Looking through M[other] Artists: An Architectural Expression of a Holistic Feminist Cooperative.

Abstract

This thesis produces a design outcome, supporting creative professionals that have decided to have children. During early childhood one of the parents (mostly commonly the mother) has her working capacity reduced, as much of their time becomes dedicated to the child. Many previously established creative professionals, become homebound, with lower income and shrunk social interaction with other mothers. A proposed answer for this disruptive financial and experiential deprivation, is through the design of a network of small holistic, gentle, female- community led cooperatives, distributed through quark theory. Facilities provide symbiotic studio space for creative output joined with child care. Where the client is viewed as more just an artist- but a mother and more than a mother, but an artist. The spaces allow for messy workshops, business related office meetings, exhibitions and gatherings of the creative mothers community occupying the space. The Holistic Cooperative exists on a strong collective of women who desire to continue to participate in their child’s lives and equally enrich themselves through their career. This business model is based on trade and barter of time and craft values to provide a rotation of mothers looking after the children, while other parents are working in the vicinity and provide support if needed. By addressing design in terms of feminist ideology, this thesis engages systematic historical tensions of life for a female, through the contrast of Russia and New Zealand. This thesis converts those interpretations into representations of architecture, as equally valuable nodes of culturally reflected Third Space. This entails identifying the traditional thoughts through material and structural constructs, confronting and opposing dichotomies to identify, the threshold/ Chamber halting growth of professionals with children. This thesis formulated with a vision that the mother artist actions, among actions of other females are instructed, protected, directed and restricted - identified in this thesis as an architectural expression of a chamber. Where glass can be viewed as femininity, by exploring the expanse of the binary relationship and its symbiotic relation with metal, though bicultural language theory. An additional influential analogy is the influence of the “other” creating an architecture fit to Third Space. Through the processes of conceptual, drawing and model making with wax, glass and steel, the difference between portrayal and understanding and difficulties of capturing the chamber surrounding the creative mother were explored. The role of colour’s importance was expressed in the intensification of expression formation of the moment/ detail depicted. Analog making process became an intrinsic generator for the fixious and theoretical representations of perceptible and surreal spaces of female collective being. It appears that wellbeing can be enhanced by an architecture that promotes equity of the community. This thesis proposition acts as a model for rejuvenation and gentle enrichment of the life of female occupiers, and challenge more working options available in our immediate surroundings today for them.