By Gabrielle Kennedy
Queer and design are not new friends. Aaron Betsky has been contemplating the gendered nature of architecture and interior design for decades now. What has changed is the mainstream media’s embrace of the subject.
What rocked about this talk is that not everyone agreed – and that isn’t always easy on a topic that’s so inherently personal.
“I have a problem with the whole Queer thing,” says Renee Mess. “These are all my friends, but I disagree with them. I find it too aggressive.”
Her colleagues don’t.
“I love an aggressive approach,” retorted Maher, “because without the aggression of feminism, where would we be today?
For all participants Queer research is about disrupting the notion of what is deemed normal by questioning given realities.
“And what is so normal about the given power structures in a patriarchal, hetero-normative society?” asks Maher.