While interpreting the spatial composition of public and private spaces through Irigaray’s and Lacan’s theories, it can be argued that the Robie house does not accommodate for different sexed subjects but only the male subject. Even though a metaphorical stance is applied to understanding spaces that influence the psychological viewpoint, Wright’s attempt at creating public and private spaces that, through an architectural perspective, accommodate the sole purpose of socializing or having privacy while allowing a female subject to exist. Although, throughout the two architectural time periods, it is vivid that the spatial compositions in suburban residencies have adapted to a more inclusive and more female considerate spatial arrangement as seen through Ban’s Naked House. However, it can be understood that gendered spaces will not cease to exist unless the psychological and metaphorical understandings of spaces have diminished in order to create the natural and unforced balance between spatial arrangements that lessen the concept of gendered spaces and allow subjects to co-exist.
METAPHORICAL REPRESENTATION OF SPATIAL EXPERIENCES AND SEXED SUBJECTS Through Irigaray’s perspectives derived from symbolic representations of objects and spaces, she is able to make the female subject more included in society through a positive metaphorical, yet psychological comprehension of female qualities resembling or mimicking spatial compositions. This symbolic parallel can be seen through Irigaray’s analysis on Plato’s philosophical text, The Republic, in which she states that “men – with no specification of sex – are living in one, same, place. A place shaped like a cave or a womb” (Irigaray, 1985, p.243). Thus to Irigaray, Plato’s myths “relegates woman to a secondary, supporting and material role in the production of the human subject” (Rawes, 2007, p.36), in other words, the ignorance undermines a woman’s powers and capabilities.
Figure 6: Mobile compartments of the Naked House Photo credits: Hiroyuki Hirai
By means of Irigaray’s symbolistic representation, the flexible composition that Ban has integrated through unsealed and mobile compartments (figure 6) allows for fluidity and adaptability that directly correlates with Irigaray’s theory of feminine spaces which suggests that “spatial experiences and relationships with other people can be reconfigured into fluid, permeable boundaries, rather than discrete finite spaces” (Rawes, 2007, p. 34). Even though Irigaray promotes female qualities by depicting the negative associations of women through a positive light, she believes that “woman has been aligned with [negative] ideas of incompletion, infinity, and formlessness, because Page | 7
