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Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment
Discrimination by Design is a fascinating account of the complex social processes and power struggles involved in building and controlling space. Leslie Kanes Weisman offers a new framework for understanding the spatial dimensions of gender and race as well as class. She traces the social and architectural histories of the skyscraper, maternity hospital, department store, shopping mall, nuclear family dream house, and public housing high rise. Her vivid prose is based on exhaustive research and documents how each setting, along with public parks and streets, embodies and transmits the privileges and penalties of social caste.
In presenting feminist themes from a spatial perspective, Weisman raises many new and important questions. When do women feel unsafe in cities, and why? Why do so many homeless people prefer to sleep on the streets rather than in city-run shelters? Why does the current housing crisis pose a greater threat to women than to men? How would dwellings, communities, and public buildings look if they were designed to foster relationships of equality and environmental wholeness? And how can we begin to imagine such a radically different landscape?
In exploring the answers, the author introduces us to the people, policies, architectural innovations, and ideologies working today to shape a future in which all people matter. Richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, Discrimination by Design is an invaluable and pioneering contribution to our understanding of the issues of our time--health care for the elderly and people with AIDS, homelessness, racial justice, changing conditions of work and family life, affordable housing, militarism, energy conservation, and the preservation of the environment. This thoroughly readable book provides practical guidance to policymakers, architects, planners, and housing activists. It should be read by all who are interested in understanding how the built environment shapes the experiences of their daily lives and the cultural assumptions in which they are immersed.
In presenting feminist themes from a spatial perspective, Weisman raises many new and important questions. When do women feel unsafe in cities, and why? Why do so many homeless people prefer to sleep on the streets rather than in city-run shelters? Why does the current housing crisis pose a greater threat to women than to men? How would dwellings, communities, and public buildings look if they were designed to foster relationships of equality and environmental wholeness? And how can we begin to imagine such a radically different landscape?
In exploring the answers, the author introduces us to the people, policies, architectural innovations, and ideologies working today to shape a future in which all people matter. Richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, Discrimination by Design is an invaluable and pioneering contribution to our understanding of the issues of our time--health care for the elderly and people with AIDS, homelessness, racial justice, changing conditions of work and family life, affordable housing, militarism, energy conservation, and the preservation of the environment. This thoroughly readable book provides practical guidance to policymakers, architects, planners, and housing activists. It should be read by all who are interested in understanding how the built environment shapes the experiences of their daily lives and the cultural assumptions in which they are immersed.
190 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 30, 2008
At her best Weisman offers firm criticism of public and semi-public/semi-private spaces and the ways shopping malls, alternative birth (and too briefly discussed, abortion) centers, housing, neighborhoods, and office towers are ultimately politically charged environments yet historically designed without any regard to social consciousness.
I was pleased to find she offered sensible historical elements to her critique of contemporary spaces (i.e. the origins of the mall) and that she didn't simply posit her analyses on the female versus the male but rather the broader subject of feminism with age, race, and economics all part of her critique.
Despite my appreciation for her re-imagining of family spaces it seemed that the heterosexuality was often assumed or implied. She mentions zoning discrimination and sites the example of a harassed lesbian couple who couldn't quite feel at home in their conservative suburban neighborhood and also the ways zoning "has been used to ensure that the boundaries of the affluent white suburbs and the impoverished black and Hispanic ghettos that form America's urban pattern would be drawn with indelible colored lines on the patriarchal map of social injustice." But I was left wanting more critique on these subjects especially queer space, possible alternatives, and the need for a re-designing of the physical and social qualities of neighborhoods and homes that resists the paradigms associated with "normal" straight family living.
Still, one can't expect a single author to cover all the topics and write all the possible solutions. This book was also quite an easy read and is very accessible to anyone just beginning to think about the politics of design and architecture with some nifty acknowledgement on social action (protests, rallies, etc) as a way for us to challenge patriarchal authority and reject the limitations of being social deviants (read minority) through the use and occupation of public spaces (streets, parks, etc).
I was pleased to find she offered sensible historical elements to her critique of contemporary spaces (i.e. the origins of the mall) and that she didn't simply posit her analyses on the female versus the male but rather the broader subject of feminism with age, race, and economics all part of her critique.
Despite my appreciation for her re-imagining of family spaces it seemed that the heterosexuality was often assumed or implied. She mentions zoning discrimination and sites the example of a harassed lesbian couple who couldn't quite feel at home in their conservative suburban neighborhood and also the ways zoning "has been used to ensure that the boundaries of the affluent white suburbs and the impoverished black and Hispanic ghettos that form America's urban pattern would be drawn with indelible colored lines on the patriarchal map of social injustice." But I was left wanting more critique on these subjects especially queer space, possible alternatives, and the need for a re-designing of the physical and social qualities of neighborhoods and homes that resists the paradigms associated with "normal" straight family living.
Still, one can't expect a single author to cover all the topics and write all the possible solutions. This book was also quite an easy read and is very accessible to anyone just beginning to think about the politics of design and architecture with some nifty acknowledgement on social action (protests, rallies, etc) as a way for us to challenge patriarchal authority and reject the limitations of being social deviants (read minority) through the use and occupation of public spaces (streets, parks, etc).
March 4, 2020
A good introduction book for understand the feminist view on archtecture and space. However, it is a bit redundant.
April 23, 2023
toata cartea eram :(
September 13, 2016
Definitely a lot of interesting and illuminating history here. However it is nonetheless extremely limited in its analysis, which is integrationist despite the repeated claims to the contrary. The occasional remark on the need to 'go further' and 'dismantle patriarchy entirely' don't really make up for the rest of the book's lamenting that there aren't enough women architects or designers. At one point the author asserts the idea that the shopping mall isn't inherently oppressive, but could be altered for the better. Hopefully readers can see how absurd that is; a shopping mall can never not be a center of capital. Capitalism and patriarchy are inextricably bound together from the root.
Overall it's not that bad of a read for those interested in how the entirety of our environment is shaped to facilitate control. It's just a frustrating read given the limited horizons of the author's analysis.
Overall it's not that bad of a read for those interested in how the entirety of our environment is shaped to facilitate control. It's just a frustrating read given the limited horizons of the author's analysis.
September 8, 2008
this book blew my mind! It made me see malls, single family homes, zoning laws in new ways! best chapters are "public architecture & social status," "home as metaphor for society," and "redesigning the domestic landscape"! ("private use of public space" could use a critique of the prison-ind. complex & police)
July 27, 2022
Overall, insightful for its time. I wish it got more into the code elements and how design discrimination is institutional.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews