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Is there space for sex?

Nicolas Howden
2/1/2023

Working Hard / Hardly Working

The merit of public space is usually assessed in terms of the requirements of the people who use it, and so depending on who is using the space, its merits might be judged under drastically different parameters. This article compares two spaces in relation to their function as cruising sites for queer people, predominantly gay men, within the context of queer architectural history and theory.

The Boilerhouse. Photographed by Nicolas Howden

The first queer spaces of the modern era were the dark alleys, unlit corners, and hidden rooms that queers found in the city itself. It was a space that could not be seen, had no contours, and never endured beyond the sexual act. Its order was and is that of gestures.

“The first queer spaces of the modern era were the dark alleys, unlit corners, and hidden rooms that queers found in the city itself. It was a space that could not be seen, had no contours, and never endured beyond the sexual act. Its order was and is that of gestures.”[1]

The two spaces which will be compared in this essay are the cruising routes in Phoenix Park, and the Boilerhouse, a gay sauna located in Dublin city. Both of these spaces are used for engaging in public or semi-public sexual encounters, providing a level of privacy and anonymity, while also exposing the cruiser to a group of people also seeking sexual encounters. It is between this duality of secrecy and community where these spaces are most interesting architecturally, and both spaces deal with these issues in unique ways.  

The cruising routes of Phoenix Park are a leftover from historically queer spaces, where cities could provide invisible infrastructure that was simultaneously in plain view and hidden through a number of coded signals. Less widespread now, as queerness in Ireland has become more socially accepted, these routes have developed out of necessity; a need to queer existing city infrastructure to provide space for same-sex sexual encounters. These spaces were undefined architecturally but would often emerge with some shared characteristics. Parks in particular often offered all of the requirements for a thriving cruising culture to develop. Aaron Betsky defines four characteristics of cruising spaces. Firstly, it needs “conditions that in and of themselves dissolve walls and other constraints”; meaning that outdoor cruising typically takes place at night. Second, it needs a labyrinthine quality, deterring the use of the space for functions other than sex, and providing “multiple barriers to intervention or observation”. Third, that cruising takes place where the city breaks down, at its edge as a whole, or at the edges of buildings in the “stoops, porticos, windows and doorways”. Fourth, “cruising grounds have to parallel, but not be the same as, the public spaces of the city”, existing within the same space physically but separated by cultural differences and differing requirements of its occupants. 

These routes have developed throughout Dublin city, and while many have faded out of use as the city changes, some remain active. In Phoenix Park, a popular cruising location has developed a community of men who often require anonymity. These cruisers might not be able to engage in same sex sexual activities at home, or might find gay saunas such as the Boilerhouse too prominent within the city centre. One cruiser, Peter, scribed the appeal of the cruising spot at Phoenix Park: “Gay men have this fascination of walking around because they're constantly on the hunt for something better – you know? – and they don't particularly like to stand still. They don't. So the park – that area of the park – is quite ideal because you've got lots of different trails and different routes that you can take.”[2]

 

Spatially, it conforms to all of Betsky’s characteristics of cruising spaces, though these are not always consistent. Peter describes how during winter many of the spots usually sheltered by leaves become much more visible, and that during rainy days some areas on sloped ground become too slippery to use. In these cases, people might have sex in a car park, or around the edge of an old sports changing room. In this way, the cruising spot is more transient, and changes even within yearly cycles and with the weather. 

By contrast, the Boilerhouse remains mostly consistent, and despite being too prominent for some gay men, still engages with privacy and protection. Located on a quiet lane in Temple Bar, the front entrance is unassuming, with a nondescript sign and a foyer after the main door where you can wait before being buzzed in by an attendant in a small kiosk. The unassuming facade conceals the sexually liberated interior, where queer sexuality is allowed to be freed from social norms. Unlike the fully public cruising spaces in the city and in Phoenix Park, the Boilerhouse was designed specifically to be a space for sex  a formalised version of traditional cruising, it mirrors the characteristics as described by Betsky. As with other shops and establishments, it is a private space which acts as an extension of the city when open and provides a semi-public environment where its patrons can cruise with more security and enclosure than in outdoor cruising routes. The bathhouse provides spaces to wander, to gather, and more reclusive rooms and cubicles to retreat into. In the Boilerhouse these areas are obviously defined; after the changing rooms and lockers, the ground floor is open with a bar in a large double-height space, visible from the walkways on the second floor. On each floor above, the spaces become more and more compartmentalised, offering varying levels of privacy and enclosure. 

Partition walls often don’t meet the floor, with mirrors above stall doors.
Photographed by Nicolas Howden

The building maintains its semi-public condition throughout, even in the more enclosed areas. Partition walls often don’t meet the floor, and mirrors above stall doors provide a level of engagement with the more open spaces of the building. Glory holes offer connections between rooms or cubicles and further blur the lines between private and semi-public space. This arrangement provides a level of community not found in the Phoenix Park, where communication between cruisers is limited, and often reduced to subtle signals or codes. In the Boilerhouse, communication is not about identifying other cruisers but conveying more nuanced sexual preferences or interest in a particular partner. 

Foyer after the main door where you can wait before being buzzed in.
Photographed by Nicolas Howden

While the Boilerhouse and other saunas might be understood as a natural progression from cruising in public spaces, it remains inaccessible to some as a private establishment with opening hours, entry fees, and door policies. These spaces both represent physical manifestations of queer space. They are defined by sex, and while queer architectural theory has developed beyond synonymising queerness with homosexuality, it provides an insight into the development of queer culture and its place in the development of the city. These queer spaces for sex disrupt a traditional way of viewing public space, and the gradations of privacy typically understood, where sexual activities happen in the privacy of home. Public space within the city is nuanced, and not so easily defined when considering its multitude of users, and so an understanding of queer people’s existence within the city is imperative for its development. 

Gay men have this fascination of walking around because they're constantly on the hunt for something better - you know? - and they don't particularly like to stand still. They don't. So the park - that area of the park - is quite ideal because you've got lots of different trails and different routes that you can take.

Working Hard / Hardly Working is an article series designed to promote the use and organisation of public space. By presenting two examples – one which works well, and one which needs to work harder – it highlights the importance of clever design, and how considered decisions can make our shared spaces better. For all enquiries and potential contributors, please contact doireann@type.ie.

Working Hard / Hardly Working is supported by the Arts Council through the Architecture Project Award Round 2 2022.

References

1. A. Betsky, Queer Space, Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, New York, William Morrow & Company, 1997.

2. Anonymous (Peter), interviewed by Nicolas Howden, 29 November 2022.

3. G. Chauncey, ‘Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public: Gay Uses of the Streets’, in Stud: Architecture of Masculinity, J. Sanders (ed.), New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, p. 224. 

Contributors

Nicolas Howden

Nicolas Howden has studied in Dublin and Paris, and received his master’s degree in Architecture from University College Dublin. He has worked on various architectural projects in Dublin, London, and Portugal. His research interprets architecture through the context of other disciplines, covering areas of queer theory, feminism, and media perspectives within the context of the traditional Irish built environment.

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The autumnal earth: the Irish National War Memorial Gardens

Tom Cookson
Working Hard / Hardly Working
Tom Cookson
James Haynes

"We have found safety with all things undying,

The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,

The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,

And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth".

Extract from ‘Safety’ by Rupert Brooke, 1914.

Located on the southern edge of Phoenix Park in Dublin is the Irish National War Memorial Gardens (1930-39). On arrival one is drawn to a modest structure framed by trees. Inscribed here is a fragment of a poem by Rupert Brooke, the great English war poet. He wrote these words at the tender age of twenty-seven, and was shortly to depart for war, where he perished soon after.

Sentinels guarding a multi-layered threshold, a play of mass and volume at the Irish Memorial Gardens.

The Irish Memorial Gardens were designed by the English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) at the height of his creative powers, in the twilight of his career. His masterpieces in New Delhi and Thiepval were complete, and he was designing Liverpool Cathedral, feted to rival that of St Peter’s in Rome. Under the auspices of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) – and its visionary director Fabian Ware – Lutyens had been directly involved in the design of 137 cemeteries and memorials following World War I, and was the spiritual and architectural lodestone for hundreds more. Yet his career began with domestic work in the Arts & Crafts style, commissions and acclaim garnered through the unique patronage of Country Life magazine. As his reputation grew, he was increasingly tasked with civic projects. His mature style, commensurately, is in the Classical tradition; yet bridging the domestic and civic is in many ways the story of his life, and that of the Irish Memorial Gardens.

While civic perhaps falls short of the breadth of Lutyens reach, he was also seeking the universal. He had a belief that perfect shapes and relationships have an eternal relevance, and are reflections of divinity [1]. This is evidenced in the layout he devised at the Irish Memorial Gardens. By composing a series of circular spaces, connected by linear routes, he established a network of cosmic geometries. These are situated within the constructed landscape of Phoenix Park – albeit separated by the River Liffey – with a planned connecting bridge never realised. These cosmic territories hold a family of monuments. In many ways the Irish Memorial Gardens is an exercise in ontology, on the nature of things and their relationships, over many scales.

Following Lutyens proposals, the centrepiece to all IWGC cemeteries and memorials is the War Stone. A neutral but enduring symbol, not overtly related to any particular religion, in line with Lutyens’ humanist values. This final proposal is reflective of his first striking instinct for a memorial, communicated in a letter to his wife, after visiting the Western Front: "a solid ball of bronze!" [2]. Yet as with all commissions of this scale and significance, more conservative voices held sway. These were led by Herbert Baker, another prominent architect, who called for the traditional iconography of the cross. The compromise reached is evident at the Irish Memorial Gardens, with the War Stone twinned to the south with a monumental stone cross.

Lutyens had been working for many years with the classical language of architecture, manipulating its grammar in the Renaissance mannerist tradition. His fascination with the work of Palladio and Wren is clear in the elements that frame the War Stone. A wall encloses this to the south, east and west, with axial entrances to the flanking circular gardens marked by pavilions which borrow the ancient Roman model of the tetrapylon. Openings in the four corners of this central space provide access to radial routes into the wider landscape, framed by gateposts, sentinels guarding their thresholds. These are figurative in character, over-scaled, in the manner Michelangelo Buonarotti depicted the human body. Constructed from sharply dressed and jointed white stone, they contrast wilfully in tone and texture with the more informally coursed walls which they interrupt. They are playful, personal, balancing mass and volume as a painter or sculptor would, roundly rejecting the assumption that the classical tradition is an imitative pattern book. To the north, a view of Phoenix Park connects this outdoor room to its broader context – a recurring motif in Lutyen’s work for the IWGC. Despite its scale, this space truly does feel like a civic room, embedded in its landscape and roofed by the heavens, delivering on Lutyens intent: "The big stone to the East, the flanking pyramid oaks and the sky forming the vault to them all" [3].

The notion of an outdoor room, or ‘garden-room’, is a strand which connects all of Lutyen’s domestic projects, under the influence of his lifelong collaborator Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Jekyll’s career began as a painter, before shifting to garden design, inspired by William Robinson’s revolutionary book The Wild Garden [4]. The domestic qualities of the spaces that Lutyen’s and Jekyll spent decades refining together are evident in the Irish Memorial Gardens, individual moments afforded amongst the universal set-piece, a contradiction delicately negotiated, elevating each experience. It is this layering from the scale of the cosmos, receding to landscape, city, building, room, aedicule that uniquely allows us to situate the presence of our individual bodies in the context of a broader continuum. To feel the presence of the earth below, and the firmament above. Another duality that is masterfully explored by sculpting the ground. The majority of landscapes are illusionary, surreptitiously urbanised, with few as skilfully executed as this one. Our experience is also illuminated through the topographic adjustments that have been imposed on this place. The more intimate circular gardens – to the east and west of the central outdoor room – uniquely feel both below the ground and elevated above it, simultaneously buried and projecting skyward.

Irish Memorial Gardens as artefact, fragmenting a constructed landscape.

Rudyard Kipling described Lutyen’s memorials and cemeteries as "silent cities". The 49,400 Irish soldiers that lost their lives during World War I inhabit these gardens, their presence is felt, the empty rooms hold an emotional density. The Irish Memorial Gardens recalls paths not walked, public spaces not shared, domestic rooms not inhabited. The tragedy of this place is that it was made to memorialise WW1, just as WW2 was about to commence. Yet it also carries hope. In the grand tradition of public space, it reminds us that the individual only makes sense as part of the collective. It also fractures our participation in the everyday – for a moment at least – connecting human life with the landscape which we inhabit, a valuable lesson in the context of a climate emergency.

11/3/2024
Working Hard / Hardly Working

The Irish National War Memorial Gardens affords individual moments amongst a universal set-piece. Referencing the scale of the cosmos, and receding to landscape, city, building, room, it uniquely allows us to situate the presence of our individual bodies in the context of a broader continuum. A vital experience in a time of climate emergency.

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Engaging with water: Arthur's Quay, Limerick

Denise Murray
Working Hard / Hardly Working
Denise Murray
James Haynes

What is it that makes a good public space? We know one when we see it but often find it hard to define why one place works and another one doesn’t. Arthur's Quay Park in Limerick is a sort of accidental public space; it was never planned and yet it exists, anchoring the north east corner of the Georgian grid of Limerick city, balanced by the People’s Park to the south west. The park was an incomplete Georgian Square, planned to be surrounded by houses but never finished due to the Great Famine (1845-52).

Arthur's Quay Park

Hardly working

Arthur's Quay Park sits on a piece of reclaimed land, originally a harbour, and was filled in by Limerick Corporation in the 1970s to create a car park, before subsequently, in the late 1980s, being transformed from a car park to a civic space; completed with a tourist office as a focal point (the tourist office won the RIAI Gold medal in 1989-91). The park is greatly valued by the people of Limerick, however, there is also a deep sense of frustration as the space never seems to quite live up to its potential. Various interventions have taken place over the years, such as the removal of planted railings to address safety concerns and improve visibility, but it still feels as though it is an underperforming public space. And in recent years, with the boarding up of the tourist office, it lacks a sense of purpose. The park has one great asset in its favour though – the spectacular views up the river towards King John’s Castle and the mountains beyond. Notwithstanding this, it still feels disconnected from the city core and remains remote from most people’s mental map of Limerick city.

Working hard

Hamburg is also a city defined by its relationship with water. The advent of container shipping has meant that the main commercial port has moved further down river, leaving the historic port area available for transformation into a new city known as HafenCity. This area has been transformed over the last thirty years and one of the first decisions taken was to raise the new ground level of buildings to protect them from flooding. The landscape is arranged on three planes, ensuring that there is always a level that provides safe access during times of flooding, while for the rest of the time the landscape tiers down to the original harbour line, ensuring that the citizens of Hamburg are able to stay connected to the river that is at the heart of their city.

HafenCity, Magellan Terrace

The quayside spaces in HafenCity are part of a continuous promenade with a variety of inviting public spaces, abundant greenery, and strong connections to the water. Some spaces change with the tides, while others are at a higher level providing a prospect over the river. There are also new water features integrated into the landscape providing a very immediate opportunity to engage directly with water.  

It is not just the innovative landscape design that makes HafenCity such a success, it is the buildings that surround it, providing places for people to live, work, and play in the city. There is a very intimate relationship between the new buildings in HafenCity and the quayside. The space is overlooked by six- to eight-storey apartment and office buildings, the ground floors of which are generally active, containing retail and commercial uses. The traffic has been carefully planned to minimise the impact of the car, allowing connections between buildings and animated public spaces.

Lessons to be learned

While the scale of HafenCity is vast in comparison to Arthur's Quay, there are some key lessons that can be learned. Namely, that it is possible to plan for flooding without cutting a city off from its river, and that a quayside is a space of transition that should be thought of as part of a riverfront promenade rather than an isolated space.

For Arthur's Quay to reach its potential as a space that supports the life of the city, it needs to be more connected and integrated into the wider urban landscape. This will mean transforming the surrounding car-dominated highway into a civilised pedestrian friendly street that can serve as a route for traffic that is accessing the city centre, instead of supporting through traffic that does nothing to contribute to the life and activity of the city. In addition, the surrounding buildings should be redeveloped or reimagined so that they engage with the park through vibrant ground floor uses – offering shops, restaurants, and cafes. Convivial spaces with terraces overlooking the river can serve a new population living, working, and playing on the floors above.

What are we waiting for, the quay is the key.

Arthur's Quay
5/2/2024
Working Hard / Hardly Working

What makes a vibrant, successful public space? In this article, architect Denise Murray considers what changes might be necessary for Arthurs’ Quay Park, Limerick, and the surrounding area to evolve into a place that better serves its citizens. HafenCity provides some examples of alternative ways to provide public spaces while addressing the issues of climate change and flooding.

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North Street, Belfast

Mark Hackett
Working Hard / Hardly Working
Mark Hackett
James Haynes

Located in the centre of Belfast, North Street is one of the older arteries of the city. Over the last three decades the street has been at risk, blighted by developers’ land banking and through forced vacancies. In large part, this process was initiated by government strategies in support of retail and the promise of "comprehensive redevelopment" powers and grants. The first developer to tackle the street bought up and emptied much of it, while their agents drew up one set of overblown and unrealisable plans after another; at one point pursuing the incorporation of the public street into a private shopping mall. Some may be surprised then that I see North Street as a space that is "working hard" despite its current perception as a place that is "hardly working".

 

The 2004 arson attack on the listed Art Deco North Street Arcade marked a key moment in the street’s history, destroying a unique and vibrant route to Donegall Street and the city’s "cultural quarter". Many of the art groups based there were burned out and lost everything. At the time of the arson, the site was coincidentally the centrepiece of a major planning application for a department store and accompanying 750-bay car park. This development failed in the 2008 crash, however, it has been followed by repeated iterations scuppered by bad loans before being passed on again to another developer.

 

Keats and Chapman, North Street

Despite this, the street and its buildings are still here, closed shutters are textured with artwork high and low, a few businesses hang on. Tenants such as the Fenderesky Art Gallery at No. 31 are heroes of the city. The nearby bookshop, Keats and Chapman, maintains its position as an enduring independent. And to the streets end, Brennan’s chippie still exists, cooking in real lard and clasping its cult fame as the place where Rihanna danced on tables for the video of We Found Love. While masquerading in the clothes of decline, the street is full of life, a life characterised by the action of individuals. Through its continued existence, it holds the potential for something new.

Opposite the arcade, the curved Garfield Street intersects and adds further charm despite the listed Garfield Building being encased in dense scaffolding. Underneath this lies the remnants of the Tivoli Barbers Shop, a third-generation business now in a temporary premises on North Street. Over 400 people came through the original Tivoli Barbers doors for snippets of live opera during the second Belfast Culture Night in 2010, an illustration of how in the right circumstances these streets can work hard and support that which is already there.

The meeting place of North Street and Garfield Street

History plays a similar role in maintaining the significance of these places and their potential to work hard again. At the top of North Street, the striking Art Deco Bank of Ireland remains, and is now the subject of a major public investment programme, while at the other end, the Assembly Building at Four Corners holds strong, remembered as the place where Belfast's mercantile class were persuaded not to engage in the slave trade. Both are places of memory pivotal to the current and future history of the city.

 

Some adept infill and repair is all the street needs with a key move being the reconnection of the arcade through an otherwise long city block. On the south side of North Street, a large vacant plot cries out for the creation of an urban green space, a crucial move in a contemporary city pleading for the lungs it is missing. In the last decade, this northern sector of the city has seen a resurgence of its nightlife through the MAC arts centre and the new university building bringing in thousands of students to the city core. North Street has the potential to be part of this, holding both latent joys of old and an ambition to do more than survive.

 

Belfast has had a number of large shopping malls imposed into its street grid; informed by misguided strategies for renewal that have removed streets, squares, and vital connections. Castle Court was such a scheme from 1985-90 and Victoria Square took a similar approach between 2002-08. Both wiped out key civic squares; spaces the city now badly lacks. The North Street area was to be the third of these retail interventions.

 

Few, if any, of the city’s structural problems have been addressed during the last three decades of development ‘churn’. The key to understanding Belfast are the edges created following decades of ring road building, large urban housing clearances, and barrier making. No credible strategy or work has advocated for active living in the city, reconnection and much needed green spaces, street trees, nor the reinvention of the wide ring road that currently acts as a grey moat around the city centre. These failures to make urban repair hold the city's natural renewal back. The city engages in slow clumsy interventions but neglects to bring the whole back to health.

2011 mapping of Belfast’s ‘grey doughnut’, a zone of ring roads and motorways planned in early 1960’s but only inserted into the city in the 1980’s in the midst of conflict and rehousing schemes. Most of the city's arterial streets lost their active frontages in these clearances with pockets of housing  rebuilt in low density enclaves. This leaves much of the city centre like an island disconnected from the wider city, reinforcing car use and inhibiting walking.

 

North Street then is a reminder that our cities are made of street grids and connections, buildings form and line these streets in a symbiotic relationship of residence and activity. Like any patient, Belfast needs a good diagnosis and careful nursing. Despite all of this neglect, North Street endures. It is resilient, working hard, waiting. As I walk down North Street, I am filled with hope and the words of Gloria Gaynor ringing in my ears: ‘I will survive’.

8/1/2024
Working Hard / Hardly Working

Through an exploration of North Street (Belfast), architect Mark Hackett discusses how considering a single street can aid our understanding of the wider cityscape. In understanding the continuity of places such as North Street, Hackett presents resilience as an important strength of the street as part of its role within a connective grid.

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