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Cripping the Picturesque

Part 2 Dissertation 2024
Scarlett Barclay
Central Saint Martins, UAL | UK
Cripping the Picturesque brings together statements around experience in existential philosophy, architectural phenomenology and aesthetic movements, such as 'the picturesque' to produce new theory based in queer, crip and feminist discourse. It does this through five lines of inquiry: language, phenomenology, pedagogy, socio-historical readings and policy.

A queercrip and non-binary approach is proposed to create space for complexity and contradiction when speaking to diverse lived experience, this aligns with Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism. This is followed by readings of 'the sublime' to examine it as an anticipatory aesthetic of experience, which could reframe bio/neuro diversity as an under-recognised creative generator. How this manifests pedagogically is then examined through contemporary practice of interdisciplinary arts/architecture organisations, such as Sins Invalid, Critical Design Lab and The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, and feminist, participatory architectural practices, including Comunal.

A critique of the cultural construct of ‘comfort’ using Sylvia Wynter’s seminal essay ‘1492’ (1995) is used to consider the political and social undertones of how we assess habitability and ‘value’ in retrofit guidance, and the history of this. This culminates with analysis of retrofit policy and the value systems connected, advocating for greater involvement of disabled and queer people in a retrofit-first approach.

Scarlett Barclay

Tutor(s)
Thomas Dyckhoff
2024
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