A Home on the Horizon

Abstract

The Dutch housing system, shaped by heteronormativity. A system of norms that decides which bodies, relationships, and ways of living are considered acceptable determines who (and how someone) is allowed to live openly and safely. Architecture participates in this through the repetition of hierarchical and exclusionary structures in traditional research and design methods. Therefore, to go beyond heteronormative housing, we need another way of reading and designing space. This research asks how co-creation and performance studies can produce a queer(ed) collective home as a transitory space of emancipation, and responds through a structure of three triptychs, each unfolding across three acts.

The first act builds a theoretical framework from queer theory, architectural performance theory, and co-creation methodology, grounded in literature, site visits and experiences within queer communities. This framework is then applied, in the second act, to a performative analysis of the case-study building — Doctor Jan van Bremenstraat 1–3 in Amsterdam — read across three temporal moments in its lifespan as a technical boy’s school, a club and a home. This reading exposes the repressive mechanisms embedded in its spatial and social history. The third act translates these findings into a design proposal and stages emancipatory mechanisms at three degrees of collectivity.

The research concludes that moving architectural practice beyond heteronormativity requires alternative methods of analyzing and designing, so that hierarchies around queerness and other marginalized peoples are not unintentionally reproduced. Performative analysis paired with co-creation highlights repressive structures by centering lived experience to hold space for emancipation rather than repeating the norms it inherits.