History museum and archive of the lesbian and gay community of New York City

Abstract

This thesis is an exercise in responsibility regarding my actions as an architect. It is based upon the belief that architecture is a product conveying culture. While architecture can convey culture, it also has the potential to shape and facilitate change q in culture. Therefore, one can view the architect as more than a technician, making architecture stand and work properly, or an artist, concerned with the aesthetic/architectonic qualities of architecture, but rather as an active entity who can both convey and change cultural values through the built environment. The struggle in this thesis regarding responsibility has been to make my role more than an active entity in culture, but a consciously active entity in culture. Since I have long viewed culture as a political product and one's existence in culture as a political act, then one’s responsibility as an architect could be to make architecture as the conscious embodiment of a political ideology. For me, feminism is the political ideology, and Liberative Architecture is the conscious embodiment.