Feminism, Architecture, and the Poor Rich Man

Abstract

In 'The Story of a Poor Rich Man' the architect Adolph Loos describes a man who had everything in his life but art. So he hired a famous architect to provide him with the ultimate artistic environment. The architect ensured that everything the poor rich man experienced thenceforth was designed and given fixed form; and so the poor rich man 'was excluded from living and striving, becoming and wishing'.' Architectural historians sometimes tend to believe, or write as if they believe, that architecture does fix and control everything in that way and that it, therefore, can be analysed as if its forms are determining and decisive. The impulse is understandable, but of course the reality is a lot more complex. Architecture is a vital aspect of cultural production, which actively produces meaning by its own special, semiotic, and symbolic procedures. These meanings are materially constituted in discourses and practices. Quite how the social organization and subordination of women's bodies, sexual and otherwise, to the institutions of family, class, and social regulation are defined by, relate to, and resist architectural discourses is a vital question and one that is central to the concerns of this book.