GLOSS. Gender Glossary for Architecture
Luisa Parisi is a PhD student in "Architecture. Theories and Design" at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Graduated in Architecture with a dissertation in architecture design named “Actions of architectonic disobedience. Naples as laboratory”, she explored architectural spaces through the lens of gender and queer theories. Intentioned to proceed her research studies in the field of Architecture & Gender, she collaborated as part of her Erasmus Traineeship with CRIMSON Historians & Urbanists, Independent School for the City and International New Town, in Rotterdam, Netherlands – where she organized and managed events and labs such as “Citizens of the Anthropocene” and “Taking back housing”. In the meanwhile, she has produced several articles for the magazine Platform – Architecture & Design and she collaborated with Ardeth magazine through the publication of contents related to her research topic. Luisa Parisi is now investigating the relationship between Architecture and the creation of subject(s), thus exploring new perspectives for architectural history through feminist theories.
She is also co-founder of Traccia, an audio magazine of theoretical architecture criticism that uses sound to transform the way that architecture is understood beyond the domain of the image and print media.
GLOSS. Gender Glossary for Architecture is an appendix to the theoretical and design research started as a PhD thesis within the framework of the PhD in Architecture. Theories and Design, at the Sapienza University of Rome and in connection with the scientific collaboration with the research group "Claming Space" of the Department of Architecture at the T.U. Wien University. GLOSS takes its cue from queer transfeminism, the most recent body of theories in the field of gender that combines and extends certain feminist demands, to reinterpret domestic space. The home, besides being the intimate space of everyday life, also represents the relationship between male and female, production and reproduction, public and private. From the transformations of gender roles to the evolution of a hybrid home with blurred canons, GLOSS proposes an open reflection on the idea of home and the inhabitants of a place whose experiments are capable of conveying new languages, new ethical aspirations and new agendas for architecture. Through the introduction of twenty words in the "glossary" of architecture, it investigates how architecture influences and is influenced by gender issues, exploring how gender perspectives can be considered in the process of designing and using spaces, through practices and case studies. It will discuss androgenicity, otherness, non-binary space, collectivity, conflictuality, discrimination, feminism, fluidity, in-between, intersectionality, heteronomativity, gender neutrality, queer space, pornotopia, performativity, interiority, hostility (etc). The research will offer a critical and interdisciplinary introduction to gender theory in relation to architecture and provide a more accessible and growing vocabulary for the fields of architecture and design to name theories and their influences and to work towards a language that can facilitate the creation of spaces of diversity and multivocality.