Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities - e-flux

Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities

Editors Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Ruo Jia

Contributors Ruo Jia, e-flux Architecture, Chong Gu, Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer, Clair Ryu, Samuel Hellmann, Shayari de Silva, Nicholas Risteen

It can be said that “Asian,” or “Feminist,” or “Architectural” are all non-existent signifiers of “initial problems,” but ones that are very present and possible. For example, “Asian” can be a geographical designation that has varied according to history; a specific race, a category constructed with violence and fluidity; or an aspired episteme that is even harder to pinpoint. Yet together, as three moving anchors in relation to each other, “Asian-Feminist-Architectural” forms a relatively coherent and stable triangulation where concrete material experiences can be gathered by certain specific moving identities.

Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Ruo Jia, supported by Pratt Institute.

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6 essays

The Feminist Ad-Hoc: Itsuko Hasegawa and the Architecture of Coincidence

Nicholas Risteen

Hasegawa’s architectural narrative can be understood as a form of meander, a narrative form that, according to author and critic Jane Alison, “hint[s] at structures inside them rather than an arc, structures that create an inner sensation of traveling toward something and leave a sense of shape behind.”

Elective Affinities

Shayari de Silva

The practice of architecture—a field that intersects spheres of capital and social politics—inevitably creates interactions that are defined by gender, class, and in twentieth century Sri Lanka, caste.

Revolutionary Renewal and Social Reproduction in Sino-Soviet Architectural Thought

Samuel Hellmann

In 1952, Chinese architects Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng published a translation of Soviet architect Nikolai Voronin’s Rebuilding the Liberated Areas of the Soviet Union. In their foreword, Lin and Liang identified reconstruction (chongjian, 重建) and redesign (chongxin sheji, 重新设计) as the operable problematics for socialism both in China and beyond.

Learning from Dim Sum

Clair Ryu

Dining at Empire Garden in Boston’s Chinatown is a big affair. From the moment you turn the corner onto Washington Street, you are drawn toward the larger-than-life marquee shouting “EMPIRE GARDEN,” “DIM SUM,” and “EXOTIC COCKTAILS” in bold yellow letters against a striking red background.

Transient Homemaking

Chong Gu and Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer

For many migrant Asian femme bodies working in the massage and sex work industry across Queens, New York, home is transient—a yearning that keeps their tired hands busy and a dream that draws them to lay in a foreign bed at night.

Editorial: “Yeah, They Were All Yellow”

Ruo Jia and e-flux Architecture

Identity has a paradoxical existence. It is deployed in the narrative of seeking “one’s own,” yet it also implies some identicalness that is explicitly not; an identity that is shared and collective, that is a priori and allows one to belong, to grow “one’s own.”

Subject

Architecture, Community, Subjectivity, Diaspora

Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Ruo Jia, supported by Pratt Institute.

Contributors

Nicholas Risteen The Feminist Ad-Hoc: Itsuko Hasegawa and the Architecture of Coincidence
Shayari de Silva Elective Affinities
Samuel Hellmann Revolutionary Renewal and Social Reproduction in Sino-Soviet Architectural Thought
Clair Ryu Learning from Dim Sum
Chong Gu and Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer Transient Homemaking
Ruo Jia and e-flux Architecture Editorial: “Yeah, They Were All Yellow”

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