Homemaking in Displacement (Friday evening)

In connection with the exhibition Fantasizing Design: Phyllis Birkby Builds Lesbian Feminist Architecture (May 8–September 2, 2025) the Center for Architecture in collaboration with Qianer Zhu and Giacomo Rossi from the Zurich-based soft resistance collective, invites you to experiment with collective fantasy drawing as a methodology.

Drawings offer the freedom and possibility to represent the intangible layers of daily practices of homemaking, from traces of labor and untold memories to emotions and dreams. At the same time, they can be a tool to reflect on how the sense of home can extend beyond spaces that are strictly domestic, encompassing a neighborhood, an object, or a ritual.

For those who refuse the heteronormative social structures, displacement is often not just an exceptional event, but a constant condition and process of negotiation. When queer bodies are displaced because of their resistance to normative expectations, how can architecture support a temporary sense of respite and belonging? What does the making of homes look like in this context of displacement? How are resilience, refusal, and resistance enacted through processes of homemaking?

After introducing their project and their time-based drawing methodology with examples, soft resistance collective will invite participants to draw together and share thoughts in a collective discussion. The event will be accompanied by tea and sweets and conclude with a guided tour of the exhibition by the curators. 

Workshop Schedule:
5:30-6:00pm: Introduction from Giacomo and Qianer
6:00-7:30pm: Drawing Workshop and discussion
7:30-8:00pm: Guided tour of exhibition

About the Organizers:
As part of an ongoing research which began at ETH Zurich in 2024, soft resistance collective has organized a series of drawing workshops in China, Italy, and across their diasporas. The work investigates the practices of resistance for queer individuals and communities in displacement. These learnings guide them as they set up a collective living experiment in Zurich known as house of differences.

Qianer Zhu (she/her) is a feminist killjoy, activist, researcher, and spatial practitioner, born in Shanghai and currently based in Zurich. Her work explores the intersection of decolonial, feminist, and queer theories through grassroots initiatives like Sekundos, Unmasking Space, and soft resistance collective. Trained at Tsinghua University, ETH Zurich, and Harvard GSD, her projects address bottom-up empowerment and resistance, including Rohingya refugee women’s spatial agency and queer homemaking in displacement. Her work has been presented at the MIT Keller Gallery, Venice Architecture Biennale, Swiss Culture Award, Hochparterre, among others.

Giacomo Rossi (he/him) is an architect, researcher, and curator based between Switzerland and Italy. Trained at ETH Zurich and Accademia di Mendrisio, he is exploring architecture as an agent of empowerment in relation to labor, activism, and the environment. Practicing across multiple geographies, he has collaborated with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Kunsthalle Zurich, Triennale Milano, among others, and his work has been awarded both by the Federation of Swiss Architects and the Seoul Metropolitan Government. He currently is editor at trans magazin and one of the co-coordinators at Unmasking Space and of soft resistance collective.