Understanding the role of gender in the cultural construction of public and private space
This thesis asserts that the role of gender is significant in the experience of the built environment and comes into sharp focus when explored through a comparative cross-cultural framework. This is most evident when the cultural construction of public and private space in certain contexts encourages, discourages, or excludes women from participating in them, or else demands compliance with rigid codes of conduct in exchange for access.
With such gendered spaces in place in our cities, a ‘dis-belonging’, particularly for women in public spaces, can follow. Drawing upon personal experience of public spaces in Lahore and London, this thesis project sets out to illustrate the contrast between men’s and women’s experiences, and the various cultural codes which are followed. Film is employed as a medium to represent the experiential dimension and auto-ethnographic aspect of the thesis, in an attempt to capture the reality of a subject area which so often is merely theorised in architectural discourse.
