Arquitetura Bicha is a Brazilian collective dedicated to investigating LGBTQIAPN+ representations in architecture through documents, fiction and experiences. It started as a response to the lack of architectural queer, gender and sexuality theory discussions in a broader range in the country. Arquitetura Bicha has participated in various events, exhibitions, public talks, academic programming and publications showcasing its collective thinking on emergent topics in sexuality and gender in architecture from a Global south (Brazilian) perspective.
The collective is centred on both periodical meetings for discussions and theoretical production and the investigation and organisation of a digital archive, currently displayed in its social media platform and organised in a database. Arquitetura Bicha's production is based on architectural historiographical and theoretical speculative work that aims to re-centrer and re-balance gender, and sexuality representations, reframe theories produced under the cis-heteronormative power, and showcase uncovered work from queer and dissident architectural practitioners and thinkers. In addition, it keeps a thesis and final paper open call for those willing to contribute to the archive.
From its inception on, Arquitetura Bicha had published works on reinterpreting the ornament apart from its modern criminalisation, a study list of global-south LGBTQIAPN+ architectural practitioners, and speculated on an "out of the closet" practice in architecture. These endeavours are also fed by the collective's individual research and practices, resulting in a wide range of investigations that comprise the differences and complexities of the Brazilian territory and subjectivities. Arquitetura Bicha connects to works being carried out in São Paulo, Fortaleza, Florianópolis and Rio de Janeiro.
In a 2021 interview given to Elle Decor Italia, the collective states:
We look at this production through two perspectives: one focuses on the specificities of the professional practice of LGBTQIA+ architects, highlighting cases that challenge the values celebrated by modern architecture, such as austerity, permanence and authenticity, and traditionally attached to a sense of masculinity. The second perspective focuses on how architecture and the traditional city are pursued by LGBTQIA+ people, far from the heteropatriarchal parameters that still drive architectural and urban thinking, and that end up marginalizing the values of this community. We think of architecture as a document, experience and fiction. By architecture as fiction, we understand that this otherness can indicate directions for substantial transformations in the field and in the collective ways of life, until it becomes a reality.
