Espacialidade da sexualidade. Lugares de desejo dissidente. Apontamentos sobre a cidade do Porto

Abstract

This dissertation is a research on the relationship between architecture and sexuality, within a study of a social and cultural control, and consequently of the practices that resist it. It's about space as a driving force of desire and thus, how architecture has been a tool (or even a consequence) that controls behaviors, creating stereotypes of performances in our society.The methodology used is grounded on a study that begins in the political-historical relationship of space/place with sexuality and how it's built according to power, gender and identity. It argues how biopolitics associated with spaces work together in the management of human relations, demonstrating how architecture is the physical design of a place that is a substantial part of our erotic expression. Considering architecture as something that follows prefix norms and techniques that govern bodies (and their desires), consequently allowing for a respective subversion of use. The work devolps into a search for spaces and places that can be representative of certain practices considered subversive within the spatial diversity that is modern society, while simultaneously working on an analysis and cataloging that aims to understand the multiple invisible systems of resistance.In an attempt to materialize and ground the theoretical development over the nature and design of spaces of dissident sexual desire, the work is brought closer to the city of Porto in a parallel ethnographical exercise. Working on identifying and analyzing some public spaces (cruising, street prostitution), as well as private spaces of an erotic economy (saunas, sexclubs, darkrooms, pornographic cinemas, etc) and, in this way, mapping a possible sexography that underlies the results of the study.