We are two architectural historians in Germany working in architecture communication, one in a museum and the other at a magazine. We have noticed a conspicuous deficit in our discipline: why does art historical research inform us about the sexual orientation of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andy Warhol, but architectural historians rarely mention the homosexuality of architects who were active in the past? Why does architectural history remain silent when art history is so voluble?
In Germany today, heterosexual colleagues working in architecture and architectural culture, more men than women, become irritated when we talk about our project. Though well meaning, the most frequently articulated objection to our project, usually voiced by those who consider themselves to be at the pinnacle of sophistication concerning gender issues, asserts that the quality of a design is paramount. A work of architecture must speak for itself, and all other aspects of the project, such as the person who created the design and his or her sexual orientation, are not relevant. We don’t agree.
Since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the second half of the 20th century, more gay men and lesbians have become more open about their private lives. Indeed, in many European nations as well as the United States, marriage between homosexuals is now legal.
During the 1990s openly gay mayors managed major cities like Hamburg and Berlin and the Foreign Minister, who was in office from 2009 to 2013, made no secret of his sexual orientation. Increasingly neoliberal economic policies required many of the larger architecture offices in Germany to not only present their architecture but to publicise their leading architects. One would expect that the time is right for gay architects to be more forthcoming about their sexuality. Yet no one dares to make this step. Although we no longer have to fear criminal laws, many gay architects remain protective – and not without good reason – about this aspect of their identity.
One reason for this reluctance to be forthcoming about one’s private sphere is the conservative attitude on the part of many investors in the building industry, which continues to be dominated by an ideal of normative masculinity. The same clients who admire artists and their bohemian lifestyles, and are not bothered by the sexuality of Andy Warhol or Keith Haring when they acquire works by them, value architects differently. In their eyes, these professionals should first and foremost use their money prudently to create valuable real estate. The fear of being rejected by potential clients is certainly one motivation on the part of gay architects who prefer to hide their sexuality. They fear that clients assume that they are unable to manage complex projects and oversee a large staff, or that they lack the personal integrity that is necessary to produce a work of architecture.
Although we glean these assumptions from our personal experiences of the challenges faced by gay architects practising in Germany today, it is difficult, if not downright impossible, to find public statements that affirm the situation we have just described. It remains an unanswered question if the well-founded angst that has plagued generations of homosexual practitioners is still relevant today. Indeed, investors who are active in project development and the construction industries are also a part of German society, which has made great strides in recent years to eliminate prejudice and misconception about gay people, and which has become more open to diversity and difference.
How do gay architects in Germany today feel about being ‘outed’ at work? Only the UK possesses fairly trustworthy statistics about the intersection of architects’ private and professional lives. According to a survey carried out by the British Architects’ Journal in 2015, 72% of LGBT architects were at ease when other colleagues knew about their sexuality. That ratio fell to 29% when they considered business partners and clients, and 12% when workers and related personnel on building sites were taken into account.1 Similar statistics are most probably applicable in other European countries.
Parallel to the reluctance on the part of practising architects to reveal the nature of their private lives, architectural historians still consider it a taboo to talk openly about the sexuality of historical figures in architecture, even though this is no longer an issue in the other arts. Indeed, throughout central Europe today, sexuality is an accepted legitimate framework through which to analyse literature, music and art. Yet in Germany, it is inconceivable to consider architecture from this perspective.
Architectural historians are just as reticent as architects. They favour discretion when considering the present day as well as the past, a position that leads to absurd discrepancies. Studies of notable architects in history, who obviously did not conform to heterosexual norms, typically shroud their private lives in mystery. Here a taboo is reiterated, as if the decriminalisation of the past two decades had not taken place.
When considering some of the most well known protagonists of modern architectural history, homosexuality continues to be treated like an unspeakable stigma, even when their ‘outing’ can no longer do them harm. Typically, these architects are portrayed as lonely geniuses, who devoted their existence to architecture and, because of their devotion to work, had no time for a private life. This is especially true for those architects working in a cultural context that was shaped by Catholicism, such as Antoni Gaudì (1852–1926), Jože Plecnik (1872–1957) and Luis Ramiro Barragán Morfín (1902–1988), all of whom seemingly led the lives of celibate design virtuosos. In the Protestant camp, Fritz Schumacher (1869–1947) is a member of this group.2 From 1909 to 1933 he was the chief city architect of Hamburg, a protagonist of northern German brick modernism, and a prolific author who wrote about contemporary architecture and urban design. It seems safe to assume that many of these ‘selfless saints’ of architecture, and certainly Barragán and Schumacher, were carefully shielding their homosexuality.
We are not the first to cast a queer view on the profession of architecture. In Germany, beginning in the 1980s, feminist architects pioneered the way. Nevertheless, the manner in which the homosexual man reacts – and continues to respond – to bias and prejudice is more complicated. Even though he deviates from the normative masculine ideal, he is a man, and his sexual orientation is not immediately visible. In the past, as long as a gay architect kept his sexual life hidden behind an impenetrable facade, nothing stood in the way of his professional success.
Let’s start with some historical facts: the past was synonymous with the persecution of homosexual deviance, which in Europe and North America was punishable by death until the 18th century and then by imprisonment. Under National Socialism, laws against homosexuality were exacerbated. In West Germany, the infamous Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalised homosexuality, remained in effect until 1969 before being gradually modified until its abolition in 1994. However, in more than a few nations around the world, the persecution endures.
In the past, the integration of homosexual architects into society and their economic existence was constantly under threat. As a means of protection, gay architects developed defensive strategies and created discreet networks. This need for secrecy and identification with a clandestine group shaped how they conducted their lives and influenced their relationships with their fellow architects and clients. It goes without saying that a tension arose between their professional lives as architects and their private lives as gay men, and the work of many homosexual architects deserves greater scrutiny from this perspective.
Research into the lives of gay male architects requires another approach towards architectural history and especially the use of source materials. To identify the traces of the outliers we have in mind, it is necessary to give a ‘queer’ reading to surviving documentation and any other extant traces of an architect’s existence. Since we began our research, the list of well known, and even quite famous, homosexual architects who were active in Germany keeps growing longer. Thankfully, those who have come to our attention are not limited to those designers with an excessive interest in style, decoration, and surface articulation – a tired cliché about gay male designers. Naturally such architects existed, but we have also discovered gay architects who gave precedence to construction, who were imaginative designers, or advocates of regional styles with carefully crafted details, as well as modernists who were committed to Neue Sachlichkeit or socially engaged urban design.
Concerning our architectural-historical method, our investigation does not rely upon a systematic investigation of the typical materials that are found in many architects’ estates, like letters or diaries, as these figures usually did everything in their power to hide their sexual orientation, and their contemporaries and relatives laboured to eliminate this blemish from their biography. As a matter of course, historians have either graciously overlooked any references to their sexuality or included inferences to it in a cryptic form. Today, the ability to decipher these clues is one possible means to analyse these biographies. When we discover such traces, we start to look beyond an individual’s tightly constructed facade to see what might lie below the surface. It goes without saying that our sources are extremely limited when compared to research about heterosexual architects in normative architectural historical research, which results in more fragmentary, nuanced, and speculative impressions of the individuals we investigate.
Biographies of homosexual architects in the present day and in history prompt the question: is it is possible to detect traces of one’s sexual orientation in one’s built oeuvre and unrealised designs? And, how should this correlation be evaluated? Although we have so far focused this project in Germany, researchers in the United States have pioneered such investigations. Of note is Aaron Betsky, who published Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire3 in 1997 and included numerous examples from Ancient Rome to the present day.
Since the 1990s, related research has been carried out at many large and prestigious American architectural schools and has been supported by the American Institute of Architects. That a professional organisation such as the AIA championed this research relatively early on is closely related to the outbreak of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. Known as the ‘gay disease’, it claimed the lives of many respected and well known members of this professional organisation.
One of architecture’s first and most prominent victims of AIDS, whose death sent shock waves through the American professional ranks, was the highly celebrated New York architect Alan Buchsbaum (1935–1987).4 His clients included numerous stars of the American entertainment industry, including Diane Keaton, Bette Midler and Billy Joel. His death, followed by the deaths of other prominent architects in the US who succumbed to AIDS, demonstrated the impact that such a sickness would have on the profession if this problem continued to be ignored.
The AIDS crisis followed a different path in Germany. In the 1980s, publicly supported self-help organisations were established, and continue to be active in providing assistance and prevention services. Just like their brothers in the US, the emancipated gay community had to fight for these ministrations, but they were able to reach their goal more quickly than the Americans. In the US, the confrontation between the gay community and the state was more aggressive and lasted longer. In Germany, many homosexuals found permanent and meaningful work in AIDS organisations and information centres, which helped bring about the movement’s deradicalisation and paved the way for them to enjoy greater social acceptance.
In Germany, however, discretion was the order of the day when referring to those who died of AIDS. We can only speculate as to how this attitude came into being. As a rule, the German media rarely reports on the sexuality and private affairs of politicians and other prominent people, and usually consults with the person in question when taking such action. As long as a politician does not make a mistake, she or he can have an affair and, in contrast to the UK, does not have to fear that the press will make a scandal out of it. This was the case during the AIDS epidemic; if those who were HIV-positive did not publicly acknowledge their condition, and if their dependants and surviving family members remained silent about the nature of their illness, then the mass media kept it hidden, too.
The story of the Cologne architect Antoine Laroche, who died in 1988, sheds light upon this significantly different way of dealing with architects who were affected by AIDS. In the 1980s, Laroche belonged to the legendary circle of up-and-coming artistic talents based in Cologne, which included the photographers Jeff Wall and Candida Höfer. A posthumous monograph about him, entitled Innenräume [Interior spaces], states that the architect died ‘after a difficult illness’.5 As far as the public was concerned, it appeared that no German architect had ever died of AIDs.
In the US, parallel to the spread of the AIDS crisis, research began into the taboo subject of homosexual architects, unearthing surprising results and prompting a fresh examination of architectural history. Robert Twombly’s 1986 biography of Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) performed one early and highly significant outing.6 Sullivan is considered the creator of a new, genuine American architecture that was freed from European roots and whose credo ‘form follows function’ influenced modern architecture on both sides of the Atlantic.
A decade later, in 1996, the legendary Philip Johnson (1906–2005) appeared on the cover of the gay magazine Out. By that point, his story was not a surprise. The 1994 biography Philip Johnson: Life and Work had exposed Johnson’s homosexuality.7 The author, art historian Franz Schulze, devoted as much space to his subject’s lovers as he did to his buildings.
Schulze’s biography appeared in German translation in 1996 and was dismissed as capricious and gossipy. According to one reviewer, Wolfgang Pehnt, the milestones in Johnson’s professional life were ‘overshadowed by names, events, scandal’. Other reviewers expressed their amazement that the ‘four Mrs Johnsons’ and the architect’s other amorous encounters were exposed in such a public fashion.
On a Saturday afternoon in November – 14 November 2009, to be precise – the authors of this chapter organised a public conference in Hamburg under the title ‘Queer Spaces’. The official sponsor was the Hamburg Architecture Salon and the architecture magazine AIT, based in Stuttgart. The editorial board of AIT saw this event as an opportunity to introduce issues related to homosexuality and the architecture profession to the public at large. Because many of their readers worked in interior design, where many gay architects are traditionally employed, the publication also wanted to strengthen their bond with these customers.
The speakers, who hailed from Germany, Holland and Austria and included historians who lectured on gay architects in history, touched on themes such as gay architects practising in the 18th century; on gay spaces in cities and how they are used and acquire meanings; and the typology of gay bars, with their spatial gradations between entrance, bar, and the ‘dark room’.
We wanted a gay architect to talk about his everyday experiences in a typical office and to join the other speakers for a panel discussion at the close of the event. However, it was almost impossible to find a volunteer who would agree to out himself as a homosexual architect at this conference. In the end, Dyonis Ottl, one of the directors of the Munich-based architectural office Hild+K, agreed to take on this task and his courage must be praised explicitly. The crowd of more than 70 visitors included many older architects who were grateful to attend such a professional event and were proud to out themselves there.
Through orchestrating this conference, our goal was to break the silence engulfing queer architects and to introduce the kind of discussion that would normally take place on the other side of the Atlantic. We have to emphasise, however, that we were not that successful in achieving this goal, even though a number of journalists were in attendance and wrote interesting reports that appeared in architectural publications and the daily press.8 Nevertheless, the Federal Chamber of Architects thought this forum was important enough to send their managing director to observe the goings on.
In the future, diversity will be a leitmotif that will profoundly impact society. It will shape public spaces in our cities, and how we organise and use our workplaces, educational venues, and cultural institutions. Queer architects are not looking at diversity from the outside; they experience it every day as they move between the protected space of private life and the complications they negotiate in their professional life. At the very least, architects who openly deal with being queer may be able to contribute a special sensitivity towards identifying adequate solutions for rendering diverse societies equitable places for all.
There are highly successful gay architects who are currently practising here but, up to this point in time, none have been brave enough to proclaim their sexual identity beyond the private sphere. Only a leading gay architect, who is not afraid of the consequences of being outed, is an appropriate role model for his contemporaries and for future generations of homosexual architects.
Our current study about gay architects in history is intended to support this future. By retrieving forgotten or buried biographies from the darkness of architectural history, and by putting them forward as role models for those present-day gay architects who desire to keep their sexuality closeted, we hope that our brothers will take pride in themselves, their identity, and learn about the history of all those whose sexuality matched their own. For us, this is the value of our research and, most importantly, what we hope to achieve.