Simona Castricum hosts ‘More Than Bathrooms: Gender Diversity in Architecture’, a panel centring active stakeholders in Melbourne’s LGBTIQA+ community to talk about their experiences creating queer, sexual and gender diverse spaces.
More than just bathrooms; our airports, workplaces, event spaces, sports stadiums, healthcare facilities, universities and schools all have unique archives of memory and experience for queer, trans and gender diverse (TGD) people. From delight to trauma, beyond risk and safety; these architectural typologies, spaces and buildings have their own spatial and political meanings where surveillance, exclusion and discrimination can directly affect life chances and belonging. The unique perspective of queer and TGD people from outside the dominant lens of the (cis)gender binary offers architecture—our cities, the public realm and buildings; indeed our communities—something valuable and celebratory.
This conversation centres the voices of queer, trans and gender diverse people who interact with architecture unconsciously to better understand the role it has in their daily lives. It presents grassroots-led design activism that mobilises a critical knowledge base to inform and inspire more equitable, intersectional, experimental and inclusive design. It also offers practice and governance an insight into non-binary futures outside normative frameworks of gender and sexuality.
Moderator
Simona Castricum, Musician; Architecture Researcher & Educator, University of Melbourne
Speakers
Bexx Davis, Director, LISTEN
Andrew Eklund, Executive Director, Transgender Victoria
Dr Bianca Fileborn, Lecturer in Criminology, Melbourne University
Sally Goldner AM, Co-Founder, Transgender Victoria; Broadcaster, 3CR’s Out of the Pan
S.J Norman: Artist, Producer-in-Residence – Next Wave
Peter Waples-Crowe, Artist; Indigenous Health Educator, Thorne Harbour Health