Andrés Jaque and Laida Aguirre at A Queer Query Symposium

Architects, theorists, and artists come together at this symposium to outline the contemporary role that architecture plays in queer culture today, and vice versa. 

Due to increased concerns regarding COVID-19, this activity has been postponed to Fall 2020.

The ambition of a queer architecture is to sever ties with received ideas of mastery and others the architectural canon. After thirty-plus years of that ambition, we’ve seen architects construct performances, reject drawing in favor of images, reconfigure urban domesticity, and replace individualized manifestos with calls for coming together. Our references have evolved, our ranks have diversified, and our attention has moved to structures underpinning the field. It’s fair to say that today, architecture is a diffuse association of material practices without a shared canon. The field is foggier and perhaps already queerer. 

Undoubtedly, there’s still a lot of queering to do. Since architects construct consensus from clients, contractors, and stakeholders to entrust them, how do queer architects build that consensus? Are there queer architectures or just queer architects? What does queer look like? And most importantly, who gets to say what is and isn’t queer?

A Queer Query aims to find out. Two panels of architects, critics, and theorists examine the aesthetic and political interestections of queer culture and architecture.  Spanish architect Andres Jaque will be among the participants. After de Symposium, B Gosse, Gracie Cartier and Chris Tyler will explore queerness through drag, mixed reality, and performance.

About Andres Jaque

Andrés Jaque is an architect, writer, and curator internationally known as one of the initiators of interscalar and transmedium approaches to urban and territorial studies. His work explores architecture as the entanglement of life, bodies, technologies, and environments. He holds a PhD from UPM and has been a Heinrich Tessenow Stipendiat (Alfred Toepfer Stiftung FVS) and Graham Foundation grantee. He is the founder of the Office for Political Innovation, a New York/Madrid-based agency working at the intersection of research, critical environmental practices, and design.

His work IKEA Disobedients is the first architectural performance ever included in the MoMA Collection, and his work PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society is part of the permanent collection and exhibition of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited in international biennales including and he has developed projects with many of the most important cultural organizations around the world.

Andrés Jaque is the director of Columbia University’s Advanced Architectural Design Program, a legendary architectural innovation lab that has helped shape the evolution of architecture in the last three decades. He previously taught at Princeton University and ETSAM. His latest publication, Superpowers of Scale (2019), will be presented at SCI-art on March 23rd.

About Laida Aguirre

Laida Aguirre is an architectural designer and director of stock-a-studio. Interested in the circulation of materials and commodities, their research focuses on the way our built environment is affected by the politics of aesthetics, logistics and media. Their work conceives of architecture as a temporary assembly of materials in service of the everyday event. Aguirre is currently an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where they were the 2017-18 William Muschenheim Fellow. They hold a BA from Northeastern University in Political Science and a Master’s of Architecture from California State Polytechnic Pomona, where they were awarded the Richard Neutra Award for Best Graduate Thesis.

Aguirre’s research and design work has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture, Materials & Applications, Milan Architecture Week, A+D Museum, Berlin Art Week and Oya in Oslo, and has been published in E-flux, Pin-Up Magazine, POOL and Art Papers.