Reading the Queer Domestic Aesthetic Discourse

Abstract

The stereotype of the gay man as arbiter of domestic style and design is widely recognized. Robin Williams humorously referenced this in a joke: “We had gay burglars the other night,” he notes, “They broke in and rearranged the furniture.” What remains unclear is the ways in which stereotypes relate to the lives of ordinary people and the homes they inhabit. This article brings together the idiosyncrasies of queer design that circulate at a number of levels in a mainly transatlantic discourse—thanks to the help of mass media, television programs, and a niche of scholarly literature—with a study of ordinary homes belonging to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) lives in a global city. It is argued that this wider queer aesthetic penetrates everyday space and shapes homes in complicated ways; there is a tension between these two domains. The empirical research draws from in-depth semi-structured interviews with Londoners gathered as part of a larger project on sexual minority identity at home in London, UK. Looking to these domestic case studies allows for a spatialized reading that challenges celebrated and exclusive interiors. Offering a timely and distinct architectural approach looking to the everyday users of ordinary domestic space aims to modestly move in another direction towards a model of diversity, opening up queer domesticity and sexual minority identity to multiple representations.

Keywords:

• queer aesthetics
• celebrated stereotypes
• ordinary homes
• homemaking
• London
• UK

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the two anonymous peer reviewers. Thanks also to Dr Andrew Gorman-Murray and Dr Rachel Scicluna for collaboration on this special issue.

Notes

¹ This article implicitly builds on the work of Colomina (1992), wherein clear links were made between sexuality and (modern) space. The modern movement in architecture was preoccupied with house and home. And as Colomina points out, it was in the “the split wall” of the residential unit that modern architecture confronted a tension: while historically sexuality was kept internalized, hidden away in private out of the public gaze, through the use of new stylistic conventions and materials traditional boundaries could be deconstructed, blurred (Colomina 1992: 94). By referring to the “modern,” the article does not probe the vast literature on the modern movement, but rather refers to the post-1930s move towards glass and, more generally, a focus on stylized interiors.

² This follows the Lefebvrian triadic conceptualization of space, which sees space conceived as both discursive and material, with processes of design, imagination, and material happening simultaneously. In the context of this article, Lefebvre’s three levels of space are spatial practice (perceived space, or homemaking practices), representations of space (conceived space, or design and decoration), and spaces of representations (lived space, or the meaning of domesticity) (Lefebvre 1991; see also Schmid 2008).

³ Research for the larger project consisted of in-depth interviews with thirty-three singles and seven couples—a total of forty-seven homeowners or renters ranging in age from their early twenties to late seventies. All respondents self-identified as LGBTQ and self-selected to be part of the research. This article follows standard practice of utilizing pseudonyms to protect anonymity.

⁴ While this might be the marking of the “dandy” homosexual as domestic aesthete, it is important to underscore the power of home in identity formation. Hatt (2007) has shown, through a reading of Wilde’s aesthetic interior, that the domestic environment of sexual minorities was not just a closed-off private space removed from the public realm, but in interiors like Wilde’s attempts were made “to create spaces where private desire and public self were integrated, where all one’s experience could be invoked and unified” (Hatt 2007: 105). For more on the history of Wilde’s domesticity, which this article does not have room to go into, refer to Cohen (1993) and Potvin (2013).

⁵ See Pilkey (2013: chapter 2 and conclusion) for detailed discussions that frame this influential, yet admittedly now limiting text.

⁶ This relates to Colomina’s (1992) point that the site of the wall (or in this case window) stands in for the tension between inside and outside, where interiorized sexuality is externalized for public consumption.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brent Pilkey

Brent Pilkey is a Senior Teaching Fellow at both The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), and at the UCL Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching. In 2013 he completed his doctorate, which employed a feminist and queer theorized approach to architectural history, specifically by focusing on ordinary LGBTQ domesticity in London. He has published in, among other periodicals, Geographical Research; Gender, Place and Culture; and Local Environment. [email protected]