Queering Mormon Space:
Blurring Suburbia
Harvard GSD Studio, spring 2022
Instructor: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
In a radical studio called Moratorium on Construction, I selected a familiar site and focused on a global issue: exponential resource consumption.
Having lived with the experience of growing up Mormon and queer, I used that lens to question heteronormative suburban habits that characterize sprawling American development. The “Law of Consecration”, a historical Mormon doctrine, called for a radical communal lifestyle that, if implemented today, could illuminate improvements in justice and equity.
Diagnosis
Case Study: A Collective Scenario
Local Potential
Block Reallocation
Key Facility Changes
Resources of a Dwelling Today
Resources of a Collective Dwelling
Interrupting Levittown’s Pervasion
Outline:
Diagnosis
At the rate of approx. 900,000 single-family homes built annually (US Census Bureau) on an average .25-acre lot, the equivalent of four new cities the size of Boston, are constructed annually in the US. A theoretical line exists where we can consume less than the earth can replenish, but current systems of construction and lifestyle far exceed that, with technology and “innovation” exacerbating rather than reconciling the difference. Radical, new ways of thinking are required.
A moratorium on construction can interrupt the harmful trend, giving time to restructure the relationship with our environment.
Case Study:
A Collective Scenario
Early Mormons were devoted to their new religion in the 1830s, so much so that they experimented with collective living, “imparting their substance unto the lord” (42:31 Doctrine & Covenants). Mormon doctrine describes this ‘higher’ Law of Consecration, first instituted in 1831 but soon after discontinued, where every worldly possession was given to the church to be redistributed as needed. What was once radical has since been abandoned, with private land ownership and resource depletion overruling all else—a global trait.
This law is to be reinstated in the future with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but what would this actually look like spatially?
Church leadership first considered this question when they laid out the “Plat of Zion” as a template for every city built in their migration west from 1833 in Ohio to the 1860s in Utah. They centrally located multiple blocks of communal “temples” where not only religious activity took place but also storehouses of communal resources would be centers of distribution.
In a potential “Second Coming Out,” I consider a single 10-acre block in Wellsville, Utah. I explore the possibilities of what this collective scenario could look like to support more diverse lifestyles than the current suburban experience does.
Plat and Explanation of Plat of the City of Zion, [Kirtland Township, Geauga Co., OH], ca. June 25 1833; text and drawings in handwriting of Frederick G. Williams; one page; CHL.
Local Potential
Wellsville, Utah, is nestled directly below mountains, where water is relatively plentiful in a state with an average rainfall of only 9 inches per year. “Shares” of this precious resource are distributed equitably with a careful weekly schedule. This mechanism of collective resource management indicates the ability to consider other resources in a similar manner, but current individualistic habits stand in the way.
Block Reallocation
Under-utilized land and structures left over from a time of greater “self-sufficiency” include barns, outbuildings, and garages that each can be re-purposed for communal facilities such as libraries, group kitchens, and diverse housing typologies.
Key Facility Changes
Block Scale
Convert existing barns/sheds into communal spaces.
Locate food production near communal centers (gardens, greenhouse, communal kitchen, etc.).
Restrict vehicle access to only the block corners near new urbanized clusters rather than to each dwelling.
Designate specialization of urbanized corners depending on the context (i.e., public garden, repair center, education facilities, and commercial center).
Locate mail rooms and shared laundry areas in each block corner facility.
Remove tree species that rely upon heavy irrigation (due to desert climate), but preserve all other adapted species.
Dwelling Clusters
Convert former garages into additional dwellings.
Preserve existing houses to remain as dwellings, but kitchens, dining rooms, etc., are to be shared with new adjacent dwellings.
Allow for any new insertions between structures to be communal spaces.
Individual Dwellings
Use non-mechanical air conditioning methods, which include natural ventilation and geothermal fields, to reduce energy consumption.
Collect rainwater from roofs to supplement natural irrigation of limited landscaped and agriculture zones.
Re-purposed barn for communal use. Program elements could include a community center, cooperative library, music practice rooms, theater, school, community nursery, historical archive, etc.
Addition of communal programs such as dining, living, or office/study, used to connect existing structures together. Typical stick-frame construction centered on a 4 ft module could allow for flexibility and ease of assembly.
Re-purposed garages for dwellings.
Additional covered walkways connect dwellings and communal spaces for all-season access.
Resources of an
Existing Dwelling
To assess the results of this new shared system, an existing dwelling from today can be compared to a potential collective dwelling.
This existing house sits on a 0.6-acre lot, with 62% of the lot featuring a monoculture lawn, providing little utility beyond an aesthetic of “normalcy.” This fenced property, consisting of a house, garage, lawn, and irrigated vegetation, typically supports 2 to 6 people. Unfortunately, this form of property ownership, lifestyle, and resulting costs can alienate elderly, homosexual, non-white, and non-married populations.
Resources of a
Collective Dwelling
Due to the impossibility of fitting within current cultures and systems, being queer is a radical act. To queer space here means to collectivize resources both culturally and spatially, including walls, land, and lifestyles. For example, nearly 50% of the land can be reallocated on this suburban plot without such individual and separate land uses.
Floor plan of two former single-family homes and their garages, now in a collective dwelling form.
Illustration of the populations and lifestyles that could be accommodated
Interrupting Levittown’s Pervasion
Levittown, one of the earliest quintessential manifestations of the mass-produced American suburb, represents everything wrong with today’s habit of exponential resource consumption that favors a Western, white, nuclear family above all else.
Recognizing this, we must continue to inject queerness into political systems, including municipal policies, lending institutions, and developer investments, until either these change toward a more equitable lens or are replaced altogether.
Queering Mormon space is one way to imagine a future where this happens while using a context that Mormons are familiar with. Perhaps by doing so, Levittown’s and Wellsville’s gay sons do not feel alienated from their own cultures but rather embraced. As an urban designer, I am keenly aware of this work to be done, and I am passionate about creating environments where all people are considered.
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