Visible Morality: Rejuvenating Karangahape's Unconscious Networks

Abstract

The thesis seeks to investigate and challenge the notion of commodification and exchange of women’s bodies through prostitution. Rethinking the notion of social order, the profession is explored through the reflection of patriarchal discourse of western state-capitalism and society, to recognize the use-value of women’s sexed bodies within the male exchange economy. The term ‘Visible Morality’ therefore projects volumes of theoretical and design explorations in attempts to normalize urban life through re-imagination of “immorally” deviant social figures. The conceptual framework presents an on-going inquiry of morality between gender distinctions and their marginal placement on the fringes of Karangahape. Recognizing attempts of eradicating the sex industry from its historical site. The thesis re-envisions sanctuaries of resistance, dislocation, commodification, and exchange, with speculative architecture as an instrument to reclaim the urban domain. Legitimizing and legalizing an inclusive territory that is visible in a spatial, social and cultural context, the project takes position on the eccentricities of sex worker environments, and architectural structures as salient subcultures of individuals. The architectural proposition rejects traditional thought and is all-together critical and ambivalent, submitting new modes of cultural visibility and safety. The construction of a new spatial condition allows the female prostitute to seep beyond the frameworks of containment and control while participating freely in mainstream society. Deliberate interpretations of design processes and theoretical writings evoke architecture as a system of representation, re-read in sexual and political terms. A systematic and analytical approach therefore was imperative to identify the obstacles and possibilities of sexed zones on Karangahape through geographic mapping and model making to determine spatial tactics of contemporary play and power to resubject women in a dominant position. The thesis overall is a plea of tolerance for the normalization and acceptance of prostitution in a working-class context where the equal citizenship of space and power can be recognized by society.