Embroidering architecture: ornament and the feminine

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore the place of women and ornament within architecture. The vehicle for this exploration is embroidery, a material construction used in the creation or ornament and the inculcation of the feminine. Within Western philosophical thought, ornament and femininity are associated with the improper, located on the 'other' side of the historically constructed binary oppositions. This philosophical system of thought provides the backbone for institutional and political structures. With the questioning of these principles, the boundaries that contain these marginalised 'others' can be transgressed and subverted, causing ambiguities amongst these historically defined frontiers. Redefining the realm in which ornament and the feminine exists leads to the possibilities of expanding these arguments further into areas associated with the improper. Areas such as the privileging of construction over drawing, practice over theory, the mind over the body. Embroidery provides a method of constructing surfaces while simultaneously creating built structures around the structure (or matter) of the existing material. The palimpsest activity of embroidery allows for the application of a different structure to a structure of a similar material.