Manufacturing a Public Sexuality: Queering the Architecture of Cruising Culture & the Nightclub

Abstract

A space that does not recognize the community it serves is not a successful space. This thesis is built from the view of queer space as one of connection, exploration, and sexualization of the body. The nightclub is conceived here as a monument to queer liberation; a transitory escape from heteronormativity. Queer spaces can typically be found in the reclamation and exploitation of clefts within the urban fabric; bathrooms, stairwells, and alleyways, for example. These spaces promise life to emerge, whilst inviting a community to blossom. Challenging the existing Mercury Theatre and the adjoining Norman Ng Building on Karangahape Road, I am presenting a critique of the queer night scene. Within their interiors, the queer experience, as an event, is activated. Proposed is deciphering how moments in queer architectural history could stimulate such a space. Historic queer precedents were impermanent, and therefore are viewed in this thesis as distinct cultural events, each motivating another. These contexts vary, however are linked by the influence of voyeur and cruising; this being the physical, or non-physical, public sexual encounter. Throughout this thesis year our community has been troubled by a lack of safe spaces. The ongoing COVID-19 situation has, too, reduced our abilities to gather, explore, create, and celebrate. The common bedroom has acted as a haven for most, allowing the individual to experiment in solitude and compromise with the materials at their finger-tips. Exploring a drawing and digital practice, alongside a restricted scale of 1:1 modelling, I found comfort in the atmosphere that surrounded my work, doing my best to incorporate those moments into it. The significance of the observed events relating to queer space does acknowledge a lot to be questioned, and as this has been a closely researched oriented thesis, respect, among all else, allows the navigation of this queer nightclub space to be triumphant.