Resistance training: redesigning the North American fitness club to challenge dominant narratives of sex, gender, and sexuality

Abstract

North American building design is predicated on the notion that there are only two sexes, genders, and sexualities. With the former presumed to be the biological determinant of the latter, male and female are constructed as anatomical, behavioural, and aesthetic opposites. Queer theory and gender studies literature, however, articulate embodiments, expressions and desires that are neither binary nor fixed. This design seeks to acknowledge these alternative inhabitations by appropriating an elite Winnipeg building, the Manitoba Club, for use as a gender diverse fitness club. Exploring concepts of the body, queer space, and deconstruction, this practicum design questions the dominance of binary discourses.