Abstract
Memory and experiences of the built environment cannot be registered, defined, or represented without an understanding of the complex negotiations that occur between the layered relationships of bodies, architecture, and identity. However, existing tools of architecture, including practices, methodologies, and language, have contributed to concealing the voices and experiences of marginalized communities within the built environment. In the decolonizing of architecture, discourse must expand its theoretical positioning and languages of process and critique to include informed intersections with existing disciplines outside of architecture that use systems of thinking and repair in alignment with pluralities of lived experiences. Informed by textiles, as negotiations between the trajectories of bodies and architecture, centering identity, culture, and experience, the paper presents a new form of spatialized memory through the making of textile responses that move from private to public atmospheres, seeking to preserve and celebrate authentic lived experiences and cultural identities.
Keywords
Cultural Identity, Making, Textile theory, Architectural Memory
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2916
Citation
Mimms Scavnicky, K., and Sosa Fontaine, A. (2026) Spatial Tapestries: Negotiations between bodies, experience, and architecture, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2916
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Spatial Tapestries: Negotiations between bodies, experience, and architecture
Memory and experiences of the built environment cannot be registered, defined, or represented without an understanding of the complex negotiations that occur between the layered relationships of bodies, architecture, and identity. However, existing tools of architecture, including practices, methodologies, and language, have contributed to concealing the voices and experiences of marginalized communities within the built environment. In the decolonizing of architecture, discourse must expand its theoretical positioning and languages of process and critique to include informed intersections with existing disciplines outside of architecture that use systems of thinking and repair in alignment with pluralities of lived experiences. Informed by textiles, as negotiations between the trajectories of bodies and architecture, centering identity, culture, and experience, the paper presents a new form of spatialized memory through the making of textile responses that move from private to public atmospheres, seeking to preserve and celebrate authentic lived experiences and cultural identities.