ARCHITECHTURAL PAPER PROJECT set in at the former site of the MINESHAFT LEATHER BAR in THE MEATPACKING DISTRICT in NYC made in 2022
MINESHAFT / UNTITLED GAY REVENGE FANTASY
CO-DESIGNED WITH JACOB MIDDLETON
This was an architechtural conceptual project in which myself and an architechtural designer chose a site and collaborated on an imagined gay bar, seeking to combine our interests in inherently queer architehctural space and spaces for queer performance, seeking to bridge queer history and queer futures. When looking for a site, we ended up learning about Mineshaft, one of many gay leather bars/sex clubs in the now gentrified, ultra-luxe Meatpacking District. Surpisingly, the building happened to be up for sale, and we used existing plans and fragments of anecdotal accounts of what the former club was like in order to imagine various spaces meant to refrence historic gay bar spaces or archetypal nightclub images but with a conceptual twist, including a bar made entirely of bleachers (with a dark under-the-bleachers bar on the floor below) and a ‘rabbit’s warren’ of dark rooms with surreal themes in the basement.
Centered around 835 Washington St (former site of the notorious gay leather bar and sex club The Mineshaft in New York City’s now luxurious Meatpacking District), this hybrid architechture/performance design project seeks to address a number of ideas and concerns:
MINESHAFT / UNTITLED GAY REVENGE FANTASY
CO-DESIGNED WITH JACOB MIDDLETON
This was an architechtural conceptual project in which myself and an architechtural designer chose a site and collaborated on an imagined gay bar, seeking to combine our interests in inherently queer architehctural space and spaces for queer performance, seeking to bridge queer history and queer futures. When looking for a site, we ended up learning about Mineshaft, one of many gay leather bars/sex clubs in the now gentrified, ultra-luxe Meatpacking District. Surpisingly, the building happened to be up for sale, and we used existing plans and fragments of anecdotal accounts of what the former club was like in order to imagine various spaces meant to refrence historic gay bar spaces or archetypal nightclub images but with a conceptual twist, including a bar made entirely of bleachers (with a dark under-the-bleachers bar on the floor below) and a ‘rabbit’s warren’ of dark rooms with surreal themes in the basement.
Centered around 835 Washington St (former site of the notorious gay leather bar and sex club The Mineshaft in New York City’s now luxurious Meatpacking District), this hybrid architechture/performance design project seeks to address a number of ideas and concerns:
- To trace a narrative of queer space from the 70’s to now, from Mineshaft’s popularity as a site of sexual liberation evading traditional respectability politics and bourgeois aesthetics, to its erasure by public health officials as an unsuccessful scapegoat masking a much deadlier neglect of AIDs in the 80s, to its total erasure in the ensuing commodification and gentrification of Meatpacking, the neighborhood’s industrial, working class almost entirely erased by corporate interests that
- To discuss the ways in which industrial or often neglected spaces are transformed into sites of queer spectacle and joy
- To create spaces that poetically tease/explore the way queer people specifically negotiate nightlife spaces and performance, as spectators or patrons as performers themselves.
- To design spatial concepts and solutions for a performance idiom (drag performance) that is rarely given spatial attention.
