Queer Spaces creates "accessible lineage of queer themes in architecture"

The recently released Queer Spaces book is an atlas of 90 LGBT+ spaces from around the world. Its editors, designer Adam Nathaniel Furman and historian Joshua Mardell, choose six of the most interesting.

Published by RIBA Publishing, Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories aims to draw attention to an area of architecture that can often be ignored.

"Queer Spaces is an accessible new history for an area of architecture that has been ridiculed, othered and dismissed for too long," said Furman and Mardell.

"It is a powerful resource for queers and anyone else who is non-normative within the architectural profession to take up space and demand – and command – respect in its histories and design culture."

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The book contains 90 queer spaces selected by 50 contributors from around the world and chosen to demonstrate the wide variety of queer spaces.

"We were mindful to cover as wide an array of types of spaces as possible, to choose singular spaces that can speak for broader phenomena, and to offer a diverse range of spaces across geographies, temporalities, and socio-economic strata," said Furman and Mardell.

"Jargon-free but full of depth and insight by over 50 authoritative contributors, the book is a loud and proud shot across the bow of the traditional architectural canon that has always privileged the heteronormative spaces and designs of a tiny elite, (and yes, oh-so-miserable) academic minority."

Book "needed to broaden the relevance of architectural history"

Furman and Mardell believe that the book was needed both as a resource for queer people and to expand the canon of architectural history.

"It was needed to offer queer people, especially architectural students, a clear and accessible lineage of queer themes in architecture, that was so conspicuously missing," they said.

"It was also needed to broaden the relevance of architectural history, and those subjects and constituencies that it speaks to."

Read on for Furman and Mardell's pick of queer spaces:

Photo is by Studio Gaya

Light Coffin, Chiba, Japan

"A windowless, queer domestic haven for a same-sex male couple, designed by architect Osamu Ishiyama, is chronicled by Tokyo-based architect Alyssa Ueno in the book."

"Closed to prying eyes from outside, but entirely open-plan within, the building uniquely responds to the needs of its queer users, defying ingrained heteronormative understandings of the spatiality of domestic life."

Photo is by Regner Ramos

Loverbar, San Juan, Puerto Rico

"Contributed by historian Regner Ramos, the Loverbar is a multi-coloured extravaganza of sensuous aesthetics that is both a club and a community sanctum in San Juan."

"It is embellished by a beautiful mural created by local artist Popa/Paula I Del Toro. The writing on the garden perimeter reads, your gaze violates us."

Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, UK

"In the book, Whitney Davis profiles Fonthill Abbey, a gothic revival residence erected in Wiltshire, England, by William Beckford, who was known to his contemporaries as much as an infamous 'bugger' as a writer, builder, and collector."

"His abbey was conceived as his stage set – a space for the play of imagination, projection and an escape from his 'mean' Palladian parental home and the vicious, homophobic and judgemental world of middle-class Britain in the 19th century."

Photo by John Maltby/RIBA Collections

Steelworks, Sheffield, UK

"In the book, historian Helen Smith explores spaces where working-class men conducted same-sex relationships, free from intrusion, in the industrial north of England. These include the Norfolk Arms pub at the heart of the steel-working district in Sheffield, which later became the city's first gay sauna."

"Smith overturns the too-often-held perception that queer lives could exist only in middle or upper-class society, when they actually flourished, perhaps even more openly and powerfully, in the working-class culture of the 19th and 20th-century Britain."

Photo is by Julian Cardoso

Comparsa Drag, Buenos Aires, Argentina

"Artists Gustavo Bianchi and Facundo Revuelta profile the Comparsa Drag collective of Buenos Aires, whose performative partying seeks to redistribute queer pleasure through the metropolitan landscape."

Photo by Katy Davies, courtesy of Fashion Space Gallery

Museum Of Transology, London, UK

"Selected by curator EJ Scotte, the Museum of Transology contains the UK's most significant collection of material culture surrounding trans, non-binary and intersex lives, an extraordinary site of recorded memory for trans people."

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Dina chair by Adam Nathaniel Furman for Beit Collective

Dezeen Showroom: designer Adam Nathaniel Furman has put a colourful twist on a traditional Lebanese style of furniture to create the Dina chair for the brand Beit Collective.

Beit Collective produces contemporary design inspired by the Middle East, and the Dina chair is part of its Beiruti collection, which is produced in Lebanon.

The Dina chair is based on a traditional style of seating from Lebanon

Furman based the chair's design on the "Khayzaran" chair, a wooden chair with a woven rattan seat, similar to Thonet's Vienna coffee house chair.

Instead of the traditional cane, Furman's woven seat and backrest are made from a durable castor oil-based bioplastic.

The woven seat and backrest are made from bioplastic

The wooden frame is designed to emphasise the pattern of the weave and also to echo the look of a traditional upholstered chair.

Suitable for both indoors and outdoors, the Dina chair is made to order and can be customised with a choice of 12 bright colours for the threads. There are three standard wood options – maple, beech or oak – as well as others on request.

Product: Dina
Designer: Adam Nathaniel Furman
Brand: Beit Collective
Contact: [email protected]

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Phoenician by Adam Nathaniel Furman for Beit Collective

Dezeen Showroom: London-based designer Adam Nathaniel Furman has created a collection of recycled glass vases and tumblers for Lebanese homeware label Beit Collective.

The Phoenician collection includes a pair of drinking glasses called Blue Quay and a vase called Fluted Buoy. The range is made from recycled glass using a traditional Phoenician glassblowing technique.

Furman has created two glass tumblers for Beit Collective

"I created this line to echo the aquatic and ancient environment of Phoenician cities," said Furman.

"I wanted these pieces to represent a treasure washed up on the beach, coming from ancient civilisations lost for millennia."

A larger vase also makes up the Phoenicia range

Each item in Furman's Phoenician collection comes in turquoise, navy or clear – drawing on the aquatic colours associated with Phoenicians.

Phoenicia was an ancient coastal civilisation that originated in what is now called Lebanon. Many members of its society were mariners in the navy.

The items are informed by the ancient civilization Phoenicia

Beit Collective called on glassblowing artisans who have worked in Lebanon for many generations to manufacture Furman's glass and vase designs.

In the making of the collection the artisans blew molten glass and then placed it into a custom-made cast-iron mould that resulted in the irregularly-shaped Phoenician range.

Product:Blue Quay and Fluted Buoy
Designer: Adam Nathaniel Furman
Brand: Beit Collective
Contact:[email protected]

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details [email protected].

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership contenthere.

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Postmodern architecture celebrated in illustrations by Adam Nathaniel Furman

Designer Adam Nathaniel Furman has created a vividly coloured illustration series called Postmodern Icons, which celebrates buildings such as London's Isle of Dogs Pumping Station and Chicago's James R Thompson Center.

The series is a personal project that Furman started during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, when he decided to revisit an old hobby of sketching buildings that he liked and creating 3D models of them.

After adapting one such model into an illustration and enjoying the process, he decided to make an ongoing series, focusing on postmodernism because there was "a gap" in its artistic representation.

Furman's series mainly focuses on postmodern buildings, such as London's No 1 Poultry

"There's a lot of illustrations of modernist buildings and Victorian buildings and the great monuments of our cities from other periods," Furman told Dezeen. "There are not readily available ones much of postmodern architecture, which is something that I really like."

Often colourful and eclectic, postmodern architecture flourished in the 1980s and 1990s as a pushback against the functional ethos of modernism.

Furman tries to illustrate the buildings in a style that is as simple as possible, using just a few lines and blocks of bright colour to convey their essential character.

For Shin Takamatsu's Syntax building, Furman created a more detailed illustration

For some of the buildings, such as London's No 1 Poultry by James Stirling and Isle of Dogs Pumping Station by John Outram, the result is a highly simplified illustration that Furman describes as containing "just the right amount of information and no more".

Others, such as Kyoto's now-demolished Syntax building by Shin Takamatsu, are rendered in more detail, which Furman considers necessary to communicate the brilliance in Takamatsu's work.

A couple of the illustrations, including ones of Kengo Kuma's M2 and Philip Johnson and John Burgee's AT&T building, appear as an abstract collections of shapes.

Philip Johnson and John Burgee's AT&T building is reduced to abstract symbols

Furman chooses buildings that he loves for his illustrations, focusing largely but not exclusively on postmodernism, although not all his favourites have been suitable for the series.

The subjects have to be able to stand on their own, without their urban context.

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"They are shown as sort of solitary objects floating – like souvenirs, effectively," said Furman. "And I've always been obsessed with souvenirs, just generally."

"If you look, a lot of my design work kind of revolves around the idea of the souvenir, this sort of encapsulation of something standing on its own representing something bigger."

One of Furman's aims is to bring attention to buildings that are under threat, such as Helmut Jahn's newly saved James R Thompson Center

Furman posts the illustrations on Instagram, and sells them as prints and merchandise, such as mugs and tote bags, on his website. He also tries to use the work to call attention to architectural heritage causes.

The designer has illustrated Helmut Jahn's James R Thompson Center in Chicago, which was recently saved from demolition, as well as Wojciech Jarząbek's Solpol building in Wrocław, which earned Furman some ire from Polish commenters.

"I got loads of angry comments from Polish people like 'this disgusting building should be demolished!' – which is the reaction that very often happens to a style when it's not come back into fashion yet," he said.

Wojciech Jarząbek's Solpol building is another that is set for demolition

"The same thing happened with brutalism, and now it's everyone's favourite. Postmodernism is just going through the same thing," he continued.

Known for his colourful and playful designs, Furman considers himself part of a movement he has dubbed New London Fabulous.

His recent work has included the Proud Little Pyramid installation at King's Cross in London and pastel-coloured anatomically shaped chairs that explore cuteness and queerness.

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Adam Nathaniel Furman unveils "monumentally joyful" pyramid at King's Cross

Designer Adam Nathaniel Furman has created an installation called Proud Little Pyramid at King's Cross in London that was unveiled in LGBT+ Pride month.

Created to celebrate the reopening of King's Cross following coronavirus lockdown, the Proud Little Pyramid is located in Granary Square.

Furman hopes that the structure, which is wrapped in seating, will bring joy to those returning to the area.

Proud Little Pyramid has been installed in Granary Square

"The idea was to kind of create something which is monumentally joyful," he told Dezeen.

"So it's an anti-monument monument, it's a ridiculously fun over the top camp."

It is decorated with Furman's signature colourful motifs

Built from the recycled structure of the Christmas tree that previously stood in Coal Drop's Yard, the 9.5-metre-high pyramid is covered in Furman's signature, colourful motifs.

Surrounding the pyramid is a mirrored plinth with four corner towers that functions as bench seating.

A plinth at the bottom can be used as seating

"Fundamentally, it's a big seat," explained Furman. "It functions in a really simple way as a place to meet that orientates people around the site."

"It's a kid's version of a huge monumental complex," he continued. "The whole base is mirrored creating constantly changing ornamentation at the base, which reflects the surroundings and lots of colours that will always be changing."

It was built from a previous Christmas tree installation

The pyramid form that rises from the base is decorated in a series of motifs that were informed by the surrounding industrial architecture.

It is topped with four emoji-like character that the designer refers to as "flamboyantly ridiculous".

"It uses the forms that I like to use which, in this instance, come from Victorian architecture and the heritage of the site," said Furman.

"They are my shapes, but composed in a way that references the local context in the super-neon poppy way that I like to work."

The bright pyramid opened to the public in LGBT+ Pride month and as its name – Proud Little Pyramid – suggests, was also created as a celebration of King's Cross' queer history.

"It was designed very much with the intention of it being opened in Pride month as an exuberant, ornamented piece of design fun," said Furman.

"It references my own work in a typically camp way, but also the queer history of the site, which I've basically grown up with," he continued.

"King's Cross has been the backdrop for so much of my life – I have learnt, loved and laughed here."

It was designed by Adam Nathaniel Furman as part of a six-month-long residencey

The installation is the first element in Furman's six-month-long residency at the King's Cross estate.

It will be followed by a series of installations around the site, including decorating the hoarding of the construction site for the BIG and Heatherwick Studio-designed Google building.

"In the 90s I was regular at iconic nightclubs The Cross and the Scala and later a student and then a teacher at Central St Martins," Thurman said,

"Whilst I have taken inspiration for my residency from King's Cross' recent queer history, I have also looked back to London's Victorian heritage in which dramatic monuments of all sizes, from water fountains and public loos, to tube stations, memorials and town halls brought accessible decorative art to public spaces," he continued.

"I want to make history - and its complexity- instantly present and fun."

The King's Cross estate in central London has been developed over the past decade. The pyramid stands near the entrance of the Thomas Heatherwick-designed Coal Drop's Yard shopping centre and Tom Dixon's studio and showroom.

Designer Thurman previously created a sequence of tiled archways in Granary Square as part of London Design Festival.

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