The Baths for Queer Defense and [De]liberation
Located at Avenida Universidad in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, the project confronts the policies of religious institutions, bars and coffee shops with a history of aggression against the LGBTQIA+ community. This project confronts its context with a peripheral wall that exhibits pieces of urinals on its facade and at the same time protects the non-normative and diverse bodies that inhabit the space. Within this wall, inclusive bathrooms, jacuzzis, showers, relaxation and deliberation pools, nooks for gender performativities, terraces to sunbathe those bodies that society asks not to be recognized coexist. In addition, in this project, a social media observation tower is erected to seek transphobic “posts” in order to defend trans people, thus reversing the roles of surveillance. This project responds to an investigation that problematizes transphobic discourses on inclusive baths at the University of Puerto Rico and spatializes alternative and diverse ways of living and expressing the gender.