Briefly on Walking

As a genderqueer woman and a practicing architect, the realities of how architecture manifests and reinforces dominant social and po-litical power structures [on my body] is inescapable. And while it is fairly easy to find communities of people who would like to speak about the relationships between capitalism/colonialism/imperialism and architecture, the dialog becomes sparse when the subjects of gender, class, and race are introduced. Issues conveniently consid-ered ‘special interests’ despite the fact that they affect a majority of the population... though because of the social/educational ‘cost’ of becoming an architect, not much of the population actively designing buildings. And so it is inevitable that these ‘interests’ will be regarded as secondary and possibly selfish, when compared to the ‘larger’ demons like unregulated ‘capitalist development.’