For a long time, gay architects had to keep their private lives hidden from the public eye. An anthology profiles 41 of them.
Stephan Faulhaber
Uwe Bresan, Wolfgang Voigt, Schwule Architekten. Verschwiegene Biografien vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Gay Architects. Silent Biographies from the 18th to the 20th Century, Deutsch/English, Wasmuth Verlag, Berlin 2022 → order now
Secrets and self-protection
Silent Biographies from the 18th to the 20th Century’is the subtitle of the book Gay Architects by Uwe Bresan and Wolfgang Voigt. This secrecy is to be understood and lamented in two ways: in retrospect, keeping one’s sexuality secret served as a necessary means of self-protection for gay architects against the threat of punishment; today, this is reflected in a censored account of architectural history. Here, homosexuality is still regarded as a stain – even in the case of deceased figures – and remains unmentioned. By contrast, interpreting artistic works in the context of their creators’ private lives has long been standard practice in the history of art, music, film and literature. The editors of this book are two trailblazers who have now come together to break the silence and bring gay architects into the spotlight.
Architect Patrick Gwynne built The Homewood in Esher, Surrey County, in 1938, and it served as his home throughout his life/ © The National Trust
Queer reading
Wolfgang Voigt, Director of the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt am Main, and Bresan, former deputy editor-in-chief of the architecture journal AIT, have for some time been engaged in the analysis and research of the legacies of gay figures in architecture from the past 300 years – from the Baroque period through to post-war modernism. Deciphering the often veiled formulations and neutralising facades required a ‘queer reading’ of the historical sources. In the form of 41 exemplary biographies, the two architectural historians have compiled and shared the wealth of knowledge gained from their decades of research across a total of 304 pages. To understand the relevance of this remarkable work and its subsequent classification as a long-overdue addition – or rather, a correction – to a deliberately incomplete history of architecture, the following brief digression is necessary.
Architect Chen Kuen Lee with an unknown friend, 1930s / © Photographer unknown, private collection.
Exclusion
Architecure was, for a long time, a male-dominated field like few others. For years, emancipatory movements have been campaigning to dismantle this structurally entrenched male dominance. And they have been successful. As a result, there are now more women than men studying at German architecture schools. The number of female lecturers and professors is also rising steadily. However, describing architecture as a purely male-dominated field is somewhat imprecise: it would be more accurate to describe it as a supposedly heteronormative male-dominated field. This is because almost 50 per cent of gay staff in architectural practices regularly witness or are even victims of homophobic remarks from superiors, colleagues and business partners. According to a 2015 study by the British Architects’ Journal, only one in three gay architects is open about their sexual identity in the workplace. During site visits - a regular part of their daily working lives - nine out of ten of those affected fear hostility and exclusion. Consequently, coming out remains one of the most difficult moments in their professional lives.
Fonthill Abbey, built around 1800, served as a secluded residence for the English eccentric William Beckford / © Delineations of Fonthill and its abbey by John Rutter
Rethinking history
It is to Voigt and Bresan’s credit that the available information on the life of Alfred Roth, who was responsible for the construction management of Le Corbusier’s architectural icon in Stuttgart’s Weißenhofsiedlung – has finally been made public in its entirety. At last, the aesthetic and informative aspects of the fairy-tale-like, 90-metre-high tower at William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey form a unified whole. And at last, the bold colours in Luis Barragán’s expressive architecture unleash all the Enlightenment-inspired impulses inherent in them. This makes the pretexts used to avoid publicly addressing the sexuality of the deceased seem all the more simplistic. The frequent argument that this would not have been in the architects’ interests is, on the one hand, presumptuous – as if the denial of their own sexual identity, the game of hide-and-seek, and the persistent fear of imprisonment, social exclusion and professional ruin had been in their best interests – and, on the other hand, betrays the persistence of heterosexist attitudes amongst seemingly tolerant people.
Pioneer buildings of the New Objectivity architecture in Switzerland: Alfred Roth's Dolder apartment buildings in Zurich, 1930s / @ Wolfgang Voigt
„Entscheidend ist allein die Qualität der Architektur“, wurde in der Vergangenheit oft als Argument gebracht. Ebendies war aber über Jahrhunderte hinweg nie der Maßstab, was dieses Buch eindrücklich erklärt. Und er ist es in weiten Teilen der Welt nach wie vor nicht, was die Bedeutung der beigefügten Übersetzung ins Englische hervorhebt. Irrelevant sind die bisher zurückgehaltenen Details zur sexuellen Identität mitnichten. Besonders deutlich wird dies bei der Gestaltung der eigenen Wohnhäuser der vorgestellten „Schwulen Architekten“, bei denen sich Tendenzen einer kollektiven Entwurfssprache äußern, die sich auf die ursprünglichste Funktion der Architektur beruft – nämlich die Trennung von der Umwelt und der Schutz vor sozialen Einflüssen. Dies zeichnet sich bereits an introvertierten Fassaden ab, die kaum Öffnungen aufweisen.
A residential building as a table: the villa with studio by architect Hans Broos on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, built in 1971. The subtropical garden was designed for him by the likewise homosexual landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx / @ Wolfgang Voigt
Die Gärten von Barragán
Rundum von Mauern umschlossene Gärten sind Barragáns Markenzeichen und ein Beispiel par excellence. In seinem Wohnhaus, das er Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Mexico City errichtete, erlaubten spiegelnde Kugeln dem späteren Pritzker-Preisträger die visuelle Kontrolle über Eingänge, die sich hinter ihm befanden. So kam das eigene Haus häufig einem Zufluchtsort gleich. Und auch wenn – oder gerade weil – sich viele Auftragsarbeiten, abseits ihres herausragenden Wertes, nicht von der Norm unterscheiden, so brechen sie mit dem Klischee, dass der Architektur schwuler Männer etwas vermeintlich Feminines anhänge; dass diese sich als dekorreich, mondän und oberflächenfixiert etikettieren ließe.
Voigt und Bresan geben schwulen Architekten aus der Vergangenheit eine Stimme und ebnen mit ihrer Pionierarbeit den Weg für neue Narrative. Damit unterstützen sie auch Architekten, die gegenwärtig und in der Zukunft ihre Homosexualität offen und stolz – „out and proud“ – ihren Zeitgenossen präsentieren.
Uwe Bresan, Wolfgang Voigt
Schwule Architekten. Verschwiegene Biografien vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert.
Gay Architects. Silent Biographies from the 18th to the 20th Century
Deutsch/English
22,9 cm x 14,8 cm, 304 pages
Wasmuth Verlag, Berlin 2022
