Building the Body

Author

Jasmine FlowersFollow

Date of Award

Spring 6-1-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Architecture (MArch)

Department

Architecture

First Advisor

Malcolm Rio

Second Advisor

Aaron Tobey

Third Advisor

Pablo Castillo Luna

Abstract

Bodies and space co-produce each other and the process of co-production originates racializing and gendering work.

The concept, thesis, and subsequent design are informed by the historical context around the House for Josephine Baker by Adolf Loos. Presented here is the culmination of research which grounds itself in the relationship between Primitivism and Modernism, theory on the body and flesh, architectural graphic standards, spectacle, gaze, surveillance, hypervisibility, invisibility, implications of privacy versus publicity, expressions of Blackness and its place in femmehood (a neologism that expands “womanhood” to be trans-inclusive), all of which directly engage in co-production.

This co-production changes how architecture “preforms” - how it creates new understandings and interactions within particular spaces. How does this reconceptualize what architects believe to be design? The result here is from the perspective of a Black femme body performing in architecture.

Beyond Black femme bodies interacting with architectural spaces, this questions the implicitly racialized and gendered norms of architectural design and how it anticipates certain bodies.

Building the Body is a series of sets occupying the purported location of the House for Josephine Baker.

Recommended Citation

Flowers, Jasmine, "Building the Body" (2024). Masters Theses. 1208.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1208

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.