ACSA Releases ‘Where Are My People? Queer in Architecture’ Research in Collaboration with Emergent Grounds for Design Education

For Immediate Release:
Washington, D.C., October 18, 2024 – The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), in partnership with Emergent Grounds for Design Education (EGDE), is pleased to announce the publication of Where Are My People? Queer in Architecture.

Started in 2020, Where Are My People? (WAMP) is a research series that investigates how architecture interacts with race and how the nation’s often ignored systems and histories perpetuate the problem of racial inequity. Previous installments have highlighted the experiences of the Black, Middle Eastern, Northern African, Native American, First Nations, Indigenous, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.

In 2024, the series is expanding to include other marginalized populations, starting with the LGBTQIA+ community. Where Are My People? Queer in Architecture was developed in partnership with Emergent Grounds for Design Education (EGDE), a collective of architects, designers and advocates that organizes and educates to advance racial justice among students and emergent practitioners. Working with EGDE allowed ACSA to better connect the research to the lived experience of LGBTQIA+ people. “Queer possibilities can feel limited by place and context for marginalized communities – at work you can only be a woman or at school, you can only be Black. As a part of Emergent Grounds we organize to resist these binaries and embolden the subversive power of our queer identities,” says Michelle Barrett (she/her), a design activist based in Kansas City, MO. “I am pleased to collaborate with ACSA in ‘Where Are My People? Queer in Architecture,’ to break down the monolithic impression of race, gender, and sexuality; to recontextualize how and why we need a queering of architecture.”

Queer in Architecture chronicles both societal and discipline-specific metrics to highlight the experiences of LGBTQIA+ designers, architects and educators. ACSA and EGDE worked closely to collect data and recognize how people identifying as LGBTQIA+ navigate architectural design differently than straight people. Both organizations acknowledge that the importance of this topic involves framing it from an intersectional perspective. Together, they uncovered population statistics from multiple sources, developed a survey, collected qualitative data, and analyzed responses from queer professionals across the discipline.

“The WAMP series represents a lifelong experience for marginalized communities. In our search, our paths render maps of persistence and resistance that have enriched society. This history continues,” says My-Anh Nguyen (they/he), a community organizer and architect based in Washington, D.C.

To this end, Queer in Architecture has been organized into two sections. Part I encompasses numerous intersections with queer identity, recognizing the pluralistic and dynamic nature of gender and sexuality. It also contains quantitative and qualitative data to provide a comprehensive understanding of the significance of queer representation in architecture.

“Where Are My People? Queer in Architecture claims intersections across every body that challenges the status quo. We honor the obstacles of those who have sacrificed for change towards freedom and visibility by inviting others (the mainstream) to our perspective,” Nguyen continues. “This piece centers values of advocacy, radical acceptance and liberation of all marginalized people from norms that seek to contain and control identity.”

Part II of the research serves as a call to action by citing contemporary queer theory and encouraging readers to think critically about how architecture can be reimagined to create more inclusive spaces that extend beyond the binary.

“All architectural educators and practitioners have a duty to challenge design that disempowers, excludes and harms. Queer designers, design educators and students, especially those who are racialized as Black, Indigenous or people of color, rise to this challenge daily,” says Chris Daemmrich (he/him), facilitator of Collab., the Collaborative Design Workshop.

 “‘Where Are My People? Queer in Architecture’ gives voice to some of these courageous designers, affirming our proud existence in the face of those who would prefer we disappear,” Daemmrich continues.

While the presentation of data in Queer in Architecture serves as a benchmark for comparison in the future, ACSA plans to keep an open survey. This will allow the organization to continue to gather additional data and provide an opportunity for additional voices to be heard. ACSA invites LGBTQIA+ readers to take the survey if they missed the initial call to participate and to share widely with other LGBTQIA+ people in architecture.