Archinect - Features 2024-12-22T01:58:07-05:00 https://archinect.com/features/article/149994216/decoding-gender-discrimination-in-design-with-qspace Decoding Gender Discrimination in Design with QSPACE Nicholas Korody 2017-03-02T12:20:00-05:00 >2021-10-12T01:42:58-04:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/tp/tpngzmisj3qclz1r.gif" border="0" /><p>Last week, President Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/devos-sessions-transgender-students-rights.html" target="_blank">rescinded</a> an Obama-era order that had provided protections for transgender and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_variance" target="_blank">gender nonconforming</a> (GNC) students by allowing them to use bathrooms that correlate to their gender identity. Often unnoticed spaces, bathrooms have become the locus point for struggles to secure civil rights for trans and GNC individuals since the passing of exclusionary &lsquo;<a href="http://archinect.com/news/article/149937477/mapping-transgender-friendly-bathrooms-in-hostile-north-carolina" target="_blank">Bathroom Bills</a>&rsquo; in North Carolina and nine other states last year, which, among many other things, force individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to the sex registered on their birth certificate. <a href="http://qspacearch.com/" target="_blank">QSPACE</a>, a &ldquo;queer architecture research organization&rdquo; based at the <a href="http://archinect.com/columbiagsapp" target="_blank">GSAPP</a> Incubator in New York, has been working to expose the complicity of design in this dangerous architecture of normativity: &ldquo;how laws, codes, and design standards systematically create exclusionary and sometimes violent spaces for members of the LGBTQ community.&rdquo;</p>