Bad Built-Ins

Abstract

In March of 2022, in response to Florida Bill H.B. 1557 (“Don’t Say Gay” law), a group of students and faculties from the University of Miami’s School of Architecture built a public installation titled Bad Built-Ins: Closets as Vestibules. The text investigates this public installation as a form of “extracurricular activism,” a type of justice work within the educational academy, as an attempt to remove the apparent and artificial separation between the affairs of the university and communities at large.

Keywords:

• social justice
• activism
• education
• installation
• making
• design

Acknowledgements

Bad Built-Ins Collaborators List

Fabrication Team: Sophie Juneau, Eugenio Janeiro, Fausto Rivas (Frap Studio), Indrit Alushani (RAD UM), George Elliott, Maryam Basti, Benjamin Martin, Andrea Lira, Julia Borges, Catalina Cabral-Framinan, Shariq Che Ramsubhag, Lexi Dreybus, Andrea Martinez, Hamza Waris.

Design Collaborators: Sophie Juneau (lead), Andrea Martinez, Chris and Shawna Meyer (LU Lab), Cynthia Gunadi (Future Objects Lab).

Notes

1 Florida Senate, Higher Education H.B. 266, effective date July 1, 2023, https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/266.

2 Florida Senate, Higher Education, 20.

3 Florida Senate, Higher Education, 11.

4 For more information see (Special Committee) Afshan Jafar, Henry Reichman, Davarian Bladwin, Emily M.S. Houh, Anil Kalhan, Charles Toombs, and Brian Turner, Preliminary Report of the Special Committee on Academic Freedom in Florida, American Association of University Professors, May 24, 2003.

5 Andrew Woolbright, “On Divergent Art Education: A Case Study in Dark Study,” e-flux, March 24, 2021, https://www.e-flux.com/education/features/385559/on-divergent-art-education-a-case-study-in-dark-study.

6 See Marc Bousquet and Cary Nelson, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation, (NYU Press, 2008), and Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, (Minor Compositions, 2013).

7 Chelda Smith, Erin Dyke, and Mary Hermes, “Life in the Undercommons: Sustaining Justice-Work Post Disillusionment,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 29:2 (2013): 150.

8 Smith el al., Life in the Undercommons, 51.

9 Florida Senate, Parental Rights in Education H.B. 1557, effective date July 1, 2022, https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/PDF.

10 Florida Senate, Parental Rights, 4.

11 Woolbright, “On Divergent Art Education.”

12 Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1997), 18.

13 Henry Urbach, “Closets, Clothes, Disclosures,” Assemblage (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press): 64–65.

14 Florida—Legislature, Legislative Investigation Committee, “Preface,” Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida (Tallahassee, 1964).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sophie Juneau

Sophie Juneau is a part-time lecturer at the University of Miami School of Architecture (UMSoA) where she has taught undergraduate and graduate design studios, visual representation classes as well as graduate thesis. Her current research focuses on the topic of repair in the built environment and touches on the extended life of existing building stocks as well as issues of retrofit for universal, equitable access. In addition to her teaching appointments, Juneau is a licensed architect in the state of Florida (US) and in the province of Quebec (Canada) and runs a small practice under the name of RARAA.