Queer Encounters in the Archive

Abstract

The chapter contains a report of the ongoing research into queer voices and architecture at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, which holds the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning. After introducing the National Collection, the authors critically examine how its internal power dynamics and mechanisms privilege certain voices while marginalizing others, followed by a brief overview of earlier ‘queering’ initiatives. In the second part of this chapter, the authors present a selection from the National Collection of three post-war architects who resisted the sexual norms and expectations of their times: Onno Greiner, Dick van Woerkom and Wim den Boon. Their incomplete histories are told through the traces of queer desires and lifestyles which haunt their archives. By discussing their autobiographical house designs, the authors aim to foreground practices of queer worldmaking in the National Collection that let us imagine queer ways of inhabiting, dwelling, and living, while reassessing the history of Dutch modern architecture and some of its tenets related to transparancy, spatial concepts and interior design.