Q:DREAM : HOME
As an architect, I am acutely aware that designing a house does not equal designing a home. As a queer person, I understand that home can have divergent meanings, particularly for folks in the LGBTQIA+ community who may not feel at home in their bodies, or do not have a home to return to because of bio-family rejection. Amidst escalating violence against queer people in the streets and anti-trans legislation by many states, highlighting queer perspectives and expansive definitions of home is vital to address systemic impacts of queerphobia, both within and beyond the field of architecture.
For the 2023 Center for Architecture Lab Residency, QUEERIES asks queer folks: how do you define home?
About the project
QUEERIES: Designing Reality Equitably and Madly, aka Q:DREAM, will spotlight New York City’s queer architects, designers, organizations, and places at different scales, with a participatory component for queer folks to recognize and celebrate the spaces they call home. Designing Reality creates space for imagining worlds where queer folks have autonomous agency over their lives, while Equitably and Madly expresses parallel principles of equity of access, pride, and extraordinary imagination. Multimedia storytelling and queer data analysis will expand the frame of “home” to encompass queer families, support networks, spaces of one’s own, privacy, security, and stability. Through the course of the residency, Q:DREAM will begin to build a living archive that documents and celebrates queer designers, their work, and their desires.
Q:DREAM, as a research-creation process1 and queer data analysis2 project, seeks to queer3 the architectural discipline by telling new (queer) stories of home in new (queer) ways, which demand new modes of assessment and accountability. The seeds of critical and speculative imaginations required to trouble status quo ways of working and designing in architecture exist—what they need is incubation.
About the survey
The intent of the survey is to gather queer individuals' perspectives on "home." The resulting data will be used to inform workshop topics and gallery displays as part of A.L. Hu's Center for Architecture Lab Residency. Through this process of research-creation, we will co-create QUEERIES: Designing Reality Equitably and Madly.
Eligibility Questions
This section contains questions that determine whether or not you are eligible to complete the survey. This survey is for queer people living in the NYC Metro Area.
If you do not currently live in the New York City Metropolitan Area, but you are interested in bringing this survey to your city, please get in touch!
This section contains questions that determine whether or not you are eligible to complete the survey. This survey is for queer people living in the NYC Metro Area.
If you do not currently live in the New York City Metropolitan Area, but you are interested in bringing this survey to your city, please get in touch!
- Do you identify as queer?
- Do you live in the New York City Metropolitan Area?
Past Home
This section asks about what home was like for you growing up.
This section asks about what home was like for you growing up.
- Where did you grow up?
- What / where / who was “home” for you?
- How did it feel to be “home”?
- Who was part of your family / supportive network?
- What is your current relationship to the “home” you grew up in?
Present Home
This section asks about your current perceptions of home.
This section asks about your current perceptions of home.
- Fill in the blank: These days, when I am at "home," I feel ___________________.
- What places/spaces/situations give you that feeling?
- What people / objects / vibes / foods / sounds / smells / textures remind you or give you the feeling of "home"?
Future Home
This section asks about your dreams for future home(s).
This section asks about your dreams for future home(s).
- Where do you see yourself at "home" in the future?
- What / where / who is the ideal form of "home" for you?
- What people / objects / vibes / foods / sounds / smells / textures do you want in your ideal future "home"?
Follow-ups
This section asks about your interest in further discussions.
This section asks about your interest in further discussions.
- Are you open to discussing these survey topics with other queer individuals?
- Would you be interested in a discussion through storytelling / show & tell?
- Can you come to a storytelling event at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village, Manhattan?
- Would you be interested in attending a virtual or hybrid Zoom storytelling event?
1 : Research-creation is a term that Natalie Loveless, author of How to Make Art at the End of the World, defines as a conscious practice of research that is rooted in process, multiplicity, context specificity, and contingency (25). As a political practice of working with and through stories, research-creation produces complex emergent outputs that exceed what is apparent in their constituent parts (26).
2 : Dr. Kevin Guyan writes in his book, research and analysis methods that highlight the instability of taken-for-granted meanings and resulting power relations, thus reconfiguring the hierarchical relationalities that govern our current extractivist systems of exploitation and power.
3 : Queer as a verb can mean so many things! In this context, I intend to expand, reorient, and, possibly, explode the norms of architecture. See this Wikipedia article on Queering for much more information.