A space for sex work

A space for sex work: An intersectional feminist approach to brothels in the context of decriminalisation

Feria Prados, Irene (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Gorny, R.A. (graduation committee)
Vink, M.G. (mentor)
van de Voort, J.A. (graduation committee)
Louw, E. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Explorelab

2023-01-19

This project deals with spaces for a historically neglected collective: sex workers. It aims to destigmatize the practice by representing the workers and the material conditions that determine their safety and well-being every day, of which architecture is part.
Articulated from an intersectional feminist point of view, the research evaluates how the design of these spaces has been and continues to be a technology to control the workers. At the same time, it visualizes the workers and how they construct processes of emancipation within their (legally and spatially) subjugated position.
The design offers a working space that houses these emancipatory practices, in the context of the recent decriminalisation of sex work in Belgium. In order to do so, it draws from feminist and queer theories to construct an understanding of space that materializes the emancipation from the scale of the neighbourhood and urban block, until the detailing and use of material.

Sex work
Intersectional Feminism
Brussels
Posthuman Feminism
Decriminalisation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0a12ffa5-421b-4a7e-a3f0-f2c1bd47725e

50° 51′ 44″ north, 4° 21′ 53″ east

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Irene Feria Prados