Veil House
A Space for Celebration in San Francisco
Bachelor of Architecture Thesis Project
Veil House is a cultural center and performance space in the Transgender District in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. Femininity is redefined by embracing and celebrating traits that have typically been used against women, trans women, or any gender non conforming person. Stigma around trans women is dismantled. Fluidity in gender and sexuality creates safe spaces for trans women where they can celebrate each other and continue to gain power as a community.
“…’Veiling implies secrecy. Women’s bodies, and, by extension, female attributes, cannot be treated as fully public, something dangerous might happen, secrets to be let out, if they are open to view. Yet in presenting something as inaccessible and dangerous, an invitation to know and to possess is extended. The secrecy associated with female bodies is sexual and linked to the multiple associations between women and privacy”
From Ludmilla Jordanova Sexuality and Space