07 Mar

12:30

ARCAM

Prins Hendrikkade 600, Amsterdam

A lecture by architecture researcher Anastasia Cubasova on her work examining how housing can better support queer and pluriparental family structures, moving beyond the nuclear family norm.

Lecture: 'Honeys! I’m Home: Designing Living Spaces for Families Beyond the Nuclear Norm'

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Anastasia Cubasova is an architecture researcher from Montreal whose work focuses on spatial justice, queer domesticity, and participatory design. Her master’s thesis at McGill University, Honeys! I’m Home, examines how housing can better support queer and pluriparental family structures amid Quebec’s housing crisis. Through fieldwork, co-housing precedents, and participatory workshops with LGBTQ+ families, she explores how collective living and shared care can reshape contemporary residential architecture.

Honeys! I’m Home investigates how residential architecture can better support queer and pluriparental family structures in the context of Montreal’s ongoing housing crisis. While Québec has legally recognized pluriparentality—allowing more than two legal parents—housing policies and design standards still assume the heterosexual nuclear family as the norm.

This project asks how architecture can create conditions for shared care, collective living, and non-normative kinship to thrive. Through queer theory, co-housing precedents, and two participatory design workshops with queer families, the research identifies spatial barriers in current housing and articulates the needs emerging from contemporary LGBTQ+ domestic life.

The final outcome is a speculative 20-unit cooperative designed on the site of a municipal parking structure in Verdun. Though fictional, the proposal works within existing social housing regulations in Québec to explore subtle, feasible architectural adaptations. By positioning queer participants as co-authors, the project argues that inclusive housing is not only a matter of policy but of spatial justice, care infrastructures, and the right to live collectively while thriving in a queer identity.

Anastasia Cubasova will join the bicycle tour – that follows after her lecture – to study the projects and possibly include them in her research. Participants will then be able to exchange experiences with her.