Join us for an evening highlighting and celebrating the rich diversity of spaces featured in the new book, Queer Spaces by RIBA Publishing. The evening invites some of the contributors to deliver fast-paced presentations, exploring the various architectural examples, from bookshops and nightclubs, to archives and museums.

Queer spaces come in a huge variety of forms, but are always liberating sanctuaries for queer people in which they can act freely, and express themselves without fear or shame.

"Queer people, throughout the world and across time, have always found ways to exist and be together, and there will always be a need for queer spaces."

Whether celebratory and social, or urgent, even lifesaving in purpose, queer space resists a fixed typology, form or style, sometimes emerging and developing organically in existing buildings, sometimes in customised private dwellings. Queer space can be private and hidden, or it can be communal and shared. Its defining, enduring feature is that of freeing queer people who use the space, from the constant pressures of hiding, modifying or even justifying their existence.

This event coincides with the launch of the new book by RIBA Publishing, Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories, edited by artist and designer Adam Nathaniel Furman and architectural historian Joshua Mardell.

The new publication is sponsored by AHMM, Anomaly, Grimshaw, PLP and RIBA.

The evening will begin with an introduction by Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell, editors of Queer Spaces. Our panel of speakers will then discuss a queer space that is meaningful to them, in short presentations. Following the presentations, there will be the opportunity for audience members to ask questions directly to our panel.

Speakers

• Joshua Mardell (co-editor of Queer Spaces)

Joshua Mardell is an architectural historian, and is currently an Associate Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at the University of York and Research Collections Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He is a co-editor of The Journal of Architecture. He read for his PhD at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich.

• Adam Nathaniel Furman (co-editor of Queer Spaces)

Adam Nathaniel Furman is an artist and designer who trained in architecture. He works in spatial design and art of all scales, from video and prints to large-scale public artworks, architecture, architecturally integrated ornament, as well as products, furniture, interiors, publishing and academia.

• Elizabeth Darling

Elizabeth Darling is Reader in Architectural History at Oxford Brookes University, researches gender, sexuality, space and reform in the 1890s–1940s and interwar English Modernism. Publications include Re-forming Britain (Routledge, 2007), Wells Coates (RIBA Publishing, 2012) and Suffragette City (Routledge, 2020), and contributions to the Journal of British Studies and Sexuality and Gender at Home.

• Facundo Revuelta (via recorded presentation)

Facundo Revuelta is an Architect and Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the College of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires and at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences. He has oriented his academic and professional profile with a Master's in Public Policies, Gender and Queer studies.

• Kit Heyam

Dr Kit Heyam (they/them or he/him) is a researcher, transgender awareness trainer and queer history activist. Their research focuses on transgressive gendered and sexual behaviour in early modern England, especially ambiguous and contested narratives. They coordinate the #RainbowPlaques public history project, and work with museums to develop new methodologies for making queer histories visible.

• Vítor Lagoeiro (via recorded presentation)

Vítor Lagoeiro is an architect, DJ and music producer based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Along with Belisa Murta, Carol Mattos, Escarrbe, João Nogueira, Pedropedro, Romana and Supololo, He is one of MASTERplano’s co-founders and resident DJs. He is also a member of design collective Micrópolis and part of A-MIG music label.

• DJ Ritu

DJ Ritu is the creator of BBC Radio show 'A World in London' and the co-founder of iconic club nights Club Kali and Hoppa, a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern LGBTQ+ club. She is a pioneer of the British Asian music scene, with an eclectic repertoire mixing soul, pop, house and disco with a myriad of global genres, reflecting her belief in the universal and cohesive power of music to unite people.

This event is part of the Radical Rooms: Power of the plan programme.

Important Visitor Information

· Please bring a face-covering with you as we recommend you wear one when in our building unless you are exempt. Please also observe social distancing where possible.

· We will do a quick a temperature check on your arrival.

· If you or anyone in your household has Covid symptoms, please stay at home and visit us another time.

· Please do not attend if you have tested positive for Covid-19 in the 10 days before the event, or have been told to self-isolate through NHS Track and Trace.

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