My Garden's Boundaries are the Horizon: A Case Study of Queer Gardens

Abstract

This course aims to raise awareness about the necessity to look at architectural history through a non-normative lens. The participants will be invited to explore the topic of queer gardens via the review of exemplary case studies. We will discuss how the shape of those gardens have been influenced by their owner’s personality and argue if such spaces share a common denominator.

Objective

Participants will conduct an analysis of case studies through the means of archival and iconographical research. They will also redraw the gardens in plans and sections in order to understand the specificity of those spaces. They will be invited to sharpen their critical thinking and debate the topic of queer gardens: Can one define the spatial criteria of such a typology? Does such a genre even exist? The outcome of this weekly elective course will be a presentation of the selected garden along with pictures, plans, section, a brief descriptive text and a bibliography list.

Content

“My garden's boundaries are the horizon” (1) is one of the first sentence used by Derek Jarman, the late English artist, filmmaker and gay rights activist in the book Modern Nature to describe his small garden located in Dungeness, south Kent. The diary depicts Jarman’s artist life, his ordeal dealing with AIDS as well as his love for gardening. The word garden comes from the etymology “to guard” and is by definition an enclosed outdoor space. What a contradiction then to describe a garden, as Jarman’s does, by the absence of its limits! Dungeness has emerged over time as an exemplary reference of queer garden, but does such a typology even exists? And if it does, what are its characteristics? “Growing up queer means experiencing the destabilising absence of broad and accessible queer history”.(2) Architecture as well as landscape architecture are far from exempt from this reality and there are little stories about queer landscapes to be found in the textbooks. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, we will study the gardens of openly queer personalities of the 20th and 21st century. The case studies will include, but not limited to, the followings: - Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo, Mexico - Dungeness, Derek Jarman, United Kingdom - Majorelle Garden, Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé, Morocco - Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West, United Kingdom - Temple de l'Amitié, Natalie Clifford Barney, Paris - Villa Gamberaia, Florence Blood and Princess Ghyka, Italy (1) Modern Nature, The Journals of Derek Jarman, Derek Jarman, Paperback, 2018 (2)Queer spaces, an Atlas of LGBTQ+ Places and Stories, Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell (Eds), Routledge, 2022

Resources