In Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, published in 1990, called for a new way of looking at sex and gender. As opposed to the fixed masculine-feminine gender binary, Butler argued that gender should be seen as fluid, variable; the way we behave at different times and in different situations rather than who we are. Butler suggested that by 'deconstructing' the way we think about gender we might move towards a new equality where people are not restricted by masculine or feminine gender roles.

Butler refers to Foucault here, following him in arguing that society constructs subjects and then individuals come to represent them.

“Juridical systems of power produce the subjects they subsequently come to represent. Juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely negative terms. ‘Protection’ of individuals related to that political structure through the contingent and retractable operation of choice. However the subjects if these structures are formed, defined and reproduced according to the requirements of those structures,”

Butler states - like many other feminists - that gender is a cultural construct and that gender is a multiple interpretation of sex. Conventional theory states that our sex produces our gender which causes our desire towards the opposite sex.

Butler however, rejects this uncompromising explanation because it does not leave any room for variation, for alternative influences on different people in different situations. The very idea of 'woman' may serve to make women alienated from their own society. The idea of woman may not just obscure the truth but it may only have its proper function within oppressive social concepts.

“Representation reveals or distorts what is assumed to be true about the category about women… The feminist theory – a language that fully or adequately represents women – has seemed necessary to foster the political visibility of women… The universal cultural condition which women’s lives were either misrepresented or not represented at all. It became a point where the subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms,”

The effect of categorising all women into a unified group separate from men has actually been detrimental to feminist calls for equality. I find this very true because I come from a background where gender holds an important role within the household.

Back in Malaysia, where our home was built by my late grandfather who was an immigrant from China in the late 1920s. Coming from very traditional family structure in China where the woman dominates the domestic areas (i.e kitchen) and the man dominates the general areas, our home was designed in a way where the kitchen was made to make a man feel awkward – like shorter sinks and counter tops versus a physically taller masculine body – and the living areas were designed to make a women feel inferior – like larger seats versus a petite feminine body. These little areas truly segregate genders in a very unfair manner.

If men and women are seen as fundamentally different and separate then true equality is impossible. In this way Butler is taking a different stance to other feminists who emphasise the differences between the sexes.

Butler's approach is basically to smash the supposed links between these, so that gender and desire are flexible, free-floating and not 'caused' by other stable factors.

"When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one,"

In the article “Space Between Studs” by Sherry Ahrentzen, she mentions that gender has played an important role in architecture for decades. “The body in architectural thought and discourse is not simply non-female, it is also curiously abiological, although sex-related anatomical representations of cities and buildings have a long continuing history of architecture,” She mentions that in architecture, there seem to be a similar approach in terms of the binary differences. “The early work in the 1970s and 1980s often examined architecture – whether in symbol or in practice – in terms of female-male and feminine-masculine differences… this binary approach was increasingly called into question, resulting in an outpouring of work that conceptualized gender as one of an interesting number of elements,”

In some articles regarding Architecture and gender, this binary categorization seemed pretty structuralized without even having to give a second thought about what the essence of architecture it holds.

“Some architecture critics believe that "female" architecture is architecture that seems to express femininity. There is something womanly about the building's shape, size, proportions, color, or texture. The Singapore Esplanade, portraying curved shapes may suggest the womb. Perhaps you long to crawl inside the building and curl into a fetal position,”

“Some architecture critics believe that "male" architecture is architecture that expresses heaviness, strength, or power. Something about its shape, proportions, like Pei’s Johnson Museum,”

This is a very unfair and inaccurate form of description to be describing a building to be a male or a female due to its form. However my question is that should architecture be categorized into binary differences or does it even have a form of ‘gender’? My argument is not how Architecture can affect one’s gender, but whether Architecture has a form of ‘gender’. I believe that it does have its form of ‘gender’, but not in a binary form.

Architecture is involved in forming matter in conformance with ideas, which is how – according to Butler – our gender is a performance and our interpretation of what it.

Butler states that our gender is not a core aspect of our identity but rather a performance and our interpretation of what it is, how we behave at different times. Our gender is an achievement rather than a biological factor. “Gender out not to be construed as a stable identity or a locus of agency, from which various act follow, rather gender is an identity, tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space, through a stylize repetition of acts,”

Gender, then, as the identification with one sex or one object is a fantasy, a set of internalized images, and not a set of properties governed by the body and its organ configuration. Rather, gender is a set of signs internalized, psychically imposed on the body and on one's psychic sense of identity.

“One should not underestimate to what extent spatial patterns do influence our sense of gender. Judith Butler argues that gender is not something that is attributed to an already pre-existing subject because of this subject’s biological characteristics, but rather something that is produced through its repetitive enactment in response to discursive forces,” Gender, Judith Butler concludes, is thus not a primary category, but an attribute, a set of secondary narrative effects.

The Abbey of Thélème, a greek translation of the term “free will”, was built in Gargantua when they won the Picrocholine war in 1534. The architect had ambitious visions for the design of the abbey; the central idea of the abbey was freedom, and the plan was a hexagon form, with the number six symbolizing perfection. Huge round towers by the sides, each with six floors with 9,332 suites rooms each.

“The crowded skyline is a cross between pure symmetry and messy shapes, the latter a remnant of the French Middle Ages, and conical roofs, protruding gutters and an array of gold figures, grotesques and small animals suggest Chambord. Also portrayed is a spiral staircase, like the one to be found at Blois and Chambord where at least two men could climb it side by side,”

Informed by his stifling experience as a former monk, Rabelais challenged the necessity of enclosure in his writing. In Rabelais’s Narrative it is of fantasy proportions, allowing sex mounted horsemen abreast to ascend it in full flight.

The ones inhabiting the Abbey were mainly young aristocratic young ladies, noble handsome knights, and preachers of the gospel. There was a strong emphasis of the sexes on the spatial qualities that is designed within the Abbey. “The emphasis is on equality of the sexes, and this situation is maintained in terms of occupation of space (three wings each) and activities (walking, hunting and riding purpose-built parks),”

Rabelais’s contains the idea of the architect trapping the residents in perfect clothed in luxury and comfort. To him, the Abbey of Thélème seemed like a perfectly charmed world, a synthesis of many plenitudes and perfections.

“That is the reason why you must open this book, and carefully weigh up its contents. You will discover then that the drug contained within it is far more valuable than the box promised; that to say, that the subjects here treated are not to foolish as the title on the cover suggested,”

In my perspective, the perceived ‘gender’ of the Abbey of Thélème by Rabelais – due to his past as a monk - is a perfectly charmed word just because it is designed around the architect’s intended ‘sexed’ physical property - books, gardens, and noble residents. Rabelais did not consider how the building interprets itself to him rather how he interprets the building. He left out characteristics of what the building holds that he felt was ‘inappropriate’.

“The building and its grounds speak for themselves as it were. The inhabitants are known to read, only because there is a library containing six shelves of books in six languages. They are known to swim in pools, walk in the maze and play on the tennis courts only because these things exist, but are not actually portrayed actually doing them… the indispensible army of servants is overlooked probably because Rabelais chooses not to portray the humbler dwellings,”

The essence of the building grew together with the activities that were practiced within the Abbey. It was a life of uniformity for the inhabitants evidenced by inhuman statements. In one of Rabelais’s description, “If a man or woman said “Let us drink”, they all drank,”

In the later years when Charles Lenormant published his Restitution of the Abbey, he constructed a bird’s eye view plan where The Abbey of Thélème looked like an empty fortress or rather an impregnable prison. Although the Abbey appears to be a perfectly charmed world with its equality of the sexes and humanist reform so cherished by the great Valois Monarch, together with the ambitions visions of the abbey, yet not even this idealized abbey bears the promise of uninterrupted freedom, and its synthesis are but paradoxes in the light of real day, and its true characteristics of what the building holds shows itself for what it truly is through its repetitive enactment in response to discursive forces.

Rabelais had a very high or ariel view of the definition of the Abbey of Thélème which really doesn’t justify the true characteristics and ‘gender’ of the abbey. He did not leave any room for variation, for alternative influences on different situations. He seem to only consider the surface of what the architecture tells, but not what is beneath all that exterior face. To define what the building really holds one must look beneath the surface and understand what the life and repetitive practice and discursive forces within the building.

The Abbey of Thélème clearly shows that Architecture’s – like the gender and relating to Judith Butler’s theory – form and idea, does not define what the building is. It is not attributed to an already pre-existing building because of this building’s intended ‘biological’ characteristics, but rather, something that is produced through its repetitive enactment in response to discursive forces within the building.

#architecture #feminism