Shaping New Pathways: Mexico City, Women and Metaphors

This research explores the links between gender and architecture in postmodern cities. Space is experienced and produced by gender constructs which remain at the centre of this study: women at home, sheltered from the dangers of the street. I look at feminine appropriations of architecture where such constructs are subverted, at opportunities that specific spaces and times allow. Women take over public places through the city in their daily activities. I argue that at the centre of these territory-claims are women’s bodies, which engage with the built environment as architectural elements themselves. Either by becoming extensions or disruptions of architecture, bodies themselves become architecture. Mexico City offers a rich ground to analyse these processes. Public transport with its sex-separation, the streetscape as used and the markets engaging women in contradictory roles (nurturer and free stroller) become landscapes showing the complex relations between gender and space. The city as proposed in this study is one where neither architecture nor gender roles are fixed, and where space can allow the challenge of traditional constructs.

Faculty Supervisor:

Annmarie Adams

Student:

Partner:

Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

McGill University

Program: