Shan Jin
This thesis will investigate the designer’s role in the creation of inclusive urban environments that provide space for the LGBTIQ+ community. Although Melbourne has a strong LGBTIQ+ community with a profound heritage, it still lacks inclusive queer spaces for the community. As Giffney (2004) identifies the queer space critically contents with normativity and heteronormativity from the mainstream.
The notion of the queer space is more about the action and interaction between the community and society within a space (West & Zimmerman, 1991). Historically, sites of significance and inclusion are relegated to the fringe – this spatial positioning makes the LGBTIQ+ community less visible and recognizable. The absence of the queer space results in the marginalization of the LGBTIQ+ community.
This thesis will promote the idea of intersectional approaches within the built environment by looking at queer space theory in the context of Melbourne. The queer space theory often highlights its performative character with requirements of flexibility and fluidity (West & Zimmerman, 1991, Butler, 1988 and Halberstam, 2005). As a result, the arts center will create a space of inclusiveness by ‘(re)thinkings, (re)drawings, (re)conceptualisations, (re)mappings that could (re)make bodies, spaces and geographies’ (Browne,2006, p.888).
