GENDER AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN AMBATO

Abstract

It is possible to think the city as a space where power is spatialized and is created over practical,
objective and technical parameters, however it is also necessary to re-think the city and its spaces
from subjective practices with inclusive origins and effects. The western architectural canon
stablished form the Renaissance has been based on the masculine human body as a unit of measure,
this universal unit has enabled the structure of universal cities, buildings and interior spaces that
possibly ignore aspects of everyday life permeated by diverse gender realities. The patriarchal and
masculine views guide the development of cities, but it is inside the house where the confused
relationships of gender, architecture and domesticity become visible. In this sense, the goa, is the
edification of spaces without gender, nor primitive or hierarchical social organizations, that show the
differences and not the inequalities. In this way, the questions in this study are the relations between
architecture, bodies and gender in the city of Ambato. This research pretends to critically examine in
what form the relation between gender and architecture is expressed in the built environment ant its
role in the legitimation of norms associated to gender.