City of Today: Development for Feminine Urbanism

A proposal for a fresh urban perspective, the City of Today is a product of the Old Girls Club.  It is a series of presentations/drawings/performances/historic fictions where clients are asked to parti

City of Today: Development for Feminine Urbanism

A proposal for a fresh urbanism, the City of Today is a product of the Old Girls Club.  It is a series of presentations/drawings/performances/historic fictions where clients are asked to participate as investors, architects, planners, critics, philosophers and visionaries.  Toting a hardhat and a clipboard punch list, groups of ten are invited to engage in an investment pitch PowerPoint presentation of the history of feminism as directly related to urbanism, and then tour vacant, fecund construction sites around New York City with our female urban planners as Department of Buildings approved plans are redlined to be implemented on site.  From Queen Nefertiti’s oversight of the building of Ahketaten City, Egypt in 1380 bce, to Catherine Bauer’s City of Tomorrow/New Deal plan for housing in America in 1937, to Monica Bonvicini and Zaha Hadid’s view of an architectural future, the documentation of women’s role in society as Master Planners is developed despite their lack of position placement in Western cities like London, Paris, New York, and Rome.  Reclaiming the didactic as a drawing measure, the AutoCAD-generated construction documents on vellum are marked by participants as an actual construction set. This action places the responsibility of the consumer onto the art space as an analytical breeding ground.  Participants are also given building tampons in case of emergency.  An unrealized proposal for a new way to approach our cities, this project asks questions to the patriarchic structure of our built environment, and considers the psychological, commercial, and social implications of our cities and their history.

-Coralina Meyer 5/25/2011