Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture
3D design: Xiaoxiao Guo
Photographs: Courtesy Samuel Lahoz, Asya Gorovits
Press: “Phyllis Birkby harnessed her knowledge and lesbian feminist politics to encourage countless people to reimagine their built environments. ... The exhibition also includes newly commissioned artwork by LJ Roberts, as well as Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer and Chong Gu, co-founders of the collective Rehearsing.” —Hyperallergic
Center for Architecture, AIA NY
Fantasizing Design traces the life, work, and networks of lesbian feminist architect Phyllis Birkby (1932–1994), who pushed design professionals and the public to imagine a built environment beyond the confines of existing male-dominated forms. Inspired by the women’s movement and gay liberation, she joined one of the first lesbian feminist consciousness-raising groups, staged a feminist building occupation, and co-founded the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture. Her most groundbreaking intervention, however, was a series of workshops that encouraged women to imagine and draw their “fantasy environments”—the home and community spaces they would like to inhabit. Fantasizing Design takes Birkby and her circle of friends, lovers, and collaborators as a lens on the broader ways feminists and lesbian feminists have worked to remake architectural practice, domestic space, and the broader built environment.