Curtain Wall 2.0: Queer Camouflage
In Collaboration with Jon Carlo Ardila
Yale University
2024
Freeing the curtain wall of its technological and environmental responsibilities, we can continue its dematerialization within the context of resolution and scale, its order and pattern.
In addition to freeing the curtain wall from its initial environmental responsibilities, we wanted to imbue a more phenomenological purpose to this project. One in which builds on initial research on queer experience and gives the speculative curtain wall a purpose within this context.
The fear of discovery and subsequent repercussions permeated every aspect of queer individuals' lives; maintaining secrecy was not only a matter of personal safety but also a means of avoiding professional ruin. An answer to this fear of discovery, in the context of gay intimacy and sex, was found in the act of ‘cruising’ whereby homosexual men took on public space to act on sexual desires otherwise deemed illegal or taboo, seeking false intimacy in clandestine encounters away from the scrutiny of society’s gaze.