Rethinking Architecture from a Gender Perspective: Creating Coworking Spaces Free from University Harassment at Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí

Abstract

This research proposal aims to analyze the different articulations between Architecture Studies, Sustainability (Climate Change and Mitigation), and Gender Studies. All these concepts anchored in analytical frameworks that are useful for rethinking the utility of these approaches from an academic perspective. In this sense, rethinking university spaces and collaborative workspaces through the articulation of gender in architecture requires adopting a critical perspective that reveals how social structures related to gender, climate change, and social structure are reflected and reproduced in physical space, transcending a merely technical and functional vision to understand architecture as a cultural construct that perpetuates systems of domination and inequalities.

Within this framework, analytical concepts and tools emerge from various sources, highlighting the notion that space is both a reflection and constructor of social and gender order, as proposed by Bourdieu (1977). First, physical space functions as a symbolization of social space, where university spaces are not neutral but manifest social hierarchies and distances, including those of gender, making these differences appear natural or inevitable due to their inscription in culture and history. Furthermore, issues such as climate change and power, as well as symbolic violence, are exercised in these spaces subtly, through structures that interpellate and naturalize subordination, in a process that socializes occupants into these dynamics and reinforces power relations. The struggle for the appropriation of space is also central, as those with greater capital (economic, cultural, or social) dominate and monopolize privileged spaces, leaving others in positions of physical and symbolic relegation.