Stud: Architectures of Masculinity

Abstract

Stud is an interdisciplinary exploration of the active role architecture plays in the construction of male identity. Architects, artists, and theorists investigate how sexuality is constituted through the organization of materials, objects, and human subjects in actual space. This collection of essays and visual projects critically analyzes the spaces that we habitually take for granted but that quietly participates in the manufacturing of maleness. Employing a variety of critical perspectives (feminism, queer theory, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis), Stud's contributors reveal how masculinity, always an unstable construct, is coded in our environment. Stud also addresses the relationship between architecture and gay male sexuality, illustrating the resourceful ways that gay men have appropriated and reordered everyday public domains, from streets to sex clubs, in the formation of gay social space.Essays include Steven Cohan on the bachelor pad, Ellen Lupton on the electric carving knife, Diana Fuss and Joel Sanders on the psychoanalytic office, Lee Edelman on the urinal, Marcia Ian on the gym, D.A. Miller on the piano bar, and George Chauncey on the street. Visual projects include work by architects Rem Koolhaas, Mark Robbins, Violich and Kennedy, and Interim Office of Architecture, and artists Matthew Barney, Renee Green, Vito Acconci, and Flex-Torreros.