erotics—too much SG When you say incubator space, what exactly certain rules and modes of operation and roles again with the rise of the middle class and for this conversation but detailed in my essays interests you? to play. In every culture and every group you are the separation of the domestic function of and book.