A Search For Queer: Early Post-Modern Camp and the Possibility of a Queer Architecture

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ABSTRACT

There is a lack of analysis of the ways in which Camp sensibilities have influenced and can be utilised by architecture. This is a symptom of the lack of visibility of queer spaces and queer impact on design and culture. Architecture as a practice places a large importance on precedent, whether for inspiration in design or prioritising history in schools. However, there is still a lack of queer narratives in this precedent, and architects are in danger of falling behind on social justice issues and missing out on diverse perspectives.

This thesis will conduct a literature review of Camp studies alongside a review of the context within which this research was produced. Focusing on early Post-Modern architecture of the same time period (1960-1999) three case studies will be analysed through a Camp lens demonstrating the possibility and benefits of a Camp analysis of architecture for queer perspectives. The outcome will be a collection of knowledge summarising the sensibility of Camp and demonstrating how this sensibility can be used in the practice of architecture.

This will increase the perception of queer narratives in architectural practice, providing an introductory point for more queer knowledge and perspectives to be highlighted and giving architects insight into how different perspectives can be applied to gain new knowledge of history and architecture. This includes new language (Camp) which can be used to describe the queer impact on design.

INTRODUCTION

In Susan Sontag’s original essay Notes on Camp1 she listed examples of Camp objects as an illustrative point, and of these examples there was a single architectural object; the Brown Derby Restaurant on 3377 Wilshire Boulevard.2 This restaurant was the flagship store of a chain which has since gone under and was steeped in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The owner was an ex-husband of actress Gloria Swanson, the Brown Derby was a popular hangout for Hollywood characters, appeared in several films and a Disney cartoon between the 30’s and 90’s, and was eventually licenced by Disney to appear as a replica at its theme parks. Sontag does not explain her choice of examples, seemingly allowing the rest of the essay to provide a reason for their inclusion, however we can draw a few assumptions for this example. The Brown Derby uses a style of architecture known as Novelty Architecture which was popular at the time, and which uses the shape of another object as the façade of the building for advertising purposes, without any attempts at authenticity. Much of theme park architecture uses this style. One could not mistake Splash Mountain for a real geographic feature, and the Disney Park does not expect you to; instead, they expect you to buy in to the pretence of the mountain, to temporarily believe the lie. The Brown Derby is Being-As-Playing-A-Role,3 the role of a hat, but it reveals its performance at the same time as it proclaims its ‘hat-ness’. Therefore, the Camp is not merely in the building’s odd shape, but in the reason for it and in the people (Hollywood characters) with which it was connected.

Unfortunately, architects did not leap at the chance to have their buildings labelled as Camp. The word’s connections with gay men, frivolity and cheesiness meant to architects that it was an insult rather than a compliment, and their views influenced subsequent Camp scholars to the point that few would dare to use architecture as an example of Camp. As Camp has shifted its scope over the years to adapt to the cultural zeitgeist and changes in queer theory, architecture has been left out of the narrative. That is a great shame because Camp (as a device to analyse the aesthetics of a thing) can play a large role in highlighting the queer influences on a work, and architecture needs more queer perspectives. Analysis of precedents is one of the first things taught in many architecture schools, and if students are taught to include a wide variety of perspectives in their analysis from the onset of their studies, they will continue to look for diverse perspectives in their practice. By using Camp as a lens for analysis, this thesis aims to increase the possibilities for queer narratives and perspectives to be highlighted in architectural theory.

This is valuable for three reasons. Firstly, we as humans cannot understand things which we have no language for, a phenomenon known as qualia. If we have no words to describe the effect queer theory and sensibilities have on the built environment, then not only are we unable to talk about it but we also are unable to understand. Secondly, the architecture profession tends to invent and subvert language to suit our purposes,4

1 Susan Sontag, "Notes on "Camp"", Partisan Review 31, Number 4, no. XXXI (Fall 1964).

2 Susan Sontag, "Notes on ‘Camp’," in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 54-55. She later mentions Sagrada Familia in Note 25 in relation to extravagance, however as this is not a general example of Camp but rather a specific example used to elucidate one point we will focus on the Brown Derby.

3 Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp’,” (1999), 56. Note 10.

4 Rory Scott, "150 Weird Words That Only Architects Use," ArchDaily, October 19, 2015, https://www. archdaily.com/775615/150-weird-words-that-only-architects-use.

which can get around the issue of qualia. However, this also creates an in-culture dialect which people outside of the discipline cannot understand. In order to avoid this confusion an interdisciplinary approach can be useful, which is why this thesis will propose the use of Camp as a defining term for queer sensibilities and study its application to architecture. Finally, this analysis will aim to fill a gap in the existing research on queer architectural theory. Current research tends towards one of two perspectives: queer architecture meaning architecture which is designed by queer people and how they design differently from straight people (or how queer people appropriate architecture),5 or how can architecture provide spaces for diverse people and conversely discriminate against them.6 These perspectives fail to address how straight people and straight trends have always been influenced by queer people and trends, an influence which is clearly demonstrated by the mainstream adoption and adaptation of Camp.7

To achieve this goal, this thesis poses the question: Is there a Camp architecture? And, operating under the hypothesis that there is, the research question becomes: How can an analysis of “Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader” be used to provide a Camp reading of early Post-Modern architecture from 1960 to 1999 and allow for a greater understanding of queer perspectives in architecture?

5 See Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell, Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories, (RIBA Publishing, 2022).

6 See Diarmuid Hester, Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories, (Pegasus Books, 2024). and Marko Jobst and Naomi Stead, Queering Architecture: Methods, Practices, Spaces, Pedagogies, (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023).

7 This influence can be seen most clearly in fashion, movies, Disney Villains, and pop music.

First, we must define some of the key terms in use up to this point and beyond as they are intended to be read in this thesis.

Camp (with a capital C) is the main theme of this thesis. When used this way, it is referring to the collective body of work which has defined camp in the period this thesis is analysing, 1960 to 1999, and allowing this collective definition to become the definition. Camp is an aesthetic category, or a sensibility, and refers to a subject which has a majority of the Camp traits defined by the Camp reader. Camp must be agreed upon by a cultural group, and as such does not have a set finite definition. However, for the purposes of this thesis assume that the definition of Camp is as described in the Camp Theory literature review for the relevant Era, as summarised in italics at the end of the section.

camp (with a lowercase c) – not referring to the above, used in the traditional sense according to the dictionary definition.

Camp reader – referring to “Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader”, may also be referred to as the canon of Camp for this thesis.

Era – a phase of Camp scholarship defined by a moment in queer history which has been assessed by the author and previous scholars as having an impact on the shape of Camp. The first Era begins in 1960, shortly before Susan Sontag publishes the first scholarly work relating to Camp and ends at the Stonewall Riots in 1969 (see Chapter 2 for how this impacted queer studies and Camp perspectives). The second Era carries on from there and ends in 1981, the year before the AIDS crisis was officially declared (see Chapter 3 for how this impacted queer studies and Camp perspectives). The third Era begins in 1982 and finishes in 1999 just before the turn of the century, the year the Camp reader was published and prior to the many cultural shifts which took place in the early 2000’s.

Queer – relating to the LGBTQIA+ community, and to those who do not use labels. Can also be used as an umbrella term for anyone who is not heterosexual and cisgendered (and they must be both). When used as Queer Theory this relates to the academic topic established in the early 1990’s, which is a sub-topic of Queer Studies, and challenges the idea of socially constructed norms. Gay has been used to refer specifically to the Gay male subculture within queer culture, and for the most part does not include Transgender, Bisexual or other related identities. Particularly in the 60’s there was less distinction made between the identities, and so when this thesis addresses Queer culture during that period it will use Gay as Gay men were the most visible of the queer groups, and so much of the content from that decade will focus on Gay men. In a similar way Lesbian subculture will be addressed in some of the content from later decades, as will Transgender, Drag and Genderqueer subcultures.

The scope of this thesis was decided after conducting a literature review (see next section for details) of Camp theory and Queer Architectural Theory. The Camp reader was chosen as the primary source for analysis due to its thorough inclusion of Camp sources up to 1999, its reputation among later Camp scholars (assessed by the number of citations it has received), and due to its academic nature. A secondary source was used to assess the Camp reader for relevance and scope, which was “Camp! The Story Of The Attitude That Conquered The World” by Paul Baker. While this source is less academic than the Camp reader, Baker has published academic papers previously and his research was well documented, and his book included information about Camp after 1999, as well as information on Camp before but which came to light post-1999. His work validated the information in the Camp reader, and his perspective was noticeably shaped by the Camp reader’s inclusions as important sources of Camp definitions. Further research would be necessary to assess Camp post-2000 which is not included in this thesis. The choice of early Post-Modern architecture fits neatly into the period addressed by the Camp reader and is further explained in the next section.

The structure of this thesis is designed to first provide the necessary context for each era before diving into an analysis of the writings on Camp for the period, culminating in a definition for Camp as it stands at the end of this Era. The Case study will use this definition and the surrounding context to analyse the building through a Camp lens, providing both an example of the application of this thesis and further evidence of the hypothesis. Finally, the conclusion will summarise the results and reiterate the purpose of this research for the architectural discipline.

This thesis uses a mixed methodology comprising of a systematic and grey literature review and architectural case studies, both of which are undertaken using thematic, critical, and visual analysis. This combination of methods has been used previously by Felix McNamara in his thesis The Quaint,8 and was deemed appropriate for this thesis due to their similar goals of understanding a chosen type of architecture through a popular term. As shown in the research design diagram, the thesis project was split into three phases of research: staring with the literature review in Phase 1; conducting thematic and critical review of the literature and preparing the case studies in Phase 2; then combining the literature review and case study research in the final phase.

A systematic literature review was chosen for its ability to assess a wide range of academic records for suitability. Given the lack of architecture-specific readings about Camp theory and the need for interdisciplinary voices in shaping this thesis, as discussed in the previous section, the systematic literature review was tailored to gather as many relevant results as possible for further screening. The search terms “Queer” and “Camp” were first used, gathering only results in the English language due to the author’s monolingualism, and several academic databases were searched. As this produced almost 400,000 results the further search terms NOT “tent” and InCategory “Architecture” were added, the first due to several results referring to the temporary dwelling “camp” instead of the sensibility “Camp” and the second in the hope of finding texts mentioning architecture in relation to Camp design or application. Further screening was undertaken to remove duplicate and inaccessible records, then records which were deemed irrelevant, only partially accessible, and tangentially related to the research topic. Finally, an additional search was undertaken in non-academic (grey) literature sources, including popular journalist site ArchDaily and video essays on YouTube. These sources would have the most current opinions on Camp due to their instant publishing and lack of academic oversight, so although they may not be the most reliable, they are useful in gaining an understanding on the popular opinions of Architecture and Camp. In addition, the previously identified sources were citation mined for further records, and these were all screened using the same strategy as above. The resulting list of records was split into sources relating to Camp and sources relating to Architecture for ease of ordering the readings, and a further category relating to Case Studies was added during Phase 2 of the research.

8 Felix McNamara, "The Quaint," Architectural Theory Review 27, no. 3 (02 August 2023): 346-67, https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2290493.

Figure 1: Research Design Diagram, 2024.

The case studies were initially chosen due to their aesthetics. Each used an aesthetic which was different from the popular style at the time, and which has endured to still be viewed as aesthetically pleasing in 2024. From a shortlist of several buildings for each era, one was chosen which best represents the definition of Camp in that era. Each of the case studies are projects designed by architects who were active in a similar period, which allows for a closer comparison between peers and ensures that they all share a similar context culturally. The post-war period in the 60’s and the many countercultural movements in the 70’s and 80’s led to a rapid increase in the number of technologies available to architects, and each of the chosen case studies uses this technology in a different way to enhance the aesthetic of the architecture. Additionally, during the shift from Modernism to Post-Modernism there was a push for architects to innovate and imagine, as change in the dominant styles drove change in individual practices. One particularly key aspect of each case study is their focus on the façade (architecture’s primary aesthetic) and its relationship to the rest of the project. In these case studies there is also an element of reveal in the facades of these projects, a moment where if the building were a drag queen she would flash a hairy leg or a slip of the wig to reveal the masculine form beneath the veil of femininity. As with Camp and drag, rather than ruining the illusion this moment serves to remind the audience of the purpose of this play; that it is Being-As-Playing-A-Role and that your surprise at the reveal shows how perfect the performance was, and therefore how superficial the role is when performed in “real life.” Finally, these case studies have all been extensively documented and there is a wide range of information available about them, including about the people involved with the projects.

Figure 2: Systematic Literature Review, 2024.

18. Naïve vs deliberate

19. Serious and antiserious

20. Self-love

21. Outlandish

22. Extravagance

23. Fantastical

24. Detachment

25. Separated from now

26. Glorification of character

27. Not good or bad

28. Irony

29. Never tragedy

30. Vulgarity

31. Good taste of bad taste

32. Enjoyment

33. Identification

34. Belonging

35. Witty

36. Self-defence

37. Vitality

38. Exclusion

39. Ambiguous

40. All about our response

41. Impractical

42. Cheapness

43. Objectifying

44. Obsessive

45. Radical/Progressive/ Critical

46. Art as Fabrication

47. Equivocality

48. Defined by gays

49. Theatricality

50. Humour

51. Incongruity

52. Youth/Age

53. Sacred/Profane

54. Spirit/Flesh

55. High/Low Status

56. Masculine/Feminine

57. Passionate

58. Object/Context

59. "Painful"

60. Subversive

61. Being-oneself

62. Effeminate, not feminine

63. Not radical

64. Parody

65. Individual

66. Fetishist

67. Transgression

68. Shock Factor

69. Silliness

70. Relationship between things

71. Impersonation

72. Against Type

73. Ubiquitous

74. Camp vs Camping

75. Asexual

76. Future

77. Amplification

78. Literalisation

79. Death of Glamour

80. Linked to opression

81. Classic Gay Camp

82. Bad Gay Camp

83. Good Straight Camp

84. Bad Straight Camp

85. High Camp

86. Low Camp

87. Ultra Camp

88. Bad Ultra Camp

89. Quasi-Camp

90. Subversive Camp

91. Reactionary Camp

92. Liberal Camp

93. Conservative Camp

94. Intentional Camp

95. Unintentional Camp

96. Good Intentional Straight Camp

97. Mainstream

98. Commodity

99. Esoteric

100. Sophistication

101. Discursive

102. Sincere

103. Pluralist

CHAPTER 1: SONTAG SPARKS SCHOLARSHIP

While it is hard to say that the origins of camp are unknown, it is also not correct to say that we know precisely where and when the term was first used, nor exactly where it came from. The most popular and widely accepted theory is that it was derived from the French ‘se camper’, meaning “to posture boldly”,9 and early uses of the term seem to support this origin. One of the original Camp grounds was Versailles in the time of King Louis XIV. The camps which the King would erect on his military tours were a reflection of palace society, complete with resplendent silk tents and glamorous parties, and this has been traced as the ironic origin of Camp as it came to be known, of artificiality and theatricality.10 Whether or not this is the true origin, Versailles was certainly the most well-known place of extravagance and silliness in the 17th century. The grandness of the palace combined with the artificiality of the wealth involved and the theatricality of the people who partied there represent one of the earliest examples of Camp, even if the term did not exist in that context yet.

Part of the difficulty with identifying Camp’s origins lies in the group which first used it, and in how it was used. Among the late 18th century culture arose a particular subculture of young men, labelled by society as Dandies.11 These were idle aristocratic young men who came to be self-defined by their dress. As Thomas Carlyle, a contemporary writer, disdainfully suggested, “A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress…”12 Others described the Dandy as a Romantic, a man who is most dedicated to aesthetics as a religion. It is easy to see, then, how an aesthetic lifestyle might adopt a term such as camp to describe their efforts. However, it is a particular subset of Dandy who has been recorded with the use of the term Camp, and that is the gay and queer men who also identify as Dandy. This tradition can be traced back to letters and court documents,13 but by far the most highprofile queer association with Camp was in the trials of Oscar Wilde.

Although by the latter half of the 19th century Dandyism had fallen out of popular use, there were still those who used its dressings as a mask or signifier of their particular taste (in romantic and sexual relationships with other men). Around this time is when the mentions of Camp in media became associated with gay men in particular, and it was used both by gay men speaking with each other to describe their theatrical lives,14 and by detractors who used Camp as an insult, insinuating sodomy.15 In a move repeated throughout history, Oscar Wilde became the source of his own downfall by suing for libel a rival who called Wilde a “posing somdomite [sic.]”.16 The resulting trial was widely publicised and contained as evidence Wilde’s Camp mannerisms and traits as the basis for his rival’s claim of sodomy.

9 First use of ‘se camper’ meaning ‘camp it up’ traced by Mark Booth to a play written by Jean-Baptiste Moliere in 1671, also during the time of Louis XIV.

10 Paul Baker, Camp!: The Story of the Attitude That Conquered the World, (Footnote Press Limited, 2023).

11 "Dandy - Wikipedia." 2024, accessed 21 June 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy.

12 Thomas Carlyle and Mark Engel, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books, (1 ed. Vol. 2: University of California Press, 2000), doi:10.2307/jj.8501217, http://www. jstor.org/stable/jj.8501217.

13 Baker, Camp!, 46.

14 See Isherwood’s play “The World In The Evening”.

15 James Redding Ware, Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang and Phrase (Alpha Editions, 1972), https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2fiXzQEACAAJ.

16 John Douglas,“CALLING CARD OF MARQUIS OF QUEENSBURY”, 1895, Paper, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Somdomite.jpg

Figure 4: The Brown Derby Restaurant, 1956.
Figure 5: Calling Card of Marquis of Queensbury, 1895.

This dual use of Camp, as a signifier for gay men within and a disdainful description from without, continued into the mid-20th century and the term and its derivatives were adopted into the early London-based Gay language, Polari.17 After Wilde’s high-profile outing of the term, the first definitions of Camp included an entry in the “Passing English of the Victorian Era” dictionary of slang,18 and a brief passage in Christopher Isherwood’s “The World in the Evening” (both associated with gay men, in different ways). These first forays of Camp into text paved the way for its exhaustive academic review.

The 1960’s was not a time for academics in the queer community: it was a time for action. This decade saw the formation (and dissolution due to infighting) of Gay Rights movements across the globe, fighting to decriminalise their lifestyles and loves. These early groups focused on the message that gay men and women are no different than straight men and women, aiming for a peaceful assimilation.19 Although a few organisations started earlier, many were encouraged by the release of the Wolfenden Report (1957) in the UK. It would take 10 years for the UK to amend their laws to reflect the Wolfenden Report at least partially (the Sexual Offences Act, 1967) and other countries such as America, France and Germany were also slow to reflect the changing public sentiment in their laws.

Gay Rights movements in the US took inspiration from the Black Power movement and protests against the Vietnam War to be more public and vocal about their causes, including early Stonewall-esque protests and sit-ins in California and New York. A few queer activist groups also took their cues from the Second Wave Feminism movement, reignited by Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”, and lesbian rights groups especially worked with some feminist groups to promote their joint causes. France had decriminalised homosexuality after the French Revolution, although it was not accepted in “polite society”. Early Gay movements in France were led by philosophical figures, although this did not save them from infighting and schisms during 60’s and after Stonewall. Germany, too, was slow to recover from the Nazi Party’s discrimination against gay men, and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 did not help matters, splitting the once thriving gay metropolis into a more timid and secretive scene. Australia also introduced new discriminatory laws during this time, with the NSW Crimes Act being updated in 1951 to state that “buggery” was a crime, regardless of consent (previously if the “buggery” was consensual it was not illegal), and the Cahill government reopened a prison in Cooma specifically for gay prisoners in 1957. It was not until the end of the 1960’s that Australia finally founded its own gay and lesbian rights groups, including one named CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution).20

This growing political, cultural, and social unrest did not go unnoticed by those in power, who displayed one of two responses; crack down on the unrest through force, or begin to make changes to accept the marginalised groups driving the unrest. Sadly, most chose the former, and as a result tensions rose to a breaking point culminating in the most famous of the early queer protests, the Stonewall Riots. This event marked a shift in the thinking about how Gay Rights movements could operate, as well as a publicising of the discrimination being faced by queer people.

Into this political milieu Susan Sontag released her first major work in the Partisan Review – “Notes on “Camp”.”21 This essay drew attention to the young writer, but it was not until she re-published the essay in her 1966 collection of essays, “Against Interpretation”,22 that the academic world was truly captured by her introduction to Camp. Although early criticism of her work dismissed Sontag as vapid and contradictory,23 there are very few subsequent writings on Camp which do not in some way reference this seminal work, and Sontag herself gained renown as “one of the most influential critics of her generation.”24 As the starting point for a definition of Camp, Sontag’s work opens a broad definition with several contradictory clauses. On its own, this leads to a somewhat confused term which is too broad to be useful in defining individual taste, but as the initial investigation for a topic of academic study it is excellent for providing many points from which future scholars can branch off and develop their own theories. Among the 53 clauses a few key themes emerge, those being: camp is a sensibility which prioritises aesthetics over substance25; camp is apolitical26; camp is related to Gay culture but not exclusively gay27; camp is theatrical extravagance, being-as-playing-a-role28; camp is best when naïve, when a thing is undertaken with passion which ultimately fails29; camp understands irony and artifice30; camp views a thing with enjoyment and love, not with disgust or derision31. As will be shown in the following sections each of these themes has been debated by future scholars, and many of the examples of Camp which Sontag puts forward are no longer considered Camp today, demonstrating the claim of this thesis that Camp has evolved over time.

17 Paul Baker, Polari - the Lost Language of Gay Men, (Taylor & Francis, 2003), https://books.google. com.au/books?id=MRKCAgAAQBAJ.

18 Ware, “Camp,” Passing English of the Victorian Era, 61.

19 Matthew Todd, “A Time of Revolution,” in Pride: The Story of the LGBTQ Equality Movement, (Weldon Owen, 2020), https://books.google.com.au/books?id=yVw4EAAAQBAJ.

20 Robert Reynolds, From Camp To Queer: Remaking the Australian Homosexual, (Melbourne University Press, 2002), 11-30.

21 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” (1964). In the same edition she published a series of three reviews entitled “Going to Theatre”.

22 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1 ed.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), https:// books.google.com.au/books?id=zJ5BzwEACAAJ.

23 Vernon Young, "Socialist Camp: A Style of Radical Wistfulness," review of Styles of Radical Will by Susan Sontag, The Hudson Review 22, no. 3 (1969): 513-20. https://doi.org/10.2307/3849445. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/3849445.

24 “Susan Sontag,” The New York Review of Books, https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/susansontag/.

25 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 1, 54.

26 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 2, 54.

27 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 51, 64.

28 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 10, 56.

29 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 19 & 23, 58 & 59.

30 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 7 & 43, 55 & 62.

31 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” Note 55, 65.

Along with the political and cultural changes sparked by the end of WWII came economic changes to Europe, and through its colonial ties much of the Western world. By the 1960’s post-war reconstruction had been completed in much of Europe, leading to an economic boom. For Architecture, the reconstruction meant a large investment in building and construction which led to advancements in the field such as ComputerAided Design (CAD), improvements to materials science, and improvements to HVAC systems.32 The economic boom post-reconstruction continued the investment into the built environment, and the 60’s saw many monumental buildings designed and constructed.33

The counter-cultural movement in the arts and music was also reflected in a shift in the dominant architectural style from Postwar Modernist to Post-Modernist. PostModern attitudes towards the Modernist approach considered the Modernist rules à la Le Corbusier too restricting, and the international style as a blatant disregard for the history, culture and people in the context (site) of the building.34 Both styles vied for dominance throughout the decade and into the 1980’s, where post-modernism eventually triumphed over Modernism as the prominent style. As was the case with arts and cultural changes, most of the fighting over styles took place at the institutions where these schools of thought were taught (preached?) to future practitioners. The Modernist legacy of the Bauhaus contrasted with the historical revivalist leanings of the PostModern movements in the American Architectural schools in the 60’s and 70’s, and academics within these schools would advocate for their preferred style to their students. The resulting camps of Modern vs Post-Modern, “Less is More” vs “Less is a

32 Jonathan Glancey, “Nostalgia and Whimsy” and “The Modern World,” in Architecture: A Visual History, (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2021), 320-39.

33 Margaret Fletcher, “Modernism” and “Postmodernism,” in Architectural Styles: A Visual Guide, (Thames & Hudson, 2021), 178-85 and 200-3.

34 Peter E. Austin, “Architecture,” The 1960s Project, accessed 17 May 2024, https://www. the1960sproject.com/timelines/category-master-architecture/.

HABITAT 67 - MOSHE SAFDIE

The 1960’s was a time of hope for the future, resulting in many science-fiction stories gaining popularity (and becoming Camp by either over- or underestimating what we would actually achieve), and Architecture was no exception. From Disney’s Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow (EPCOT, also called Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) to the 1964 World Fair of New York and the unofficial inclusion of Architecture in the 1968 Venice Biennale,1 architects were letting their imaginations propel them into the future. One of the best examples of this future imagining comes from Expo 67, the Canadian Centennial celebration held in Montreal.

Habitat 67 was an experimental housing project designed by Moshe Safdie for the Expo, to demonstrate the possibilities of new prefabrication modes of construction. Safdie intended for the project to not only demonstrate the capabilities of prefabrication for concrete construction, but also as an experimental space for living in a medium- to high-density urban building.2 The catchphrase for the project was ‘for everyone a garden’, and the project achieved this through using the roofs of the preconstructed cubes as terraces for the units above. This connection helps to deepen ties between neighbours, as do the four pedestrian promenades (being the means of access to units), and potential commercial spaces available beneath the units in the current parking spaces, which were not intended to be realised for Expo 67 but were mentioned in the designs.3 These aims met mixed responses from the groups interested in the project. The public attending Expo 67 were awed by the novel shape and arrangement of the building, although reports also suggest that the public was underwhelmed by the interiors which were minimal and sparse.4 Architectural critics praised the modernist approach to community living and the futuristic design of the pods, while others critiqued the failures of the construction system and the budget to live up to such ideals.5

1 Marco Frascari, "A Heroic and Admirable Machine: The Theater of the Architecture of Carlo Scarpa, Architetto Veneto," Poetics Today 10, no. 1 (1989), https://doi.org/10.2307/1772557.

2 “Habitat 67,” Safdie Architects, accessed May 2024, https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/habitat67.

3 AR Editors, "From the Archive: Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada," The Architectural Review, (1967), https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/from-the-archive-moshe-safdies-habitat67-in-montreal-canada.

4 AR Editors, “Habitat 67.”

5 Réjean Legault, "The Making of Habitat67: A Tense Pas de Deux between Moshe Safdie and August Komendant," Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada / Le Journal de la Société pour l'étude de l'architecture au Canada 46, no. 1 (2021): 30, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/ 10.7202/1082359ar.

Habitat 67’s camp can be felt initially instinctively; it is a funny looking building, like Safdie took a child’s building block structure and turned it into architecture. Upon further analysis the camp goes deeper than aesthetics, although the initial aesthetic response is important as camp in this era was primarily an aesthetic endeavour. As with Sontag’s naïve camp, Habitat 67 contains a passion and seriousness which fails. The original goal was for a high-density housing which provides quality dwellings regardless of income, but this was thwarted by restrictions in the size of the project, the incomplete nature of the experiment lacking the necessary commercial aspects to allow the units to be self-sustaining, and the enthusiasm of the designer creating so many variations on the units (14 variations in 153 dwellings, using 365 cube ‘units’) that the costeffectiveness of pre-fabricating the units was essentially lost.6 Yet despite these failings of the architect’s intention, the resulting project has been an inspiration for luxury apartments and a beloved home for nearly 60 years of residents, as well as a tourist attraction for Montreal. In addition to the naïve camp of failed seriousness, there was also a well-documented drama behind the scenes of the project. From the government being practically tricked into funding the project, to the engineer and contractors butting heads so often that they each separately took to the media to air their grievances (in the same issue at that!),7 and subsequently attempting to publish a rebuttal only to be dissuaded by the architect and Expo 67 organisers, the television-drama behind the scenes is a classic indicator of a Camp production.

6 AR Editors, “Habitat 67.” Figure 7: Underwhelming interiors, 1966.

7 Legault, “The Making of Habitat 67,” 41-42.

Figure 6 (previous spread): Habitat 67 exterior

Change over time has rendered the building both more and less Camp, in different areas. Looking back on the theme of Expo 67, and the futuristic leanings of the exhibits produces for the Expo, we can now judge these predictions of the future in comparison to our current lives. In Habitat 67’s case, neither its method of pre-fabrication nor its focus on community living (a garden for every person) have become the norm which Safdie at the time was aiming towards. In a recent interview, Safdie has acknowledged the ways in which the experiment failed in regards to pre-fabrication, and has made note of the differenced in modern iterations of pre-fabrication and pre-construction.8 One of the major criticisms of the design was of its use of concrete as the pre-fabrication material, and on this point Safdie remains steadfast, claiming that while a lighter-weight material would have been easier and cheaper to use, that the long life and structural integrity of concrete make it the perfect material for this kind of pre-fabricated dwelling.9

Knowing the failure of its aspirations, and that the community living model has been corrupted into inspiration for luxury apartments, it is easy to see how the Camp of Habitat 67 has endured to this day. More serious concerns for the building, however, have brought it down from the heights of Camp. From the earliest occupation the building was too expensive, had issues with water leakage in the connections between concrete cubes causing mould, and the fibreglass bathroom units had to be replaced due to more water leakage issues.10 Today the building requires serious maintenance and testing of the structural integrity of the concrete, in the wake of resident complaints and other concrete buildings from a similar time period having major structural defects. The gentrification of the building is also an issue, with several residents and Safdie himself complaining about the increasing development of rental properties within the building undermining the community living ideals.11 In the wake of the love and seriousness, not to mention the money, which the residents have invested in their homes over the years, it is hard to imagine they would agree with the label of Camp for Habitat 67. This would break one of Sontag’s primary rules for Camp - Camp and tragedy are antithesis12 – and there is too much tragedy in someone losing their home for the residents to bask in the Camp of their ‘futuristic’ building crumbling around them. The reader of this thesis, however, does not share the same seriousness and tragedy which the tenant does, and can therefore see the Camp in Habitat 67. This demonstrates that Camp is a perspective, one which can be applied to a building to see if the viewer can learn anything from this perspective, whether it fits perfectly or not.

8 Moshe Safdie, “A Look Back at Habitat ’67 with Moshe Safdie,” interview by Amanda Dameron, dwell, December 30, 2012, https://www.dwell.com/article/a-look-back-at-habitat-67-with-moshe-safdie4035f224.

9 Safdie, “Look Back At Habitat ’67.”

10 Genevieve Paiement, "Habitat 67, Montreal's 'Failed Dream' - A History of Cities in 50 Buildings, Day 35," The Guardian, (13 May, 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/13/habitat-67montreal-expo-moshe-safdie-history-cities-50-buildings-day-35.

11 Nancy Keates, “Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 at 55,” Dow Jones International News, (09 September 2022), https://www.proquest.com/docview/2712103829/citation/2830E965AF944400PQ/1? accountid=14757&sourcetype=Wire%20Feeds.

12 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” 62.

Figure 8: Exploded axonometric of unit configuration, 1964.
Figure 9: Habitat 67 in the modern day, 2017.

CHAPTER 2: RESPONSES AND REACTIONS

The decade of Gay Rights movements in America came to a head on June 28th, 1969. The Stonewall Riots became a pivotal moment in Gay Rights’ political and cultural influence, and although there were still many issues and detractors, more and more gay people were encouraged to be openly and publicly gay. The messaging of the movement pivoted to calling for acceptance of Gay and Lesbian people, rather than the assimilation which the previous groups were aiming for, and promoting the understanding of our differences as people. The anniversary of the Stonewall Riots became the first ever Pride parade, on the last Sunday in June, and was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day. By 1972 some European countries joined in the June Pride marches, turning the American anniversary into an international movement.13 It did not take long for internal tensions to rise to the surface, with sub-groups within the Queer banner fighting for their own needs amid the general Gay and Lesbian Rights movement. In particular queers of colour, street queers and drag queens received far less attention within the movement due to the discrimination against people of colour, homeless people, “lower class” people and gender non-conforming people, even within the so-called space of equality.

For Camp, this also became a turning point in the theory which many people have posited as the moment Camp changed in public perception. The terms of this change differ from scholar to scholar, with Richard Dyer14 and Jack Babuscio15 arguing that Stonewall turned Camp from a secret Gay signifier to a way of expressing Gay men’s identity to all, becoming the Gay Sensibility. The opposing theory is represented by Andrew Britton,16 identifying Camp’s problematic ties to misogyny and arguing that there is nothing about gay men which gives them a unique perspective which could be called the Gay Sensibility, and that Camp had become a harmful stereotype representing only one way of being gay and limiting how gay men could express themselves. These two perspectives are representative of the pre- and post-stonewall attitudes towards Gay male representation, with the former representing post- and the latter representing pre-. This distinction becomes blurred in later eras, as both perspectives are acknowledged by queer theory and cultural groups as valid means of Gay existence (Out and Proud in combination/comparison with Out and Loud).

13 Todd, Pride, 87-89.

14 Richard Dyer, "It’s Being So Camp as Keeps Us Going." in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 110-16.

15 Jack Babuscio, “The Cinema of Camp (aka Camp and the Gay Sensibility),” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 117-35.

16 Andrew Britton, “For Interpretation: Notes Against Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 136-42.

Other prominent voices of Camp at this time include Esther Newton,17 whose work on Drag Queens and the gender binary provided an early foray into the gender dynamics at play in the Camp (see the next section for further analysis), and Harold Beaver,18 whose essay “In Memory of Roland Barthes” concurs with the premise of this thesis that a Camp analysis has much to do with post-modernism (as in Barthes’ “Death of the Author”19) and in the viewer (as in Barthes’ “Camera Lucida”20). Finally, Mark Booth introduces in his essay on the origins and definitions of camp a comparison between two kinds of camp, Camp itself and Camp Fads and Fancies, where the former is an object or person who is intrinsically camp and the latter is an object or person who appeals to camp people.21 This distinction has been used by other scholars under the terms of Camp and Campy,22 or Camp and Camping23 respectively, and is a more structured version of Sontag’s naïve and intentional camp. Although, the binary it produces can still be criticised as arbitrary, especially as the distinction between the two has been fading as Camp gains popularity in culture.

The 1970’s was also a time of shifting perspectives for architecture. With the rise of post-modernist architecture came a series of more specific movements in architectural practice and theory. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour headed the post-modernist movement in America with their work “Learning from Las Vegas”,24 arguing that modern architecture had become empty of meaning by denying all ornament and signposting in the design. Drawing on the work of Jane Jacobs, Venturi and Scott Brown also highlighted in their work an analysis of the city as an important consideration in architectural theory, not simply a byproduct of distinct pieces of architecture sharing a location. This movement was reflected in Europe by theorist Aldo Rossi, who was inspired by the approaches of his country to post-war reconstruction and the many ways he saw these reconstructions fail the city, the people, and the history of the architecture. These approaches are not dissimilar to historical revivalism, which was another reactionary movement to the destruction of the wars, but where revivalism

17 Esther Newton, “Role Models,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 96-109.

18 Harold Beaver, “Homosexual Signs (In Memory of Roland Barthes),” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 143-59.

19 Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author." Aspen no. 5-6 (1967). https://www.ubu.com/aspen/ aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes.

20 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflec�ons on Photography. 1st American ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981).

21 Mark Booth, “Campe-toi!: On The Origins and Definitions of Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 66-79.

22 Baker, Camp!, 12.

23 Christopher Isherwood, “The World in the Evening,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 51.

24 Robert Venturi, Denise ScottBrown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1972), ISBN 978-0-262-22015-6.

INSTANT CITY - ARCHIGRAM

As Camp sat in a flux state between conflicting perspectives on its worth, so too did Modernism in architecture. At a time when post-modernism was gaining popularity, a group of architects in England came together to discuss what could be done with Modernism. This group became Archigram, and together they published a journal by the same name containing their projections for the future of cities, technology, prefabrication, and human living. Their views were neither Modernist or PostModernist, occupying a sort of profane avant-garde movement25 sceptical of what came before and what was shaping up to come after. The Instant City project combines previous ideas and themes of Archigram, and published as it was at the height of the group’s popularity it is a good representation of what makes the group’s works so Camp. This project was published in Archigram 9,26 the penultimate issue of the journal, and was designed primarily by Peter Cook and Ron Herron. The idea for the project is a temporary structure, to be set upon an existing small town, which could bring all the conveniences and amenities of a large city such as London or Los Angeles to a remote area. This structure would temporarily take over the town, and when it moved on to the next site it would leave behind the means of connecting the small town with the large city and other small towns through a National Happening Network.

25 Academy Editions, A Guide to Archigram 1961-74, (Academy Group, 1994): 420.

26 Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, and Ron Herron, “Archigram 9: Instant City,” Archigram The Book, ed. Dennis Crompton, (Circa Press, 2018): 218-25.

27 Peter Cook, Archigram, (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999): 98-9.

As with Habitat 67 the Camp in this project is immediately apparent through its aesthetics, although in this case the Instant City was never realised so its primary aesthetics are in its drawings. Archigram often used Pop aesthetics in their works, using bright colours, comic-book graphic imagery and collage to enhance the fantastical and futuristic aspects of the projects. This produces an interesting ontological parallel in many Archigram projects of the Camp object and the Camp representation of the object.

28 The Instant City project is Camp in and of itself, but also the drawings created to represent the Instant City are themselves Camp, especially in the context of architectural representation at the time. There is a link here to Booth’s Camp fads and fancies, although where Booth uses the binary to devalue one side, this thesis would argue that the representation enhances the project, and vice versa. Architecture is almost unique as a medium for this effect, 29 due mostly to the amount of influence the representation can exert on the project. A painting of a drag queen, for instance, could be done in a Camp way and be a Camp object, but the Drag Queen herself would not be changed or influenced to be more Camp by the painting. But a representation of an architectural project (done by the author/s of the project) becomes a part of the architecture, and for unrealised projects such as the Instant City it becomes the whole of the architecture.

Another extremely Camp aspect of the Instant City is the theatricality of the project. The Instant City arrives by night and drapes the town in stage setting, performs there for a week or so, then packs up and moves on to the next. These ties with theatre and performance are key themes in Camp, and the idea of a small town dressing up as a big city and giving the performance of one is Camp at its core. This performance also links to the superficiality of Camp, the Post-Modern urge to declare you are something you are not. As seen in the below image, the Instant City uses fabrics to create a temporary façade over some buildings, sets up large projection screens on others, all to change the way people see their town and invite them to explore these interruptions and become curious. Particularly interesting are the signs encouraging people to “Learn French Now” considering the adoption of French words into Polari, the Gay language, as a means of emphasis and posturing intelligence or worldliness. The inclusion of brand advertising on the airship and some buildings draws on the Pop Art movement, another nod to Camp performance but without outright mentioning the need for sponsors in a project of this scale. For the Instant City, scale and practicalities are ignored in favour of the potential of connection, performance, and future imaginings.

28 As in Object Oriented Ontology, see Graham Harman.

29 Probably. Further research required.

Figure 10 (previous spread): Instant City, Peter Cook’s version, 1969.
Figure 11: Instant City process of connection, 1969.

Another marker of a Camp undertaking is exaggeration and excessiveness, which this project has in spades. The architects could have chosen a more viable vehicle to demonstrate their ideas about connectivity and expendable architecture, which would have made the proposal more likely to be further researched and prototyped, possibly even implemented at a small scale. Instead, the Archigram designers decided to up the scale of the project, make the vehicle as fantastical as they could and render the entire project unrealistic. Yet, in this way they enhanced the message of their works and contributed to one of the core themes of Archigram; reigniting imagination in a world suffering post two world wars. The exaggeration of Camp must have a purpose, otherwise the excess comes off as cheap or insulting and it loses its Camp. For Archigram, the purpose of making the Instant City an explosion of pop colours, flying machines and staged performances was to turn technology into a fiction, one which demonstrates the absolute possibilities which could be reached with its help; the idea of a living city, combining all aspects of life, using expendable parts for maximum customisation yet still coming together into a single organism.

These themes did not always resonate with the architectural canon and profession. The projects in Archigram 4, for example, “upset a lot of people who still felt that architecture was somehow a sacred discipline that should not be played with and certainly not placed at the same level as comics or things like that.”30 This perspective is still apparent today, and if anything has been heightened by the increasing risk of Architects being replaced by technology and other professions. Architecture takes itself too seriously, and rarely allows any play or fun to be represented in its ranks; similar to how anti-gay protestors used the sacredness of the family unit to oppose gay partnerships, architects believed that any anti-seriousness would corrupt their arguments about architecture’s importance and their own continued existence. Archigram knew this and used their bold and colourful drawings purposefully to incite a reaction from their peers. As Peter Cook noted, “Many young architects in London don’t agree with us. They are often embarrassed by the fruitiness of the objects as much as by the undermining of the continuing story of architects’ architecture which is implied. The fruit is really as much a basic necessity to the central idea as a list of priorities.”31 Despite their popularity, Archigram were still a marginal group due to their practices of imaginative, colourful projects and their refusal of both modernism and the burgeoning post-modernism, and this marginality is another marker of Camp.

30 Academy Editions, Guide to Archigram, 22-23.

31 Academy Editions, Guide to Archigram, 25.

Figure 12: Instant City, Ron Herron’s version, 1969.
Figure 13: Cover of Archigram, 1999.

CHAPTER 3: EXPANDING AND EVOLVING

The queer advocates and activist movements of the 60’s and 70’s had begun to see results in the political sphere by the late 70’s and early 80’s. Many countries were working to decriminalise homosexuality, although for many gay marriage was still not considered a possibility.32 The release of the International Classification of Diseases 9 (ICD-9) in 1978 encouraged several countries to change their laws to allow gender affirming care after the addition of gender dysphoria/dysmorphia as a mental illness in the ICD-9. Many countries also amended their homosexual age of consent to become equal to heterosexual age of consent.33 Unfortunately, these were not the only changes made to law in the 80’s.

The first case recorded by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of a death related to HIV/AIDS of a gay man was in 1981, and from there the “pandemic” and misinformation spread rapidly. Where previously gay people were considered immoral but mostly harmless, there was now a lethal disease associated with Gay acts which was wrongly assumed by popular media, despite scientists proving otherwise, to be contagious by touch or even proximity to an infected Gay man. Many countries put into place a new law banning Gay men from donating blood for fear of spreading HIV/AIDS, a law that many countries still have in place to this day. This new panic combined with existing prejudices to set back the progress queer activist groups were beginning to make. The disease also gave an excuse for political parties to introduce further discriminatory policies, including Section 23 in Britain, attempts to quarantine those with HIV/AIDS in America,34 and continued police harassment and brutality in Australia.

In response to the outbreak of AIDS and the governments lack of support, medical or otherwise, queer people came together to advocate for HIV/AIDS research, awareness, and treatment for those already infected. These groups educated their own on the ways they could effectively protect themselves against AIDS and other STDs and fundraised for care and further research into the causes and cures. Many celebrities who had previously been ‘in the closet’ about their gay identities came out publicly during this time in support of gay movements, not only in curing AIDS but also in combatting the increased prejudice caused by misinformation and Section 23, for example. The gay movements had to pivot their messaging once again, this time in a reactionary twist to re-humanise Gay men in particular against those who would turn them into merely walking diseases. While the post-Stonewall messaging of accepting differences was still in use, it was becoming clear that this was not enough in the wake of AIDS.

While the effects of the AIDS crisis were a setback for the political and cultural goals of the movements, these decades also saw the flourishing of the new academic discipline of Queer Studies. This discipline provided more perspectives through which to analyse Camp, most notably a feminist perspective and a gender-based perspective. Phillip Core’s essay bridges the shift in thinking from Sontag’s era to this academic era, elucidating the possibility of a women’s camp hinted at by Newton through lesbians and drag queens, and beginning the discussion of class-based analysis of camp by looking at the commercialism of camp.

35 Mark Finch also addresses the previous era’s dispute

32 Many countries would not approve gay marriage laws until the late 1990’s, some into the 21st century and many still do not allow gay marriages.

33 Todd, Pride, 92-149

34 Todd, Pride, 158.

35 Phillip Core, “Camp: The Lie That Tells The Truth,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 80-87.

between camp and the modern gay movement through a reading of the TV drama Dynasty,36 although speaking as he is from after the start of the AIDS Crisis he is able to reflect on the issue from without, concluding that the show’s treatment of gay characters and audience vacillates between acceptance and erasure too easily.37 Also in the 1980’s early era of scholarship came a review of Oscar Wilde’s many forgeries of self by Neil Bartlett,38 and an essay on the Uses of Camp by Andrew Ross.39 Whereas Finch views the Camp reading of Dynasty as a modernist reading and calls upon comments by the show’s creators to emphasise his point, Ross begins to engage with a post-modernist reading of Camp by analysing its ties with Pop art and nostalgia (history’s waste). This marks another shift in Camp scholarship, and the post-modernist approach to Camp is one that is primarily in use today.

The first of the feminist readings of Camp comes from Sue-Ellen Case’s use of the Feminist Subject40 as a framework to study the performative butch/femme roles in lesbian culture, with the aim of demonstrating how these roles can situate the lesbian subject in feminism and a heterosexist world.41 In this text Camp is proposed as the means by which lesbians can claim the gender identities of butch and femme, using Camp’s irony and wit to perform femininity and masculinity to heterosexuality, while retaining the inward-facing intention of the play, being without men. This ties in with the ideas of gender performativity published two years later by Judith Butler, whose work has been central to Gender Studies and who also dabbled in Camp analysis.42 June L Reich also tackles the butch/femme roles, although as you might expect from an essay titled “Genderfuck” it does so in an irreverent (though still steeped in theory) way.43 Reich’s essay tackles the counter-identity politics of the early 90’s queer movements, in a confronting tone which some queer theorists adopted as an aggression towards the academia which had excluded them for so long. The genderfuck and Camp both tackle the binarism of heterosexual gender roles, and Reich uses her own experience as a femme lesbian to navigate the relationship between the two. This idea of a Camp androgyne has also been tackled by George Piggford, who uses Camp as a way of analysing historical attitudes towards gender performance. In all these readings Camp’s exaggeration is a tool used to highlight the arbitrariness of cultural gender norms, and its irony as a tool for understanding how these norms have been subverted and utilized by queer communities in different ways.

36 Mark Finch, “Sex and Address in Dynasty,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 143-59.

37 He demonstrates how Dynasty’s treatment of Stephen as a gay man represents the “Camp is a harmful stereotype” side taken to the extreme; in a show as Camp as Dynasty Stephen is played as a straight man who happens to be gay, and he shows very few stereotypically gay traits for the time. A modern reading might argue that this is taken too far, leading audiences to question if Stephen is gay at all? However, this reading is opposed by those critics who argue that not all queer stories should focus on coming out or facing oppression, that queer characters should be allowed to play any role in a story just as a blonde character or a tall character could. This argument between stereotype and representation has continued to the current day.

38 Niel Bartlett, “Forgery,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 179-84.

39 Andrew Ross, “Uses of Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 308-29.

40 From Teresa de Lauretis’s work Technologies of Gender, 1987.

41 Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 185-201.

42 Judith Butler, “From Interiority to Gender Performatives,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 361-68.

43 June L Reich, “Genderfuck: The Law of the Dildo,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 254-65.

Here we also see the beginnings of a Black (African American)44 Camp in Pamela Robertson’s analysis of Mae West’s gender, class and racial Camp transgressions. Through examining the relationship between Mae West’s performances and those of the black supporting cast Robertson calls attention to the similarities between Camp’s ability to cross class and gender boundaries, and the way West is also able to cross racial boundaries in her films. While this is not, strictly speaking, Black Camp,45 and Robertson notes that Camp’s flexibility of roles does not extend to racial roles, she is also able to demonstrate how a Black Camp would share the critical characteristics of a Gay Camp or a Class Camp. Other works have traced the origins of Black Camp to early Cakewalk culture, a culture which shares many similarities with Mae West’s roles.46

Even among the more general reviews of Camp it seems each scholar has chosen a different theme to be their focus, which led to interesting intersections between viewpoints. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick foregrounds an exploration of the sentimental and how it relates to Camp and kitsch, a term often used in conjunction with Camp.47 The text also addresses some of the key arguments in queer theory of the time, such as the rehabilitation of sentimentality and Camp in a feminist/queer context, the effects of the audience on a subject and the relationship between audience and subject, and the use of labels not as an identifier but as a question of relationships between labels. Sentimentality is also a subject of Daniel Harris’s essay on gay men and diva worship, although Harris focuses more on how sentimentality can be turned against the subject (devotion demands intimacy, intimacy destroys reverence) particularly in regard to Golden Age Cinema and how Television re-runs killed the glamour of those (female) celebrities.

48 Here Camp acted as a tool to boost the Diva’s appeal among gay men preStonewall as a unifying, internal signifier, and equally as a tool of ridicule for the downfall of these Divas.49 Towards the turn of the century many were calling for the Death of Camp, or predicting its downfall in the post-Stonewall gay counterculture, including Fran Leibowitz in 1995. In response Caryl Flinn wrote an essay tracing the Camp preoccupation with death and decay, combining theoretical works and Camp practices with an analysis of the assault on the female body in a political and cultural context.

50 Her text follows Sedgwick’s ideas about the sentimental and Harris’s destructive worship and looks at the nostalgia of Camp, both morbid and ironic, and how this nostalgia defines what may be too new or old for Camp.51 Flinn also addresses how Camp’s treatment of women’s bodies often exaggerates their trauma, whether through age, weight, ethnicity or the physical trauma of substance abuse and plastic surgery,52 highlighting how Camp could be the tool to bring queer and feminist theory back to focusing on the damage being done to the female body. Jonathan Dollimore’s work addresses the connection between gay men’s sensibility and Camp, using Wilde as

44 Not to be confused with Black (morbid) Camp noted by Dollimore in regard to Joe Orton’s work.

45 As it is written by and about a white woman.

46 See the documentary Paris is Burning (1990), directed by Jennie Livingston, and Baker, Camp!, 19097.

47 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Wilde, Nietzsche, and the Sentimental Relations of the Male Body,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 207-20.

48 Daniel Harris, “The Death of Camp: Gay Men and Hollywood Diva Worship, from Reverence to Ridicule,” Salmagundi, no. 112 (1996): 166–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40548907.

49 See also Spencer Kornhaber’s On Divas

50 Caryl Flinn, “The Deaths of Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 433-57.

51 Taking one of Flinn’s own examples, the 1920’s are no longer viewed as Camp today as they are now considered a historical period and too far removed from our own context.

52 Flinn, “Deaths of Camp,” 448.

an example of how although gay discrimination initially shaped Camp it is not the Gay Sensibility; it is the inversion and subversion of other sensibilities.53 Camp works via parody, pastiche, and exaggeration to play with the artificial and the real,54 whereas a gay sensibility, if it exists at all, is comprised of perversity and paradox55 (of our heteronormative culture).

Delving further into detailed analysis, Linda Mizejewski, Sasha Torres, Matthew Tinkcom, and Johannes von Moltke perform a case study analysis of a particular Camp object in each of their works to study Camp. Mizejewski focuses on Isherwood’s plays (Isherwood being the first known author to print Camp in its current usage) and more specifically on the character Sally Bowles from his play “Goodbye to Berlin” and subsequent adaptations.56 Torres writes about the Batman TV series and its reception as an adaptation of comic books, particularly at a time when Batman and Robin’s relationship had been labelled by religious extremists as homoerotic.57 Tinkcom compares Camp and Pop-Art as two similar modes of parody, both playing with the themes of gay subcultures and commodity cultures.58 Particularly Tinkcom makes a point which this thesis is attempting to apply to architecture, that is “it is more important to ascertain how camp critiques capitalist social organisation in its analysis of the work involved in producing representations that exclude same-sex desiring subjects, and how camp's energies are devoted to a constant reinsertion of gay tastes into the consumption and recirculation of 'straight' imagery.” (italics added)59. And finally, Moltke uses German Film and Fassbinder in particular to analyse the notion of a camp spectatorship, and how such a viewing cuts across the boundaries of binaries critics usually apply to art analysis, particularly camp’s favourite binaries of gender and sexuality, while at the same time drawing attention to the boundaries it violates.60

The final word on camp for this thesis goes to Fabio Cleto, who collected the preceding essays and works into the Camp reader. In Cleto’s organisation of the chapters we can see where he identifies the major influences on Camp: Tasting It begins the first forays into identifying and defining Camp; Flaunting the Closet deals with the influence of sexualities and the discrimination they faced on shaping Camp; Gender, And Other Spectacles introduces the capability of Camp to trans – transcending categories, transgressing boundaries, transforming meanings – and how it plays with binaries; Pop Camp, Surplus Counter-Value, or the Camp of Cultural Economy studies Camp’s ties with politics and capital, as well as concurrent visual movements Pop-Art and kitsch; and The Queer Issue collects those who argue for Camp as a method of resistance, for queer activism, for Drag performances, and for advertising minorities.

53 Jonathan Dollimore, “Post/modern: On the Gay Sensibility, or the Pervert’s Revenge on Authenticity,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 221-36.

54 Dollimore, “Post/modern,” 224.

55 Dollimore, “Post/modern,” 223.

56 Linda Mizejewski, “Camp Among the Swastikas: Isherwood, Sally Bowles and “Good Heter Stuff”,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 237-53.

57 Sasha Torres, “The Caped Crusader of Camp: Pop, Camp, and the Batman Television Series,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 330-43.

58 Matthew Tinkcom, “Warhol’s Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 344-55.

59 Tinkcom, “Warhol’s Camp,” 349.

60 Johannes von Moltke, “Camping in the Art Closet: The Politics of Camp and Nation in German Film,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 415.

61

This flow tracks how Camp went from a sensibility or taste, to an aesthetic or cultural economy, to a queer discourse. Cleto himself introduces each section and gives a summary of each reading, tying them together and to his theme for the chapter while also giving the reader a sense of his perspectives on the subject. As Kenneth Williams said (and Cleto quotes in his introduction) “Camp is a great jewel, 22 carats, [sic.]”61 it refracts rather than reflects culture, has many facets, and is created by exclusions rather than inclusions.

Kenneth Williams, quote in Fabio Cleto, “Introduction: Queering the Camp,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Edinburgh University Press, 1999): 1.
Figure 14: Cover of Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, 1999.

DISNEY CONCERT HALL, FRANK GEHRY

Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall is one of the most recognisable buildings in the world… mostly. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is also one of the most recognisable buildings in the world, and to a layperson62 these buildings are so similar as to be easily confused for the other. So, to which building should we award the title of most recognizable? Bilbao came first and the Guggenheim is one of the more recognisable museums, but the Concert Hall has the benefit of being attached to the most famous surname in the world: Disney. Popularity aside, the more Camp of the two is the Disney Concert Hall, due to its dramatic history, façade, and theatricality.

To commemorate her husband Walt Disney, Lillian Disney donated $50 million dollars to the Los Angeles (LA) city in 1987 for a new purpose-built home for the LA Philharmonic Orchestra and as a gift to the city Walt loved and the music and arts he supported throughout his life. For a project of this magnitude proposals were sought from several architects in a design competition, including Frank Gehry. As with Habitat 67 and Safdie, Gehry was an unexpected choice for the project. Within the bustling architecture scene in LA Gehry was considered somewhat of an oddball, saying of his receiving the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal award in 1999 “I never thought I’d get that one. I thought I would be too weird for these guys.”63 At the time of the competition Gehry had not yet achieved the fame and renown Bilbao would grant him and was known mostly for winning the Pritzker Prize in 1989 for his experimental and innovative buildings using low-cost materials64 – not the kind of thing you would expect for a Concert Hall. After his competition presentation Gehry was pulled aside by Disney’s lawyer and told that no building of his would ever be tied to Disney’s name.65 Despite the lawyer’s misgivings, Lillian Disney loved the project for its warm and welcoming entry and its visual connections to the city, and Gehry was chosen for the project.

As the donated $50 million was not sufficient to find the entire project, the City of LA decided to build a large multi-storey carpark underneath the Concert Hall before construction of the building commenced, with the expectation that the city would make back the money using parking fees from visitors to the Concert Hall. Unfortunately, upon completion of the car park the budget was extended and the leadership faltered, and the project was suspended indefinitely pending further funding. During this hiatus Gehry completed a few of his most famous projects, including the Guggenheim in Bilbao. This would prove to be a thorn in his side for the Disney Concert Hall, as due to budget constraints and the client’s newfound love of Bilbao Gehry’s original plan for a curved stone façade was scrapped in favour of a Guggenheim-esque metal façade. Gehry did not like this change, commenting in an interview that stone at night picks up light from the city and is warm and soft, whereas “it’s hard to light metal, it looks like a cheap refrigerator.”66 He eventually agreed to the change when he realised that in the years since he worked on the project there were some parts of the form he wanted to redesign, and if they switched to metal he would have the flexibility in time, budget and material constraints to achieve those changes.

62 And for a few weeks during the course of this thesis, the author.

63 Frank Gehry, interview by Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose, 02 May 1999, https://charlierose.com/videos/ 3416.

64 Michael Webb, “Gehry Stays on the Edge,” El Croquis 117, (El Croquis Editorial, 2003): 35.

65 “10 Buildings That Changed America,” 10 That Changed America, Season 1, Episode 1, (WTTW, 05 December 2013), https://interactive.wttw.com/tenbuildings/walt-disney-concert-hall

66 Frank Gehry, “On the Architecture of LA’s Disney Concert Hall,” interviewed by Thomas Pritzker, Aspen Ideas Festival, (For a.TV, 2009), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZoR6SpmqSQ

The façade of the Disney Concert Hall is often mistaken for the building, rather than simply a drapery concealing the true form. If the clothes make the man, then the façade of the concert hall makes the architecture. Here once again Gehry would disagree with popular opinion, as would many architects trained in a similar school of thought; the architecture is the place where the music happens, and perhaps the stairs, washrooms and foyer which connect them. The façade (while spectacular aesthetically, complicated to design and costly to build) could be removed and the Concert Hall would still be a triumph of architectural design, though it would not be nearly as famous among the general public. Yet particularly for the Campiness of the building this façade is necessary, as it dresses the drab rectangle of the concert hall in its Sunday Best and exposes to the city what beautiful performances are taking place within. The Concert Hall is at its most Camp in those moments where the practicality peeks out from behind the façade. Externally this can be seen where the Café entrance and furniture spill out from under a graceful curve, and to the rear of the building where the noise and lights of a raised highway are separated from the Concert Hall by a single large brick wall. These moments are visible on the interior as well, particularly in the many brass handrails protecting the stairs in the concert hall seating. The inclusion of these rails in such quantity was a subtle (and sassy) nod to the Disney lawyer, who at the onset of the project insisted on a traditional look for the building, including traditional brass railings.67 The choice of interior finishes adds to the Camp of the design by using highly referential materials; the timber panels are Douglas Fir, the same type of wood used to create the body of string instruments, and were included despite a $5 million increase in the budget because of the supposed ties to people’s enjoyment of a performance in a musical venue and seeing timber on the walls.

67 “10 Buildings that Changed America,” (2013).

Figure 15 (previous spread): Disney Concert Hall in the day, 2005.
Figure 16 : A cheap refrigerator? Disney Concert Hall at night, 2004

Another aspect of the façade which makes the Concert Hall so Camp is the theatricality of the shapes, once again referentially designed to mimic the swoops and sways of classical music. The building sits on a somewhat inconspicuous site between busy roads, sandwiched between the more classical Music Centre and the white cube The Broad Museum, surrounded by typical high-rise offices, hotels and apartments. On this plain stage the Disney Concert Hall shines, a glimmering metal sculpture set against the backdrop of the city. Along with the drama of the construction, the drama of the shapes and the drama of going to see a musical performance in a venue like this is the added drama of Gehry’s insistence on perfection. He invited musicians and acoustics specialists68 to consult on the project to produce the best possible acoustics for the Philharmonic orchestra specifically. Gehry also spent time consulting with Manuel Rosales, an organ consultant and tonal designer, to create a unique design for an organ for the hall. Rosales turned down almost every single idea proposed by Gehry as either impossible or unable to produce a beautiful sound, until the project seemed impossible. The organ was completed thanks to a compromised design of a curved wooden pipe, to match the interior of the hall, which the public has nicknamed the French fries. A wonderfully banal and ironic name for one of the most expensive instruments known to man.

Perhaps due to his familiarity with being the outsider, as a Jewish youth in Canada, an architect among artists and an oddball among architects, Gehry was able to toss aside the expectations of normative society and design several genuinely Camp buildings. This link between Camp and the marginal reaction to normative social values (heteronormativity, gender normativity) is clearly demonstrated by Gehry’s work.

68 Minoru Nagata and his protégé Yasuhisa Toyota.
Figure 18: French fries and the concert hall interior, 2013.
Figure 19: Rear brick wall , 2003.
Figure 17: Square plan, 2013.

CONCLUSION

In the beginning this thesis posed the question: Is architecture Camp? Indeed, since the 90’s there have been critics and scholars who have proclaimed the death of Camp in general due to cultural advancements allowing gay people to be queer visibly and negating the need for a secret handshake of style. Others have defended Camp, using examples in film, television, and fashion to demonstrate how Camp is not dead, simply older and wiser; evolving its form to fit in with the times. These critics often cite the belief that Camp is a refraction of mainstream culture, and therefore while it may appear to die along with previous trends it instead adapts to the new trends and perseveres (some have gone so far as to argue that the new stars of Camp are Donald Trump, reality TV and K-Pop idols69). 21st century Camp is a topic for another thesis, however what is clear from this debate is that Camp is constantly changing, and constantly up for debate. This thesis has shown that architecture can be viewed as Camp, using examples from the height of Camp’s popularity as evidence that even architecture has been shaped by queer influences.

Specifically, by focusing on this time period this thesis has shown that early postmodernist architecture is particularly prone to a Camp interpretation due to that style’s similarities with Camp styles. Both are notoriously hard to pin down,70 as both tend to deny the certainties held by mainstream culture.71 As mainstream culture is constantly shifting, particularly in a post-industrial society, this makes it difficult to define either term by strict principles. Both styles contain a referentiality which is not perfectly copied, but instead uses our preconceived ideas about the reference material in a parodic or ironic way to encourage the viewer to see them (and the object using the references) in a new light. Both styles deny the binary way of thinking about the world,72 instead opting to cross binaries or demolish them altogether. On a more aesthetic note, both styles are preoccupied with image, post-modernism through the façade and Camp through the costume or performance of a thing. In post-modernism the façade is designed in such a way that it suggests what is taking place within, in a direct reaction to modernism’s international style of making the façade as empty of meaning as possible to allow for seamless streetscapes and unified cities. As with Camp, a post-modern architecture can take many forms and shapes and be visually disparate within the umbrella term post-modern. There are also no restrictions on what kind of architecture can be post-modern, as is evidenced by the inclusion of Archigram’s imaginative and unrealised projects ranging in scale from a piece of furniture to a city to a drawing (despite their denial of both the labels modernist and post-modernist). Perhaps not all post-modern buildings earn the label Camp; but then again, perhaps not all postmodern buildings earn the label post-modern.

69 Spencer Kornhaber, On Divas: Persona, Pleasure, Power, (New York: Zando, October 2023), and Baker, Camp!, 238-66

70 Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History, (Routledge, 1995), https://books.google.com.au/ books?id=3FEiEqi060MC.

71 “Post-Modernism”, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, 4 ed. (Oxford University Press, 2021), https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191918742.001.0001/acref9780191918742-e-3632?rskey=PzXD1G&result=4404.

72 Meg-John Barker and Alex Iantaffi, Life Isn’t Binary: On Being Both, Beyond and In-Between, (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019).

The research method used to come to this conclusion was appropriate for the information available at the onset of this thesis. Using the Camp reader as a focal point for study allowed for a narrower focus than was originally planned and provided the opportunity for a deeper analysis and more thorough study of the genesis of Camp. Using a staged approach to research, with an analysis of Camp first followed by the choice of case studies, led to the discovery of post-modernism as similar to Camp in style and approach, narrowing the focus of the thesis further and completing the framework within which this thesis plays.

As mentioned earlier in this thesis further research is required to assess the time period of 2000 to present day in regard to the changes in Camp theory, as well as how it relates to 2000’s and later architecture. It would also be interesting to see how a Camp analysis could be applied to buildings which predate the notion of Camp, and to apply the modern or current definition to the case studies used in this thesis to see if their Camp holds up to the whims of time. It would also be useful to compare the analysis of Cleto’s “Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject” to “Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality” by David Bergmann. As with the Camp reader, Bergmann’s work collects essays related to the defining of Camp and contains some essays not found in Cleto’s reader. Bergmann’s work was unavailable to the author during this research and so was unable to be used as a reference, but would provide an interesting comparison to Cleto’s reader, especially as it was published six years earlier and appears to be targeted to a more general audience rather than Cleto’s academically-targeted reader.

In summary, this thesis provides a working definition for Camp Architecture: Camp Architecture (Noun) – Any architecture which someone (not necessarily an architect) with a decent understanding of camp principles labels as Camp.

This definition is, admittedly, not particularly helpful. It requires a definition of camp principles, for one, and probably also a definition of architecture and “decent understanding”. However, this flexibility is necessary for any attempt to define Camp, as Sontag herself would tell you: “Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea... [sic.]”73 The purpose of this thesis was not to strictly define Camp or architectural Camp, but to open up the possibility of a Camp Architecture which has previously been left aside. In a way, this thesis is an advertisement encouraging architects to consider their work and the precedents they study through a Camp lens.

73 Sontag, “Notes on “Camp”,” 54.

The reason for this thesis/advertisement is to demonstrate how queer influences have impacted architectural practice, especially in the counter-cultural decades of the 1960’s to the 1990’s. By using Camp as a tool for analysis it is possible to separate the requirement for direct influence (a queer person being involved in the project) from the study of queer architecture, in much the same way that male homosexual influences were made unnecessary to Camp production despite the role they played in initially shaping Camp. This will increase the scope of queer architectural research and open new possibilities for assessing precedents in architectural practice. This thesis also demonstrates that architecture has its place in the canon of Camp and allows for further studies into what a Camp Architecture would look like.

FOR ARCHITECTURE, THE PHRASE “THIS IS CAMP” SHOULD BE SEEN AS SYNONYMOUS WITH THE PHRASE

“THIS

HAS BEEN INFLUENCED BY QUEER CULTURE”.

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Jay Yarrow, “Research Design Diagram,” 2024.

Figure 2: Jay Yarrow, “Systematic Literature Review Diagram,” 2024.

Figure 3: Jay Yarrow, “List of Camp Characteristics Diagram,” 2024.

Figure 4: United Air Lines “eBay itemphoto frontphoto back,” Public Domain, (1956), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23424600

Figure 5: John Douglas,“CALLING CARD OF MARQUIS OF QUEENSBURY”, 1895, Paper, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Somdomite.jpg

Figure 6: Jerry Spearman, “Habitat 67,” courtesy of Resnicow and Associates, https:// architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/happy-50th-habitat-67/

Figure 7: Canadian Architecture Collection, McGill University, “Interior Photograph,” copyright 2001.

Figure 8: Canadian Architecture Collection, McGill University, “Axonometrics, floor plans, apartment section (for presentation?); 8.5x11, 11x14, 17x22," (1965). https://cac. mcgill.ca/moshesafdie/habitat/showplans.htm

Figure 9: Thomas Ledl, “Habitat 67,” (2017) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=61578410

Figure 10: Peter Cook, “Instant City in a Field, Typical set-up,” (Los Angeles 1969), https://www.archigram.net/portfolio.html

Figure 11: Peter Cook and Ron Herron, “Instant City Steps,” Archigram The Book (2018), photograph by Jay Yarrow (2024).

Figure 12: Ron Herron, “Instant City,” Archigram The Book (2018). https://www. dezeen.com/2020/05/13/archigram-instant-city-peter-cook-video-interview-vdf/

Figure 13: Diana Jowsey, “Cover Art,” (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999).

Figure 14: “Cover Art”, Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Edited by Fabio Cleto. (Edinburgh University Press, 1999). http://www.jstor. org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxcrp56.

Figure 15: Carol M. Highsmith, “Walt Disney Concert Hall,” available from United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs (digital ID pplot.13725.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4205549

Figure 16: Aaron Logan, “Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles at night,” http:// www.lightmatter.net/gallery/Night/disneyhall5

Figure 17: Gehry Associates, “Roof Plan,” ArchDaily, https://www.archdaily.com/ 441358/ad-classics-walt-disney-concert-hall-frank-gehry

Figure 18: Daniel Hartwig, “Auditorium of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles,” https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61997445

Figure 19: Hisao Suzuki, “Disney Concert Hall,” El Croquis (2003), photograph by Jay Yarrow (2024)

C A M P A M P M P P C A M P C A M P C A M C C A

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